Updates Being Blocked in Certain Regions due to Anti-Piracy Measures

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Update 2: Electric Boogaloo: FOSSTorrents appears to be having difficulty with their hosting/DNS provider. We’re working on another solution.

Update: We’re pleased to announce that the latest TrueNAS 25.04 ISO and update files are now available thanks to our friends at FOSSTorrents!

If you’re from an area being impacted by IP blocking, try reaching the download URLs below.

https://fosstorrents.com/distributions/truenas/

Hey folks,

Over the past few months, we’ve seen sporadic reports of users being unable to download TrueNAS updates and ISO files, despite having the correct DNS and network configuration.

It appears that several of our CDN endpoints, along with those used by several other products, are being caught up by very wide-reaching IP blocks in an attempt by several EU member states to block streaming websites used for piracy.

Unfortunately, these wide-reaching blocks are catching major content delivery networks used by providers like Cloudflare, Amazon, Google, and yes - TrueNAS.

We’re working on standing up alternate delivery methods for our software, including region-specific download repositories, and distributed updates (subtitle: “Bittorrent”) that will be more resilient to these heavy-handed attempts to block off chunks of the Internet.

Several members of our community in the impacted areas have already taken it upon themselves to set up mirror sites, donating their own resources and bandwidth to this cause. :saluting_face:

When downloading TrueNAS updates or ISOs, make sure to compare the SHA256 checksum of the file against the ones we publish on the download page (https://www.truenas.com/download-truenas-community-edition/) before installing, to ensure that your update or installer is 100% genuine and hasn’t been tampered with.

I’ll be back to update this thread or add further announcements as we work to address this. Stay tuned.

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

  • John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
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EU is famous about over-regulating everything. The “accept cookie” button on websites reminds me every single time…

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Does this also apply to the Apps catalog?

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EU is famous about over-regulating everything. The “accept cookie” button on websites reminds me every single time…

That’s not over-regulation, that’s bad regulation. Good regulation would have simply banned all non-essential cookies and cross-site tracking, with heavy penalties, so people can use the internet without having to worry so much about cookies.

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It impacts the icons for the Apps, but shouldn’t impact the Apps themselves, as far as I understand things.

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Well, so this explain why in the last weeks i faced a lot of time of forum/site down, i was thinking about some DNS problem…

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Which EU countries censor the internet? Please names!

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In Italy we are plagued by the Piracy Shield platform, that to safeguard the interests of football’s lobbies - aka, the financier of the project -, Is effectively acting in way questionable manner (some would even dare to say in an unconstitutional manner), moreover causing a lot of problem/embarassing incidents to people and company which have really nothing to do with this topic.
The most glaring gaffe has been the “shutdown” of Google drive, just because some link with privacy protected stuff has been shared…

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The ISP implements the censorship?
Please use a VPN recommend by Private VPN Service Recommendations and Comparison, No Sponsors or Ads - Privacy Guides

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the privacy-right owner abritrary report content violation, and ISP - DNS provider - VPN (yep, are theorically involved too) must block everything in 30 minutes.
They operate for a while only to “live content”, now they can operate also on many other scenarios, they are literally trampling on everyone and everything without any control.
BTW, i’m already evaluating Proton VPN, but honestly pay 10€ per months to avoid having problems on normal use of the net to me seems too much absurd

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United Kingdom

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Spain

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BTW, i’m already evaluating Proton VPN, but honestly pay 10€ per months

Mullvad and AirVPN are half this price.

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never a joy :smile:

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instead Mullvad seems available and effectively costs half the price. Thanks for the tip!

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I just installed Protón VPN in free version. It has connected me to the Netherlands and I have been able to download from download.truenas.com without any problem.

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I always thought countries like Spain, Italy, and Great Britan were democracies. Is that no longer the case? When did that change?

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Another one to check out is AzireVPN, as it’s slightly cheaper than the other two. I can’t vouch for it or AirVPN as I haven’t used them, but their prices are reasonably low. I have used Mullvad though and have been fairly happy with it.

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We’ve received reports from France, Italy, and Spain so far - and yes, it’s primarily related to football streaming as @oxyde mentioned.

VPNs are certainly one way some users are working around it, but as discovered in another post, some VPN providers don’t offer services to the countries in question (as they’re subject to the same regulations) - and asking our community to sign up for a VPN or use a free one isn’t really a solution we consider viable or acceptable.

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I completely agree with you.

But more and more former democracies are now requiring official ID to view NSFW images and videos. For privacy reasons, no one wants to confirm their real identity on an NSFW site, which is why more and more people are turning to VPNs.

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It’s been happening for a while. It almost happened in the USA, under the last admin.

It’s probably one the few good things this admin has done, to go after this plague. My friend in the UK are essentially muffled and are very very afraid to post anything anywhere.

It’s like 1984 over there, right now.

Art

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