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Censorship Government Japan Piracy The Internet United Kingdom Your Rights Online

High Court Orders UK ISPs To Block More Torrent Sites 133

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the coming-to-an-america-near-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The website blocking phenomenon has continued today in the UK, with the High Court adding three major torrent sites to the country's unofficial ban list. Following complaints from the music industry led by the BPI, the Court ordered the UK's leading Internet service providers to begin censoring subscriber access to Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy." Unlike when the Pirate Bay was blocked, none of the ISPs contested this. They did, however, refuse to block things without a court order. Looks like the flood gates have been opened. On the topic of filesharing, Japan arrested 27 file sharers, using the recent changes to their copyright law that allow criminal charges to be brought against file sharers.
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High Court Orders UK ISPs To Block More Torrent Sites More

High Court Orders UK ISPs To Block More Torrent Sites

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  • Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28, 2013 @04:17PM (#43038523)
    Suddenly six strikes that end with a slap on the wrist doesn't look so bad.

    • What makes you think they will end with a 'slap on the wrist'? That process is simply a new one, in addition to the existing process of suing individuals. If anything, it makes the lawsuit that much better "But we gave him six chances to stop!" [it WILL be presented as a defacto admission of guilt unless you have challenged each step and been successful, which is, well, impossible] Nevermind that at best, they can only establish which internet connection was used for this possible infringement.

  • The law has obviously not caught up to the Tech Community...

    • Fun times (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28, 2013 @04:27PM (#43038633)

      When the law begins to not represent the morals and wishes of the people. The Australian tax payers are building a high speed fibre optic content distribution system that will allow content producers to sell us their copyrighted product and they have the gall to claim that we will be using it for piracy.

      FUCK you content producers, I'm going to lobby the government that we should be taxing copyrighted content to subsidise the delivery system that the people have paid for,

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        +1 interesting...

      • And the entire music industry gathers together for a wonderful holiday charity chorale, featuring their stunning new number, "We Jump The Shark Together".

      • Who wants to bet they'll be crying when there's no way of distributing their 4K content to consumer's new TVs?

      • FUCK you content producers, I'm going to lobby the government that we should be taxing copyrighted content to subsidise the delivery system that the people have paid for,

        I'm a content producer and well... FUCK you, too! It's been shown via many studies that people that share music also buy much more than those that don't share it. Hollywood has made, hand-over-fist, more money each year, even when they have strings of crappy releases. This isn't a war of the content producers, insomuch, vs the public; it's the content copyright HOLDERS waging this war convincing ISPs to serve as the judge and jury to questionable connections between one computer and another. Really, I coul

        • FUCK you content producers, I'm going to lobby the government that we should be taxing copyrighted content to subsidise the delivery system that the people have paid for,

          I'm a content producer and well... FUCK you, too! It's been shown via many studies that people that share music also buy much more than those that don't share it. Hollywood has made, hand-over-fist, more money each year, even when they have strings of crappy releases. This isn't a war of the content producers, insomuch, vs the public; it's the content copyright HOLDERS waging this war convincing ISPs to serve as the judge and jury to questionable connections between one computer and another. Really, I could be sharing a legal torrent from archive.org with a person that's also torrenting a newly-released Hollywood movie. Both of us are encrypting all inbound and outbound traffic. Guilt by association? I don't know, but I have a feeling that if the EFF was arguing on my behalf, I'd win.

          You right about your criticism of the RIAA and the like, but lets remember that these banned sites were just free loading shit bags making money from advertising or donations in return for giving access to content that they have no right to distribute.

          It is one thing to think RIAA and MPAA are crap but that doesn't mean that sites like these are any better. They are just freeloading off the original artists that produced the works we all enjoy as well. At least the record companies share 0.001% (a pathetica

    • I haven't personally tried it but Google seems to suggest it works - install Opera and enable the turbo mode, which is basically a built-in proxy. This will let you get on to TPB from the UK right now, but I assume it doesn't offer the same security a paid VPN would.

      I used to pirate a lot of music and also buy an awful lot of CDs. Same with movies and DVDs. Then they started suing consumers and adding those hateful anti-piracy ads to DVDs - did I pirate less? No. But I stopped buying discs. I'd like for

  • How is this done? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Are these sites pulled from those ISPs' DNS servers? Do they block the IP address (which could easily be changed)? Non-Brits want to know.

    • Re:How is this done? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Spottywot ( 1910658 ) on Thursday February 28, 2013 @05:03PM (#43039115)

      Are these sites pulled from those ISPs' DNS servers? Do they block the IP address (which could easily be changed)? Non-Brits want to know.

      Well when TPB was blocked a few months ago it definitely wasn't DNS(I use open DNS and couldn't access it normally). I think they must be blocking the IP address, easily negated by the various proxy sites that popped up straight away, and which still give easy access to TPB without the next need for TOR or a VPN or any such obsfucation techniques. The same thing will happen with this next round of blocks. The ISPs that grumbled the last time probably aren't bothering this time around, because they are aware of the fact that it won't really affect anyone other than having to alter a couple of bookmarks before carrying on as usual. I'd be willing to bet that there has been no decrease in torrent traffic since the Pirate Bay block, and there will be none this time either.

    • if its a dns level thing then its an easy bypass for *nix people just install their own dns server and redirect dns requests to 127.0.0.1

      • changing the DNS doesn't help, the IP address is blocked at ISP level. The usual workaround is to google alternative web addresses that point to the same final IP. for instance :- if "www.thepiratebay.org" is blocked by your UK ISP, you'll probably find that "http://thepiratebay.ee/" will get you to the same place and not be blocked. I hope that helps.

        • changing the DNS doesn't help, the IP address is blocked at ISP level. The usual workaround is to google alternative web addresses that point to the same final IP. for instance :- if "www.thepiratebay.org" is blocked by your UK ISP, you'll probably find that "http://thepiratebay.ee/" will get you to the same place and not be blocked. I hope that helps.

          If an IP address or range is blocked at the router, it won't matter what you name it, it will be blocked. If www.tpb.org and tpb.ee go to the same place, then a block on that IP address will take both of them out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      "Cleanfeed". Built for blocking child porn, of course. Traffic to specific IP addresses is redirected to a deep inspection system.

      • Re:How is this done? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday February 28, 2013 @05:36PM (#43039457)

        It's not actually a DPI system, though your close: It's a transparent HTTP proxy. The packet filter just directs traffic to port 80 on blacklisted hosts to the transparent proxy box, and the transparent proxy then filters on specific URLs. If it were a true DPI system, requests would still appear to originate from the correct IP address and we wouldn't have seen the wikipedia incident happen. Transparent proxying changes the source IP, which can be very disruptive to anti-vandal/troll systems and really mess with log analysis.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amorsen ( 7485 )

          Back when I worked with transparent proxies in the 90's, keeping the source address intact was a fairly standard feature...

          Anyway, their setup depends on the source address changing. Otherwise return routing would miss the inspection-box. So even if their transparent proxy/DPI box has the "keep source address intact" option, they cannot enable it.

          • The solution to that is obvious. If you can route traffic *to* the suspect IP into the inspection box, you can route traffic *from* it there too! If it's heading for the customer, it's still got to traverse the ISPs network.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by amorsen ( 7485 )

              You can, but it gets extremely tricky.

              To get the traffic to the box each ISP just listens to a BGP announcement from the Cleanfeed "ISP". Then all of the ISP routers automatically do the right (wrong) thing, no further configuration needed. To get the return traffic from the content provider, the ISP needs to do source-based routing (policy routing). This means adding configuration to at least each edge router which might receive traffic from one of those banned content providers, and in many cases the core

    • It's not DNS, as others have said it's done by IP. However, on our backup ADSL connection which is provided by Xilo (on a exchange with no LLU) we don't have a problem, so it appears to be only for the big ISPs, and not for smaller ones that use their infrastructure.

      AAISP don't do any filtering either. I was sorely tempted to move from AAISP back to BT as their FTTC package was cheaper, but this is making me rethink that idea. Not that I pirate anything, but it fucks me off when my ISP tells me what I can a

  • Dear Judge (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I have good reason to believe that criminals use the telephone system to distribute plans to commit crime. It is time to shut down these criminal aiding telephone systems.

    • I think you'd find very few people who would object to the phone lines being used by "credit services" being shut down. Your humorous analogy isn't as silly as it sounds.

  • And the roots of the next step in the evolution of non-corporate-sanctioned file-sharing began.

  • Im done pirating (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28, 2013 @04:52PM (#43038961)

    This is a blessing in disguise - Its a chance to stop stealing content (lets be honest here) and buy stuff through legit channels. The reason I started pirating in the first place is that a 700 mb xvid was vastly more convenient than going to the store, bringing home a dvd wrapped in annoying plastic with easytear perforations that never work and sitting through an FBI warning with nonsensical forced previews. This is all resolved, Hollywood has listened and there are tons of ways to stream movies (only the movies and non of the crap). Piracy is gone in my world, I thank Hollywood for listening to us.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I fail to see how copying something makes you steal it, and I would certainly not have paid for most of those things I downloaded. Therefore I don't see how those companies can even claim a loss in that case, and I doubt I'm an isolated case.

    • You must live in a world where you like watching two year old movies on Netflix and TV shows being held back on Hulu. Yea.. Hollywood is right on top of things. The only decent thing they've done right is music.

    • I think the only reason hollywood listened was because the piracy forced their hand. Without piracy, there would be no netflix or hulu.

    • Re:Im done pirating (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday February 28, 2013 @05:48PM (#43039591) Homepage

      They'll come around eventually, Spotify and other streaming services are now over half the music market in Scandinavia and HBO seems to have finally taken a whacking with the cluebat and introduced HBO Nordic, a streaming-only service that'll have new episodes within 24h of airing. Sure they could use a few more whacks with the cluebat, but it's a start. Give it another 5 years and I think it will have spread just like Spotify has. Movies will be last because they still manage to get people out of their chair and into cinemas for unskippable commercials and to buy overpriced soda and popcorn on top of expensive tickets, but if TV go streaming they will too. In any case, there's no reason to stop pirating. It's no surprise these services have launched where piracy is strongest and where the Pirate Party has made most progress, they're damage control. You just have to keep at it and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I still cant phantom why the ISPs should work for free for the lobbies of the media corporations.

  • On the internet all it takes is one hole. One weak link in the chain.
    This will achieve nothing. It will solve nothing.
    Determined users will find ways around it if they have not yet. This will not generate revenue and just feed the hate for the MAFIAA [mafiaa.org]

    It's not even about legality. Look at any banned substance, if there is a demand for it, there will be a supply. This ruling follows a token law that has no bite, has no teeth and is actually counterproductive. I did not even know about those other two sites

  • .. I do not know about you, but I am done pirating.

    On a more serious note, do the people making those decisions recognize the amount of ill will created by their actions? If I was not so old and did not care the new shiny everyone and their mother needs to have, I would probably start pirating out of spite...I am certain teenagers don't do things they are expressly forbidden from doing..
    But maybe I am ageist; I do teach the old folk basic computer skills for my volunteer work. Last we

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I would probably start pirating out of spite...

      I did.

      I wasn't that bothered about it, had a few albums. Everything else was happily bought CDs and Blurays etc.

      Then Labour started lauding about the digital economy act, smug Andy Burnham going on about the poor music and movie companies, like a red rag to a bull and bought pretty much nothing since except hdds and a few 2nd hand PS3 games.

      So I downloaded the lot :-
      Music - Every flac discography I could possibly think, want, maybe slightly consider - got them all.
      Emulation - Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, SNES

  • We seem to be heading towards the direction of streaming content, both audio and video, where the consumer pays $X per month for a selection of content. That's fine if you prefer that model (and it's a decent model - there's plenty of content that's probably only worth a single view/listen anyway), but unfortunately this seems to be the only legal outlet that's available for legit, digitally-distributed movies and videos from the big guys.

    In other words, I still can't legally download TV shows or movies in

  • "On the topic of filesharing, Japan arrested 27 file sharers, using the recent changes to their copyright law that allow criminal charges to be brought against file sharers."

    According to TFA

    "Existing legislation against uploaders of copyright content already provided for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($108,202) fine."

    Given that all the arrests were for uploading or otherwise making available pirated goods, I would say this comes under the pre-existing law, and not the October 1s

  • Damned be the Great Goo of Grey Typewriters that are Voters of Habit who distort elections and prevent anything to be done this decade and maybe the next.

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