Portuguese 'Anti-Piracy' Site Blocking Used Against US Video Game Developer

One of the reasons why many people are opposed to various "site blocking" laws, is that inevitably such things get abused. And while the US successfully stopped SOPA's site blocking plan, plenty of other countries went ahead and implemented something similar -- including, apparently, Portugal. Yet, earlier today, reports came out that the Portuguese site-blocking system was now blocking the website of an American video game development shop called Carbon Games. Now, it does appear that someone just screwed up here. It's not happening on all Portuguese connections, but it did happen on multiple ISPs according to the initial report on Reddit. Also, it seems they only blocked the version of the website where the URL starts with "www." Get rid of that and people could access the website without a problem -- again adding to the likelihood of a general screwup. Oh yeah, also, it looks like if you use any other DNS provider, such as Google's DNS, you'd avoid the blocks (another reason why blocking at the DNS level is kind of stupid).

Either way, even if it was just a "mistake," the fact that it happened at all should be a huge concern. When entire websites can be blocked without any real review or due process, it opens the door to much more serious and widespread censorship. It's again troubling how quickly many in the copyright realm ignore the nature of this slippery slope.

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