Comment by virtualritz
4 days ago
I just found out that https://annas-archive.li/ is masked by my German internet provider (SIM.de/Drillisch). I usually use a VPN but I had it switched off temp. to watch Fallout (Prime Video won't let you watch through a VPN). Only when I switched Mullvad back on could I open the site.
I didn't know German providers do this.
Yeah this is actually quite nefarious, as it is a private organization that decides what sites get blocked, with no legal oversight.
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearingstelle_Urheberrecht_im...
- https://netzpolitik.org/2024/cuii-liste-diese-websites-sperr...
Its a DNS based block, so overriding your default DNS server is enough to circumvent it. I think Dns over Https also works.
Pretty sure this was a thing in the past, but that currently it has to be a court order.
The wikipedia article seems to concur with you, although this seems to be a voluntary policy by CUII, the members could still decide to not wait for any court orders and block whatever they want.
I think it's a DNS level block. I've been using NextDNS (free plan) and one side effect (besides auto ad block) is that it doesn't have those blocks. Highly recommend - there are alternative services as well, just saw NextDNS recommended here.
Alternative: https://archive.ph/2025.12.21-050644/https://annas-archive.l...
Someone compiled a list of blocked domains (by probing different DNS servers):
https://cuiiliste.de/
This is also how, for example, RT is blocked in Germany.
In that vein, I am trying to find out why searching for
which should trivially yield http://github.com/alextud/PopcornTimeTV results in anything but that one particular URL in every search engine: Google, Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Bing
They even find a fork of that particular repo, which in turn links back to it, but refuse to show the result I want. Have't found any DMCA notices. What is going on?
They have marked the repo as noindex (or GitHub is forcing a noindex header).
Its returning a noindex flag so every serp is correctly doing what the repo has been asked.
That is... except for brave! I checked on my searx instance and it still showed up in brave's results
Try Yandex search, trust me later.
It has 0 censorship - regarding pirated content at least.
Very interesting. The security page does show up on kagi at #6.
I wonder if GitHub flags it to not be indexed or something.
Also true in the Netherlands, I hate these copyright freaks constantly trying to restrict access.
Was also shocked to see that (Berlin, Telekom here).
They also block some foreign "news" like Russia Today last time I checked.