It Took Us Less Than Five Seconds To Get Past Australia’s Anti-Piracy Site Blocks

Seriously, guys. This is embarrassing.

In mid-December, an order from Australia’s Federal Court directed Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 – four of Australia’s largest ISPs, including their subsidiaries like iiNet and AAPT – to block access to The Pirate Pay, Isohunt and other websites often used to download copyrighted materials.

Those ISPs were left to choose their own methods of site blocking, whether it be a simple URL block or a DNS-based redirection. The method favoured by most uses DNS, which ties a website’s URL to its numerical IP address and directs those requests through to the appropriate location.

A DNS block is phenomenally easy to circumvent.

On a Windows PC, it takes a matter of seconds to change your network connection’s DNS settings to Google’s public DNS. Open up your Wi-Fi, click a couple of things, tap the ‘8’ key four times, et voila. It was quick enough that I could GIF it.

It took me less than five seconds to get around the Australian government's #siteblock laws. GREAT JOB, TEAM pic.twitter.com/V9mKtegMwR — Campbell Simpson (@csimps0n) February 7, 2017

This post originally appeared on Gizmodo Australia