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ISP Block on Pirate Bay Not Having Desired Effect
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 11, 2008 01:03 PM
from the never-underestimate-the-pirates dept.
from the never-underestimate-the-pirates dept.
TechDirt is reporting that the recent block placed on The Pirate Bay torrent site is not only relatively ineffective, but actually driving more traffic to the site because of the attention. "The news from The Pirate Bay appears to confirm this suspicion. According to The Pirate Bay's new Court Blog, Danish traffic has not dropped since the implementation of the block. '...the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI,' the blog post reads. 'Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter - our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.' 'We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There's no noticeable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Courts Force Danish ISP to Block Torrent Tracker 145 comments
Pirate writes "A Danish court ruled in favor of the IFPI, and ordered the Danish ISP Tele2 to block all access to the popular BitTorrent tracker. The Pirate Bay, currently ranked 28th in the list of most visited sites in Denmark, is working on countermeasures."
[+]
Danish ISP Tele2 Challenges Pirate Bay Blockade 129 comments
krasmussen writes "After Monday's injunction on Danish ISP Tele2 to block access to The Pirate Bay, the company has now decided to take the case further in court. 'We do not like being put in a role where we as ISP have to regulate people's freedom of speech' says Nicholai Pfeiffer, regulatory manager i Telenor, which owns Tele2. However, because the current ruling against Tele2 still stands, the customers are not going to regain access to The Pirate Bay at the moment."
[+]
News: The Pirate Bay Blocked In Italy 247 comments
imhassan tips us to news that The Pirate Bay has been blocked in Italy. Other attempts to block the popular P2P site have been somewhat less than successful. From TorrentFreak:
"Pirate Bay's IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as they are blocked by ISPs all over the country. Whether these blocks will be very effective, however, is doubtful, since The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures. An insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker, which was sent out yesterday. Italy is taking a stand against BitTorrent sites, so it seems. Two weeks ago, the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, was shut down by the same prosecutor who is responsible for the Pirate Bay block."
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Oblig. Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
-- John Gilmore
Re:Oblig. Quote: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Truth, ignorance, and condoms. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And the Net also has another interesting trait. It seems operate with a variation of Netwon's 3rd law. For every action there is an opposite + magnified reaction.
Re:Oblig. Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
This has more to do with human behaviour and predates "the Net".
Banning (or attempting to ban) just about anything is actually a very good way of advertising something. People who would otherwise never have heard about the whatever wanting to find out what all the fuss is about.
Parent
Re:Oblig. Quote: (Score:5, Insightful)
As a sidenote, OpenDNS for the win.
Parent
ObResponse: (Score:5, Insightful)
-- John Gilmore
-- Seth Finkelstein
Parent
This is exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
...what everyone thought, I suppose. I'm wondering: did any of the legislators consult a single tech guy? I don't agree with filtering, but this is just embarrassing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
They know very well this doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This is exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
More realistically, they know exactly why it isn't working and aren't trying very hard to implement it. It's called "paying lip-service". A DNS block does work fine, as long as your users don't want to, or don't try to circumvent it. Case in point, I'm using DNS block on my home/small business network to block out adservers, using the list from http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/ [yoyo.org]. Works great, because nobody on the network has any interest at all in circumventing it. If I were blocking something like Google, the users would riot. And they'd switch to a different DNS server.
Most people in the kind of position where they'd be able to implement a DNS block know that the only way to enforce it would be to block DNS traffic at the routers... or to silently redirect DNS traffic to the ISP's DNS server, something that's ridiculously easy to do with most routers/gateways/firewalls.
Parent
Its not technical ignorance, its cultural (Score:5, Insightful)
The component they seem to miss is the resolve of those people that know how to do it to not only adapt their system to access anything they want, but to then make the fix for it easily accessible to the masses. They are willing to write scripts, make interfaces, patches, websites, directions, etc so that anyone can do it.
Thats the component they miss, and it is not a technical lack of understanding, but a cultural one.
Parent
Re:This is exactly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, maybe they don't care whether people get around the block.
Well, if the assholes at IFPI cant access the site anymore, maybe they'll stop complaining. And, hey, it's a best effort deal, most other possible blocking methods would risk catching even more innocent and entirely unrelated sites, without being much harder to bypass.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That was a rhetorical question, right? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course they did, because married tech guys are just too hard to find.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't bother with the link, it isn't worth it. Really. Nothing there but whores, alcoholics, an alien and and a needle junkie. Nothing you're not dealing with every day, ya know?
-mcgrew
(-1 offtopic, except for the comment it is responding to. Is your head about to asplode, mr. mod?)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...what everyone thought, I suppose. I'm wondering: did any of the legislators consult a single tech guy? I don't agree with filtering, but this is just embarrassing.
I'm certain they did. And they kept consulting with single tech guys, until they found one that would tell them what they wanted to hear.
And seriously, if you were a tech guy, what would you do, actually put forth a herculean effort to attempt to violate the very policies that make up the internet so some twit politicians can block a PERFECTLY LEGAL WEBSITE, a block which would be bypassed almost instantly, or set up a token effort that gets you a nice paycheck and lets everyone save face? They both pay
Re:This is exactly... (Score:4, Informative)
There was no new legislation introduced. IFPI complained to the special court called "Fogedretten" which only handles property disputes. A judge from Fogedretten made a ruling based purely on his interpretation of existing Danish IP law and ordered Tele2 to block the site. Also please remember that continental European law differs significantly from what you may be used to in US. We do not use common law. A ruling by Fogedretten does not set precedent, like a ruling in an American court would.
Tele2 announced today that they are challenging the ruling in the city court, which means this will turn into a real court case. They are backed by a common interest board of other Danish ISPs.
Parent
OpenDNS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:OpenDNS (Score:5, Informative)
The right question is: Why an ISP claiming to censor and filter is not transparently proxying DNS?
It is the easiest protocol to abuse. A single line NAT entry can do the trick. 99.9% of access equipment out there is capable of doing that. Just add it to the default user profile along with the mandatory web proxy/cache and other similar lines.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
is not transparently proxying DNS?
That would be very easy to do but it would also be very easy to get around.
I grew tired of Roadrunner's DNS re-direction for failed domains and started running my own DNS server. I configured it use the DNS server at work as a forwarder. It would be a small matter to go one more step and configure an encrypted VPN between my house and the office if my ISP started intercepting my DNS queries and redirecting them to their server.
How long before OpenDNS or equivalent services offer a VPN'ed/encrypted me
Re:OpenDNS (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting question. Here's another one, following the path you suggested:
How long before RIAA/MPAA attempts to have said OpenDNS encrypted DNS query service shut down, on the grounds that it facilitates piracy?
Parent
Re:OpenDNS (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I could come back with arguments like "It wouldn't stop piracy, you can do this yourself without OpenDNS", "they'd have no legal basis for that", but such realistic assessments of the situation have never stopped them before.
I guess the best we could hope for is that enough people would become angry enough to donate money to a legal defense fund for OpenDNS. In any case, as long as they are the ones responding to us and not the other way around it's only a matter of time before we win.
Nothing worth doing or fighting for is ever easy.
Parent
Re:OpenDNS (Score:5, Informative)
I don't use (only) OpenDNS because I don't like being tracked and their search page that pops up when you type a wrong address. I run my own caching name server (dnsmasq) that draws from a pool of DNS servers (OpenDNS too) and I get rid of their stupid search page with This is much faster than using a name server that is not in your intranet and has the advantage that I can give names to all machines in my lan (laptop, xbox, mediacenter, mobile phone...), and if one nameserver goes down or blocks something, there are others in my pool.
Parent
Re:OpenDNS (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't get much more transparent -- or easier -- than that. Users without an account do not have their DNS requests logged, obviously.
We're running a service used by hundreds of thousands of IT professionals and millions of users around the world -- we can't even keep stats fast enough as it is for the users who want them, let alone deal with everyone else.
-david (CEO and occasional janitor over at OpenDNS)
Parent
Re:OpenDNS (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
-david
Miss Streisand (Score:3)
Also, bittorrent is the only thing I know to get better with the Streisand and Slashdot effects...
You Know. (Score:2)
Streisand effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, the "Steisand effect" is very specific: an attempt to block information spreads it instead.
Appropriate quote at the bottom of the page (Score:3, Funny)
I always thought those were random
An interesting thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what will happen is already happening. People are figuring out that hey, for only a few thousand dollars, I can BUY the equipment to make my own music or movie, and release it independently.
Consider this. I invest $15,000 in some very respectable music equipment. I write all the songs, perform all the instruments, record it all, and master the mix. I then put up a website on a domain that costs me 10 bucks to register and only 15 bucks to host. I sell the music in multiple no-DRM formats on my website. In addition, I upload it onto various torrent sites, and include in the file a readme with a link to my website asking that people buy it. I upload a link to the site on Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc. I post the link in forums, in newsgroups. I submit my stuff to internet radio stations, post it on MySpace/Facebook...I even spend a little bit more money to get some advertising on various gaming and independent music websites. Let's assume that with all of this, my costs are now sitting right around $20,000 for total amount invested (not including time, of course.)
Assuming that my work is good and that people like it, I have the potential to make more money than I would with a record deal. Not only that, but I would OWN the equipment that I had made the album with, which I could then either sell, or I could keep and record another album thus making more money (especially since it would be a one time investment)
I'm not saying it would be easy, but the potential to earn far more than I invest is definitely there. By putting the album up on torrent sites and such with a link to my website, I am building an empire. I am getting free advertising. I am getting word of mouth. I am getting EXPOSURE, and it's not really costing me much of anything.
THIS is what will eventually be the downfall of the music industry (the movie industry not so much...equipment has definitely come a long way, but it's still very expensive compared to producing an album). The music industry won't be driven out of business by people downloading their crap for free...it will be little old me with full creative and distributive control over MY creation. It will be people KNOWING they can download my album because they don't have to worry about any lawyers running after them. It will be people SUPPORTING an artist like me, because I am doing the same thing they are: looking for new musicians who are doing it all on their own.
(Note: I am not actually doing this...I can barely play the nose whistle, much less any other instrument)
Re:An interesting thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the difference between copyright infringement and stealing. If I steal something from you, you have to replace it somehow if you want to sell it to a paying customer. That's additional cost, and if I steal enough I can drive you into the red. If instead I copy your product, you still have the original and can sell it if you can find a buyer.
If, say, ten thousand people buy the product and that's enough to turn a profit, it doesn't matter if ten people pirate or if ten million people pirate - it's no cost to the producer. Even if the whole remainder of the earth's population pirated, it wouldn't affect the profit-loss sheet, as long as that hard core of buyers remains.
The remainder of your post I think is quite correct - that the middleman is going to become extinct in the future. But you seemed to imply that increasing the ratio of pirates to payers would produce losses. That's not true, as long as the absolute number of payers does not decrease. Reduce the payers to one tenth of their former number, that's a loss. Increase the pirates to ten times their former number, no difference at all.
Parent
Re:An interesting thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
A few thousand dollars (even 20k) is a non-trivial investment for most people. It gets even harder because at the value you quote you're only considering equipment and initial costs. If you start selling and transferring files, that $15/mo host will probably cut you off quickly and you'll have to move to something more expensive. I imagine that you'd be pushing to have your download income outpace your bandwidth bills, never mind costs for the rest of your equipment.
And as you said, you didn't include your time. Or your residence, food, or anything else you need to live. So you'll probably have to be working a job and doing this in your free time, which carries its own set of pitfalls.
I'd wager that the cost of running a business like this (since that's what you're doing) would not be high, but your income would probably not be much higher. I would be less surprised to see them operate at a consistent loss, since you aren't really selling anything. Giving your product away and hoping for handouts is a sure fire way to lose money on something.
And that only considers costs based around the production of an album of music. Never mind other, more expensive media (animation, video games) that don't have any real-life counterparts.
Parent
It's going to court (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Eh, wha? (Score:5, Informative)
This is only logical, while english is a very common language and a great many people speak it as their second, third language, it is not the most common language.
In europe, most tv-stations, even the commercial ones are man-dated by law to provide a certain amount of "native" broadcasting. That is why the station RTL4 which was clearly aimed at dutch audience spend money on a luxemburg program block in the early hours to satisfy the law (they were based there using a loophole).
Childerens tv in holland has had a strong EU only feel to it in my youth, simply because US programs did not meet EU regs against advertising to childeren.
As for how it is affected, it is not even clear yet how copyright infringement affects hollywood, how it affects local cinema in the rest of the world is anyones guess. We certainly are not going to get the truth about it from the media, they after all have a rather direct intrest in the matter.
So far however it seems to matter little, Remember non-hollywood movies tend not to pay quit as much to their stars. This matters a lot, to pay those idiotic salaries a Tom Hanks gets you need to make massive profits. Pay them a more modest wage and you have a lot more room.
Also what you claim about english content being more easily accepted in the rest of the world helps. I can far more easily find a seeded torrent of a US show then say a belgium program even if said program in the country itself is more popular.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to speak with an accent, go for it.
Messy writing? Spelling mistakes? No problem.
Confuse you're apostrophe's? Irritating, but still readable. (It took me about a minute to write that first sentence.)
26 characters and you're good to go. You can express any damn sentiment you want.
Compare that to, say, Cantonese, where you have to worry about intonation, angles, way more characters, &etc. Even fr
you're rather odd (Score:4, Interesting)
well duh. bollywood makes far more movies than hollywood. but bollywood movies don't spread out from india very much, except in indian expat communities, because outside of india, hindi or other indian languages are used very rarely. but outside of anglophone countries, you still find a lot of people who understand some english
you mention how french canada feels about this. what do you mean how they feel about it? i'm talking how much the movie's cultural influence is. what, french canadians go see a jason bourne movie and then go home and take a shower and vomit in disgust because they saw an english language movie? your attitude is bizarre. either they watch it, or they don't. that's all that matters. they vote with their feet, not with the attitude in their mouths. if they are in the theatre, watching the movie, they are influenced. done deal. if they watch the movie, the deed of cultural influence is done. if they dislike warmongering american neoconservative imperialism, or whatever, who cares? it doesn't change the outcome of going to the movies and being influenced
"This is only logical, while english is a very common language and a great many people speak it as their second, third language, it is not the most common language."
you don't seem to grasp logic. if everyone has language X as a second language, movies on language X will penetrate more people's consciousness than movies in language y. therefore, cultural output in language X will come to dominate. your observation about english supports my opinion, and destroys your conclusion, which isn't logical at all
"In europe, most tv-stations, even the commercial ones are man-dated by law to provide a certain amount of "native" broadcasting. That is why the station RTL4 which was clearly aimed at dutch audience spend money on a luxemburg program block in the early hours to satisfy the law (they were based there using a loophole)."
yes, this is called cultural protectionism. cultural protectionism is unnecessary in a healthy culture that isn't being eroded or feels threatened by another culture. a law requiring a certain amount of cultural output is enacted and enforced because one culture is afraid of being dominated and flooded out by another culture. which gets back to my original question about piracy threatening german, or czech, or danish culture: destroying the financial means to create a culture which feels threatened, would seem to be more damaging to a culture already feeling vulnerable. that's my original question. do you have an answer for it? the rest of your words seem to dance around unrelated subject matter. i think you think you are informing me about very obvious things, things which i already know. it's patronizing and strange
"As for how it is affected, it is not even clear yet how copyright infringement affects hollywood, how it affects local cinema in the rest of the world is anyones guess."
ah! an answer: you don't know
"We certainly are not going to get the truth about it from the media, they after all have a rather direct intrest in the matter."
huh? i asked you. i'm not the media, you're not the media
"So far however it seems to matter little, Remember non-hollywood movies tend not to pay quit as much to their stars. This matters a lot, to pay those idiotic salaries a Tom Hanks gets you need to make massive profits. Pay them a more modest wage and you have a lot more room."
ah! good answer, great answer, and one i agree with: people will always make movies in danish, or german, or czech, because they are proud of being danish, or german, or czech. well done
"Also what you claim about english content being more easily accepted in the res
Parent
Re:a question (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, creative works should be a drain on society. Manual labor during the day and creative works during the night. Assuming you're not too tired to do anyhting.
Don't know about you but I don't see films being done as concerts (as plays and films are entirely different mediums.) And of course, having reduced ability to do something is always good. Cutting back opportunity is always a benefit.
Ok. So cost of duplication is gone.
You love this example because it lets you convince yourself that all you need to do anything is a laptop, and you let yourself ignore ALL of the other costs that go into the production of an album. Never mind that human creativity reaches beyond music albums (and you need more than a laptop if you want to make something that sounds good. I hear microphones are pretty expensive still.)
Of course they are, but they need to eat too.
They would, but you'd see a lot fewer people making it. Go ahead and tell yourself that ALL the bad things would go away and all that would remain would be good things.
In a world driven by money and commerce, the injection of money into artistic works is NOT artifical. It's the natural product of the way the world works.
I'd rather have enforced copyright of reasonable length than be reduced to crap packed to the gills with advertising, or more American Idol type trash. Which is largely what you'd get if what you want were to happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
got it. because creative output depends upon enforcing a corrupt and failed economic model. it always has. the creative class as a mafia of extortion is the only way it can ever get funds. pffffffft. moron: you confused me attacking the current failed economic model of cultural creation, for attacking the very idea of supprting cultural creation
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> NOT artifical. It's the natural product of the way the world works.
>
> I'd rather have enforced copyright of reasonable length than be reduced to crap
> packed to the gills with advertising, or more American Idol type trash. Which is
> largely what you'd get if what you want were to happen.
Um, American Idol and adware ridden rubbish *is* the result of money driven "art". If you could not make money out o
Re:thank you for your answer ;-) (Score:4, Informative)
Most "small language" populations are not willing to pay for the true cost of local language culture directly, but are willing to pay indirectly for it through taxes.
The interesting corollary is that since the culture has already been financed indirectly through taxes, there is no reason to attempt to extract direct payment through distribution restrictions (copyright law). By removing the distribution restrictions one would also increase the added value of the culture, as per standard economic theory (the added value is the difference between the price of the product, and the value of the product to the buyer).
Parent
Re:HuH ? (Score:4, Informative)
You are missing something. The ISP was ordered to block Pirate Bay, and is sueing so that they no longer will have to do so. Therefore, I have no doubt the effort to block it was knowingly prefunctory.
Parent
Re:Problem - Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Parent