"Piracy Filter" Blocks TorrentFreak for 4 Million Sky Customers 122
An anonymous reader writes "Website blocking has become a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. Opponents of both voluntary and court-ordered blockades have warned about the potential collateral damage these blocking systems may cause, and they have now been proven right. As it turns out blocked sites can easily exploit the system and add new IP-addresses to Sky's blocklist. As a result TorrentFreak has been rendered inaccessible to the ISP's four million customers."
There we have it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why censorship of the internet is a fucking stupid idea.
Re:There we have it (Score:3, Insightful)
That depends on your point of view. I'm pretty sure there people/corporations/governments that do like it.
Re:So, What You're Saying is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There we have it (Score:5, Insightful)
Government officials usually have no real opinion on this due to a lack of understanding. They just act on lobby groups that are usually sponsored by Hollywood and other corporate interest groups.
Add DNS for "legitimate" sites (Score:5, Insightful)
If the blocks are applied to any IP address pointed to by a blocked site, maybe as a demonstration a blocked site should add the IP addresses of all of the major UK political parties, BBC iPlayer, Youtube, Netflix, lovefilm etc. If mainstream media sites get (automatically) blocked then perhaps the backlash might force TPTB into either removing the requirement to block or require the ISPs to use a blocking mechanism with less potential for collateral damage.
Re:Add DNS for "legitimate" sites (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There we have it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is to be expected of what I've come to call the "Corporate Internet".
Governments and corporations have inherited our tubes, and I think that by now they're pretty confident that it's going to be acceptable for them to control and limit the content that ordinary people have access to.
It's been like this for a while now; once you learn the ropes and (more importantly) learn to obey all the rules, you'll fit right in!
Re:This makes me think of Wrath of Khan (Score:5, Insightful)
Kahn was quoting Melville; Kirk was his whale. And Star Trek is more known to most slashdotters than Melville.
Re:There we have it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes the news interesting when you see it from both sides.
Notice how easily they convinced you that there were only two sides...
Re:So, What You're Saying is... (Score:5, Insightful)
the UK is now in the leauge of China, and Iran as far as internet access goes.
You might want to try that again.
I'm in China right now, and I've no trouble accessing either TorrentFreak or TPB.
(And no, I'm not using a proxy or VPN, just a bog-standard residential connection.)
SKY customers being blocked (Score:2, Insightful)
SKY is operated (largely) by NEWS Corp aka Murdoch and Fox news
So CAN WE PLEASE HAVE A BLOCK ON the SUN Newspapers Website and FOX news -
That would at least be some positive achievement out of this shambles
I live in the UK and I see a totally inept, totally technophobic government try to work the 21st century with 19th century tools and mentality.
We have 2 little rich boys trying to run a country that is in a shambles because they don't understand anything - basically.
Oh and to keep the balance - the other lot aren't much better
Too many lawyers and PR executives and not enough techies - or anyone who has actually had to work for a living - in our government.