British ISP Ordered To Block Links to Pirate Site 157
An anonymous reader writes "A UK High Court judge has ruled that BT must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies. Justice Arnold ruled that BT must use its blocking technology CleanFeed — which is currently used to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse — to block Newzbin 2. 'Currently CleanFeed is dealing with a small, rural road in Scotland,' ISPA council member James Blessing told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. 'Trying to put Newzbin and other sites into the same blocking technology would be a bit like shutting down the M1. It is not designed to do that.' Digital rights organisation the Open Rights Group said the result could set a "dangerous" precedent. "Website blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgements won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries. And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown. If the goal is boosting creators' ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand," said ORG campaigner Peter Bradwell."
Love it (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how trivial this is to get around for the pirates, too. First thing I thought was 'URL Shortener.'
But of course, anyone that really cares would use a VPN and this wouldn't affect them in the first place.
Re:Love it (Score:5, Insightful)
The fantastically sad thing is that this is what we've always warned/complained about. Every time a child porn filter is mentioned on Slashdot as a proposed project, there's a cloud of "it's gonna be abused" comments following it. It happened in Australia, without too much open discussion until the blacklists were leaked. Here, we have a quintessential example—in motion, no less—of the precise same problem.
I recall some stories about US lawmakers pushing for the Internet to become more regulated; that it's too lawless. For once, I agree with them: we need mandatory net neutrality.
Re:No appeal? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a slippery slope though. How long before Ryan Giggs [slashdot.org] or someone like him demands that they block Twitter to protect his super injunction?
Re:Love it (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to avoid your ISP's tomfoolery, use a VPN. Giganews provide one with their platinum package. When I use the VPN, it gets round my ISPs bandwidth throttling and I get 1000% faster download speeds.
By leap-frogging the ISP like this, you can work around some of the bullshit.
Re:Love it (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to avoid your ISP's tomfoolery, use a VPN.
Until your ISP starts fooling around with the VPNs. It's trivially easy to throttle things like OpenVPN & co. My ISP is currently testing DPI combined with throttling, and they've been quite successful at it.
By leap-frogging the ISP like this, you can work around some of the bullshit.
And you become dependent on the company offering the VPN service, which also has to keep logs to be legally compliant to its local government. Hell, once the VPN service becomes the next target instead of your local privacy laws protecting you (if your country has such a thing), you now are subjected to the local policies of the company you're hiring the service from. Most companies have a policy in place to keep track of financial records, if you get what I mean.
I'm very wary of companies offering me VPNs to "enhance my internet privacy".
Re:Love it (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read our law on data retention. The sensible thing for an ISP to do is to ignore it. The fine for failing to comply is lower than the implementation cost.