HN Explorer

GitHub.com momentarily blacklisted in Russia

96 points by gtrubetskoy ↗ HN
http://eais.rkn.gov.ru/en/#form (requires captcha)

The requested address is blacklisted

Blacklisting Authorization Date 24.03.2014 Blacklisting Authorization Number 4138 Blacklisting Decision Maker Роспотребнадзор Blacklisting Date 02.10.2014 Resource: github.com

56 comments

[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] thread
sarciszewski
On a scale of 1-10, this registers a solid 7 on my personal rustle-meter. Especially since I have friends in Russia who do open source work on Github :(
rabbyte
Am I wrong in thinking this only adds 1 step to your friends workflow given that git is decentralized?
ClashTheBunny
Maybe this is a problem with GitHub. Too much re-centralization of the git protocol. How many people ever learned how to use git without GitHub?
pwenzel
Anyone who used svn before switching to git!
lambda
Yeah, this is the problem with people centralizing on GitHub.

But anyhow, just set up a mirror at BitBucket or Gitorious, and have them push to one of those for pull requests.

__xtrimsky
Small question, git noob here. The comments that we see on github (outside of the commit messages), are these comments stored on github, or is it something git related.

Logically I would think the comments are just an extra layer added by github, but theoritically git could have comments also decentralized and stored, this is why I'm asking.

dllthomas
Comments and tickets on github are github only.
ClashTheBunny
Unless you [backed up](https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup)!
ihateloggingin
Do see the "limitations" section:

github-backup is repository-focused. It does not try to back up other information from GitHub. In particular, social network stuff, like users who are following you, is not backed up.

github-backup does not log into GitHub, so it cannot backup private repositories.

Notes added to commits and lines of code don't get backed up yet. There is only recently API support for this.

The labels that can be added to issues and milestones are not backed up. Neither are the hooks. They could be, but don't seem important enough for the extra work involved. Yell if you need them.

ClashTheBunny
So, it backs up most of everything, just a couple of the deeply commented stuff doesn't work. All issues for example get backed up. It feels more like it back "most" things up and leaves out only a couple of things.
lambda
Yeah, the comments are an extra layer added by GitHub, and not stored in the repo itself.

You're right that it would be possible to also decentralize the comments, but that's not how GitHub does it, they just store those on their own, and there's no part of Git that is explicitly built for storing code review comments, you would need to add something on top using the "note" system or something similar.

ancarda
Nicer formatting:

    The requested address is blacklisted

    Blacklisting Authorization Date    Blacklisting Authorization Number    Blacklisting Decision Maker    Blacklisting Date
    24.03.2014                         4138                                 Роспотребнадзор                   02.10.2014
Is there anything we can do about this?
__xtrimsky
Google Translate says the Decision Maker is CPS (Child Protective Services). So it's most likely just a mistake.
depth_breadth
Роспотребнадзор actually translates to Consumer Protection Services.
__xtrimsky
ok thank you. I actually mostly know russian, but that word made no sense to me.
depth_breadth
I know Bulgarian, which is similar. Роспотрепнадзор derives from Russia (Россия) Consumer (Потребител) Supervision (Надзор).
gtrubetskoy
I think "decision maker" means they are acting on some sort of a complaint/request. Rospotrebnadzor ("Ros" - Russia, "Potreb" - Consumer or Consumption, "Nadzor" - Oversight) is simply the government org whose responsibilities include blacklisting. There is no way to tell from that website what led to this decision as far as I can tell.
dkns
What does this mean exactly? You can no longer access github.com from within Russian territory?
gtrubetskoy
I think it means that ISPs are obligated to abide by this ruling and probably have some reasonable amount of time to adjust their filters. It may be accessible now, but won't be in a day or two.
Someone1234
Lame that they blocked it, nice that they readily admit blocking it. Wish the UK would do this with their great firewall, they have mistakenly blocked things too may times.
DanBC
Do you have any examples of things mistakenly blocked?
Someone1234
Wikipedia, Reddit, Imgur, et al.

They often are only blocked for hours at a time but it is still heavily disruptive.

DanBC
Was the whole domain blocked or the individual resource?

They all seem like examples of things that English law would block - mostly images of child sexual abuse or images of human-animal sex.

If someone is blocking all of WP and not the individual problem page then yes, that is stupid and annoying and I agree with you.

pavel_lishin
I don't understand why or how the роспотребнадзор is responsible for this.
osipov
Don't panic. It turns out that someone committed a text file with instructions on how to commit suicide and then reported him/herself to the Russian oversight agency. Typical bureaucratic stupidity. This will be unblocked shortly.
rev
Exactly. Only a few regional ISPs have been blocking GitHub for a short amount of time.
cyphunk
"dont panic" is ironic. Panic not because access was lost but because the conditions for loss were so trivial.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pietro
I just tried and got "The requested IP address is not blacklisted".
pkrs
Seems that it was banned because of this commit about suicide https://github.com/amdf/objidlib/commit/e9c31e97c0ca7863516f...

Based on the previous experience if github reacts in any way this will probably get resolved sometime in the future.

Gonzih
Hm, so there is basically easy way to use filters to block any website (at least temporary) for the Russian segment of the Internet? I don't see how it might go wrong.
ClashTheBunny
Here's an interesting problem. The person who committed the text file about suicide has a .ua domain in their GitHub Profile; would this be a specific way to troll Russia if you're Ukrainian? Just start finding important sites and post stuff on there that are legal everywhere but Russia? Not that March 23 is that good of turnaround for Russia to get it blocked when they can unblock it in a couple of hours.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dleskov
Just want to make one thing clear: in this particular case the request was to block a specific URI. It is the (smaller) ISPs that do not have a technology to block an URI and the (bigger) ISPs that do not bother to employ that tech who block entire sites by IP addresses.
splix
1. was blocked by large countrywide ISPs, like Beeline and Domru 2. Github uses SSL, and there is no way to block specific URI under https://
drinchev
I'm not sure, so I ask. Who is blocking those IP Address and from who are they blocked?