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A 17-year-old student has embarrassed the ‘Clearingstelle Urheberrecht im Internet’ (CUII): on his website, he has published the complete list of all domain names that are blocked at the instigation of rights holders without prior judicial review.

In February 2021, providers of internet access services based in Germany, including 1&1, Telekom Deutschland GmbH and Vodafone Deutschland GmbH, together with rights holders such as the Bundesverband Musikindustrie eV, DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH, Sky Deutschland Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), founded the CUII. Its aim is to combat ‘structurally copyright-infringing websites’. This refers to websites whose business model is geared towards mass copyright infringements. Websites are blocked if the extrajudicial clearing centre, which claims to be independent and is chaired by a retired judge of the Federal Court of Justice, recommends this and the Federal Network Agency has no objections in accordance with the EU Net Neutrality Regulation. A blocking recommendation by the CUII can only be made if the three-member review committee is unanimous. DNS blocks are the method of choice. They prevent the assignment of a domain to an IP address and thus direct access to a website. The blocks are not subject to judicial review; however, a judicial review remains possible for all affected parties.

If you want to know which domains are blocked by the CUII, you can find an overview on their website in the ‘Recommendations’ section. However, this is only part of the truth. A 17-year-old student, who calls himself Damian and has a passion for computer science, has published a complete list of all 275 currently blocked domains on the internet. In an interview with netzpolitik.org, he points out at least two problems he has with the CUII. Firstly, he is against the fact that the CUII, in his opinion, operates a kind of private parallel justice system. ‘If a private organisation can decide which websites to block without hearing from judges, then that's a problem,’ Damian told netzpolitik.org. ‘There is a proper way to enforce such claims. It involves effort for the rights holders. They have to prove where exactly the copyright infringements are taking place, try to track down the operator and ask the hoster to delete the content. And it is also impractical for the internet providers, as they then have to go to court. However, the legal process ensures that this takes place within the legal framework. The CUII, on the other hand, decides on its own. It's a kind of vigilante justice’. Damian also criticises the lack of transparency. The CUII keeps secret exactly which websites are affected by its blocks. Nor do users know the extent of the blocks. They cannot get an idea of the pattern behind them. ‘That's why we want to make the CUII more transparent,’ says Damian. He does not reveal where he got the list from; according to netzpolitik.org, the list apparently comes from an internet provider.

Despite all the blocks, Damian also points out that they are ineffective because they can be easily circumvented. He has published a step-by-step guide on his website in which he explains the necessary workarounds. For example, anyone surfing the web with Firefox only needs three clicks, without any additional software; with Chrome and Edge it is one step more.

You can find the list from ‘Damian’ at:
https://cuiiliste.de/domains

Further information on the ‘Copyright Clearing House on the Internet’ (CUII) can be found at:
https://cuii.info/ueber-uns/

The ‘Clearingstelle Urheberrecht im Internet’ (CUII) has responded to the publication of the complete list of blocked domain names by a 17-year-old student: as the bloggers at netzpolitik.org report, 39 blocks have now been lifted.

Since 2021, the CUII has been endeavouring to combat ‘structurally copyright-infringing websites’ at the instigation of internet access providers and rights holders. This refers to websites whose business model is geared towards mass copyright infringements. The weapon of choice here is DNS blocking. This prevents the mapping between the domain name entered in the browser line and the IP address on the DNS server of the access provider, so that the domain no longer leads to the corresponding website; however, the content itself remains accessible under the IP address. According to the CUII, a list of domains blocked in this way is published on its website in the ‘Recommendations’ section. However, this is only part of the truth, as the ‘recommendations’ are incomplete. A 17-year-old student who calls himself ‘Damian’ and has a passion for computer science therefore published a complete list of all 275 blocked domains online in mid-2024. As justification, he pointed out that, in his opinion, the CUII was operating a kind of private parallel justice system because there was no prior judicial review of the blocking. In addition, ‘Damian’ criticised the lack of transparency, as the CUII keeps secret exactly which websites are affected by its blocks.

As a result, ‘Damian’ followed up. He checked the domains on the blocked list and came to the conclusion that a third were wrongly blocked because the associated website did not infringe any copyrights. For example, the website accessible via the domain burningseries.tw had contained a banner with the content ‘Buy this Domain’ as its only page content since at least 29 July 2023. In the case of newalbumreleases.unblockit.dev, he found that the website had not been used since at least 8 December 2022 and newalbumreleases.unblockit.onl had not been used since at least 9 February 2023. After netzpolititik.org reported this on the morning of 12 September 2024, there were prompt reactions: ‘Three of the four internet providers we are monitoring unblocked burningseries.tw this morning. I wonder if there was a bit of pressure from the CUII?’ said “Damian”. At midday on 13 September 2024, he went on to write: ‘They're doing some workup right now, unlocking one domain after another.’ If you include subdomains, 122 websites were recently blocked in Germany on the recommendation of the CUII. ‘Damian’ found no copyright-infringing content on 41 websites; only two of these are now blocked. In other words: since the publication of the complete blocking list, the internet providers have lifted 39 DNS blocks.

The fact that there has been hardly any public protest against the unauthorised blocks is probably due to the ineffectiveness of DNS blocks. The cyber criminals had long since switched to alternative domains, and the content that was criticised as illegal was not affected by the DNS block anyway. Once again, what the ‘topDNS’ initiative launched by eco - Association of the Internet Industry recently called for applies: illegal online content must be rendered harmless at source by the responsible law enforcement authorities in accordance with the principle of ‘deletion instead of blocking’. Domain shutdowns, on the other hand, are not an effective means in the fight against illegal Internet content, as they are not permanently deleted.

You can find the website of ‘Damian’ at:
https://cuiiliste.de/

Further information on the ‘Copyright Clearing House on the Internet’ (CUII) can be found at:
https://cuii.info/en/about-us/