Hello,
Today, in collaboration with Davide Brunello (independent researcher), we published a new report which examines the *blocking of the Gutenberg book publishing website across networks in Italy* based on OONI data.
Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-italy-blocks-gutenberg-book-publishing-website/
Since May 2020, access to the Gutenberg book publishing website has been blocked in Italy (in compliance with a decree of the court of Rome) over copyright violation.
The criminal lawsuit is currently ongoing and that does not permit access to relevant documents that would help with further understanding the background and situation that resulted in the blocking of www.gutenberg.org.
OONI measurement analysis shows that access to www.gutenberg.org is blocked on at least 7 AS networks in Italy. Most ISPs primarily block access by means of DNS tampering.
In blocking www.gutenberg.org, some ISPs in Italy (e.g Fastweb & Tiscali) return an NXDOMAIN, others (e.g. TIM, Telecom Italia, Iliad) return the IP address 127.0.0.1, while Vodafone Italia returns the IP address 83.224.65.170.
Regardless of what is returned in the DNS response, what all ISPs in Italy (at least those included in this study) appear to have in common is the *lack of transparency* of the fact that access to www.gutenberg.org is intentionally blocked. Internet users just see an error message.
Further details and analysis is available in our report: https://ooni.org/post/2021-italy-blocks-gutenberg-book-publishing-website/
Thanks for reading!
~ OONI team.