The Bwog
A Very Special AskBwog: Can Juicycampus Really Be Blocked?
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In light of CCSC's recent crusade against juicycampus.com, Bwog wanted to know if it were really possible to ban a website from the campus server. Apparently, it's not. Resident computer expert and Bwog Web Master Zach van Schouwen explains why in the following bullet-pointed list:

  • It's expensive. They don't have an existing filter in place, so they'd have to buy expensive, unreliable software
  • We're all forgetting the masterminds of SEAS. It would be approximately 30 seconds before any SEAS hack had a mirror of the site up that was accessible at a different address
  • Proxy server. Let's say you're visiting Juicycampus. Normally your PC sends them a request, and they send back a website. A site blocker would prevent this request from going through. A proxy server is just a third-party server that you make the same request to; it then makes the request to Juicycampus and sends you the results. This can all be encrypted, too, in which case there's no way for even a smart CU programmer to know what you're doing.
  • Google cache. You can get to any blocked site by looking at Google's saved copy. Nobody ever thinks of this. (There are other sites like this too.)
  • Tunneling out. If you have login access to any off-campus server, anywhere, you can easily log into it remotely and view the site. (Like, say, the Bwog server.)
  • Mirroring. Juicycampus can just change their address, put up a mirror site, identify themselves numerically...
  • Copying. Some intrepid kid could just create a site that copies all their content every five minutes.
  • CUIT's never made a practice of it, so it'd be pretty shocking if they shelled out the $1000s for a commercial-grade filter, slowed down everyone's internet, and blocked a single site. Liberty University probably wouldn't even do this, let alone... any real university.
Read more: Ask Bwog, Ccsc, Technology, The Internets

March 4, 2008 @ 1:05 PM | Comments 24 comments | Add comment Post a comment | Link to this article | | Email this post | Share on Facebook

Posted by zach: [#1] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 1:12 PM ) (from campus)
pwnz ccsc n00bz
Posted by CUIT NetOps Intern: [#2] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 1:15 PM ) (from campus)
Yeah...this is a joke. CCSC should get someone who knows jack shit about computers or the internet before they go off banning websites.
Posted by Hannah : [#3] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 1:16 PM )
I hadn't heard of juicycampus until the post on Bwog the other day, so I just took the opportunity to see what all of the fuss is about. Man! That is one boring website!!! It's not really juicy, or salacious at all and most of those posts seem like they're only relevant to a tiny portion of the columbia population. I don't get it. Why are people so upset?
Posted by ...: [#4] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 1:29 PM ) (from campus)
banning websites: bad.

flooding them with so much crap that they become unusable: funny.
Posted by I agree: [#5] [reply] [track] (in reply to #4)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 1:56 PM ) (from campus)
CCSC should hold a trash-Juicy-Campus-while-building-CU-solidarity event, where everyone just spams the website with inane posts, say light-blue themed.
Posted by tiny portion: [#6] [reply] [track] (in reply to #3)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:08 PM ) (from campus)
The reason people are upset and want to ban the site is because they are that tiny portion. The Sunday CCSC meeting consisted of free speech advocates against the ban and sorority girls for it. These are the people who are affected by the site so they want it away. A bit hard to make an unbiased decision about something when that something is calling you the biggest slut on campus who has done lines of coke off all the the football player's dicks or whatever other absurd things the posts on that site say.
Posted by actually: [#7] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:15 PM ) (from campus)
Actually, you can't find juicycampus information in Google's cache, because juicycampus isn't indexed. (Robots.txt + all content retrieved via javascript)

But that's why banning the site is such a bad idea. If juicycampus was somehow cut off, who's to say similar information won't show up elsewhere? It's much better to have the information on a website that won't randomly show up when employers Google your name.

The response that employers can find that information if they know where to look is not very powerful.

1 - Not all employers will know where to look

2 - Anyone who thinks to look at juicycampus will know to take the information with a grain of salt. A person randomly discovering information on Google might not.

But congratulations to ban advocates. You've managed to draw more attention to the site than it would have otherwise received.
Posted by one other thing: [#8] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:20 PM ) (from campus)
If by the cache technique you just meant getting to an otherwise blocked form, that doesn't always work. At least in my high school, you could get to the front page of Facebook via the cache, but any attempt to login failed.

(Yes the front page of juicycampus shows up in the cache, I meant the content inside)
Posted by Ron Gejman: [#9] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:33 PM ) (from campus)
I'm not sure #1 is correct. Columbia has border routers and I'm sure those routers already do funky things like block malformed packets, re-route internal Columbia IPs back inwards etc. They may easily be able to block all inbound and outbound requests to a certain IP address.

The software that Zach is alluding too is probably content-searching, such as what what [ external link to www.narus.com ] sells. Blocking an ip address or a range of them would likely be trivial.
Posted by ron: [#10] [reply] [track] (in reply to #9)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:47 PM ) (from campus)
is correct. if columbia wanted to, say, throttle bittorrent traffic, that would be hard. if it wanted to look for keywords and ban them like China does, that would be hard. blocking one ip is easy - it's just doesnt actually make a site inaccessible, as the rest of the post points out.
Posted by well: [#11] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 2:55 PM ) (from campus)
Someone could still create a range of proxies I think?
Posted by ZvS: [#12] [reply] [track] (in reply to #11)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 3:46 PM ) (from campus)
Yeah, #8-11 are all correct. (#7 -- I've never seen the site myself, and didn't realize there was a robots file; so, yeah, Cache won't work.) However, I'd be *really* shocked if Columbia modified its standing routing configuration on the border routers; I can't imagine that anyone at CUIT would feel that was appropriate.

Although I disagree with #10 on one thing -- throttling BitTorrent traffic isn't all that hard, because the packets can be identified and discarded on their headers alone. I know of a few universities that do just that, since port-blocking isn't very functional.
Posted by Oh Zach!: [#13] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM ) (from campus)
You can throttle my BitTorrent traffic anytime. And it will be hard.
Posted by Ron Gejman: [#14] [reply] [track] (in reply to #12)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 4:04 PM ) (from campus)
Of course CUIT would probably not modify its routing protocols to censor a website. But the point was that if they wanted to it would be cheap.
Posted by Ron Gejman: [#15] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 4:10 PM ) (from campus)
*shrug*

Just for clarity's sake, garden-variety bittorrent clients can be filtered with some non-firewall softeare, but encrypted bittorrent messages cannot be filtered. Encryption is available on many (at least all the best) bittorrent clients.
Posted by ZvS: [#16] [reply] [track] (in reply to #15)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 4:26 PM ) (from campus)
Really, the encryption hides the protocol metadata? That's cool. I need to learn more about BT, obviously.
Posted by Juicy: [#17] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 5:18 PM )
Comments about Michelle have gotten nastier and more common since her infamous e-mail followed by the ever important CCSC meeting. I hate to say this, but she brought this on herself.
Posted by yes it does: [#18] [reply] [track] (in reply to #16)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 6:07 PM ) (from campus)
it hides the metadata precisely because that has been used to filter it. most of the commont bittorrent clients will do this.
Posted by that: [#19] [reply] [track] (in reply to #17)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 6:11 PM ) (from campus)
is kinda fucked up. she 'brought it on herself'? since when does foolishly advocating censorship mean that you deserve to be targeted with a flood of sexism? blaming the victim has an ugly history in this context...
Posted by hey: [#20] [reply] [track] (in reply to #17)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 6:12 PM )
post the "infamous email" plz.
Posted by does the site: [#21] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 6:49 PM ) (from campus)
in any way control who has access? Some of the posts for Columbia are so utterly degenerate they could not have possibly come from here. I mean, I used to read b@b once in a while, but these things look like they were written by failing HS kids.
Posted by huh?: [#22] [reply] [track] (in reply to #17)
( posted March 4, 2008 at 8:16 PM ) (from campus)
what infamous e-mail?
Posted by this one: [#23] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 8:44 PM ) (from campus)
[From the Feb 27th CCSC weekly email]

[...]

And it may or may not be my place to say this, but if you’re posting

on the website that advertises “juicy” campus gossip, please keep in

mind that this can be incredibly hurtful to people. While I hope

everyone recognizes that these posts are nothing more than spiteful

and unwarranted, they are still really bothering to people and they

really need to stop. At our Council meeting this Sunday, we will

be discussing what action we can take to have this site banned from

the Columbia server. (I am not including the url or title because I

do not want to help spread this trash anymore than it’s already

spread).

So to avoid ending this email on such a sour note, check out all the

awesome events taking place on campus this week! As always, feel

free to email or call me if there is anything the Council can do to

make your lives better!

Yours,

Michelle

[List of events/etc...]
Posted by Yeah...: [#24] [reply] [track]
( posted March 4, 2008 at 9:44 PM ) (from campus)
It might be asinine to throw your political muscle behind an effort to censor a site that's making fun of you.

Michelle Diamond is not the person I want controlling what I can see on the Internet. Haven't all the parables and dystopian novels about banned books and censorship taught a lesson by now?

Get your shit together, CCSC.
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