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Piracy Businesses Censorship The Internet United Kingdom Your Rights Online

BT Blocking Private Torrent Sites? 80

Posted by samzenpus from the no-site-for-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes This weekend both BT and Sky implemented the new changes, making it harder for their subscribers to reach these sites. Interestingly, however, BT appears to have gone above and beyond the court order, limiting access to various other sites as well. Over the past several days TorrentFreak has received reports from several users of private torrent sites who get an 'error blocked' message instead of their favorite sites. These include the popular IPTorrents.com and TorrentDay.com trackers, as well as scene release site Scnsrc.me. IPTorrents and Torrentday are significant targets. Although both sites require prospective users to obtain an invite from a current member (or from the site itself in exchange for cash), they have over a hundred thousand active users. The error displayed when BT subscribers try to access the above URLs is similar to that returned when users to try access sites covered by High Court injunctions.
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BT Blocking Private Torrent Sites? More

BT Blocking Private Torrent Sites?

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  • thepiratebay.se (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @02:07AM (#48472415) Journal

    Not that it's related, but for whatever reason today thepiratebay.se hasn't been connectable. Apparently for a lot of USA people.

    If i can't download my stuff, i will probably have to go shoplift it. Ain't no way I'm paying the fucking media companies shit for anything. Black Friday is the best day for shoplifting, just saying...

  • tpb.pirati.cz (Score:5, Informative)

    by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @02:41AM (#48472523)

    great mirror, pisses all over virgin media block.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Everyone in the UK should be using a VPN as standard anyway now. Between site blockades and illegal spying they are a necessary part of connecting to the internet here. Look at it this way, if you went to China you would want to use one, right? Well the UK is at least as bad as China.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by N1AK ( 864906 )
        I really can't see why anyone who is downloading material that they could be sued for in the UK isn't using a proxy or VPN. Given how low the cost is of using a reputable one doing anything less seems like a very naive gamble.

        However, on the topic at hand: It's completely unacceptable for ISPs to be limiting what websites users can visit when they aren't legally obliged to. Not only is it an even more dangerous precedent than the current government restrictions but it makes a mockery of protecting them f
      • VPN providers can and do share identity of their clients with the government.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          VPN providers can and do share identity of their clients with the government.

          What if you get a VPN provider in another country, will a Czech or Taiwanese based provider share information with the UK government?

          • That might be fine in theory, but who knows in what agreements in the future those governments will engage in? Perhaps it'll even be secret and you won't even know it. I think tor is a better choice. It's distributed and not bound to any particular company or country.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mjwx ( 966435 )

              That might be fine in theory, but who knows in what agreements in the future those governments will engage in? Perhaps it'll even be secret and you won't even know it. I think tor is a better choice. It's distributed and not bound to any particular company or country.

              Except TOR is bad for torrents. [torproject.org]

              Besides this, the nebulous threat of some global co-operation over copyright enforcement is delusional to say the least.

              If such a threat became credible, you'd just switch VPN providers to another country.

              • That's only one of possibilities. Also, just someone may crack VPN provider's systems and install a tap to record all logs(same is possible with tor, but it requires most of exit nodes to be compromised which is kinda hard). And you won't even know about it. You can use i2p for torrents.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      http://piratebay.rocks [piratebay.rocks]
      also works.
      (obligatory grumble about the cash-grab of the many new top-level-domains)

  • Hmmmm. (Score:3)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @02:43AM (#48472533)

    Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet?
    Sounds like a clear case of fraud.

    • So is the 250 GB cap.
      Doesn't stop them with a Supreme Court that will not hear cases involving price-fixing and fictitious advertising.
      Buy a few state judges (Crapcast just finished spending over 30 million in the last election. How much over is Citizen's United out of our sight) and you can do whatever you want to people
      Capitalism and monopolism are always synonyms given enough time and positive market feedback control.

    • > Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet?

      See also literally/figuratively.

    • Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet? Sounds like a clear case of fraud.

      Your honour, I'm filing this case because BT refuse to allow me to download copyrighted material I've not paid for and which is being distributed without the holders permission....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Yomers ( 863527 )

        Your honour, I'm filing this case because BT refuse to allow me to download material that is in public domain or under permissive licence, like GPL or CC.

        Fixed that for you. By blocking entire TPB BT refusing it's users access to thousands of legally shared torrents. And besides, TPB does not contain any copyrighted material or links to such material - only description and hash of such files.

  • BT? Sky? (Score:3)

    by rebelwarlock ( 1319465 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @02:53AM (#48472561)
    What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

    • BT? Sky? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, youÃ(TM)re supposed to at least skim TFA, the very first words of which are ÃoeUK internet provider BTæ"

    • British Telecom and Sky media: two prominent UK suppliers of broadband (and lots of other stuff, POTS and sattelite TV, respectively)

    • Re:BT? Sky? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @03:52AM (#48472733)

      BT: The biggest ISP in the UK. Former state-run monopoly phone company, long since privatized, but heavily regulated to prevent abuse of its unique position.
      Sky: Another major ISP. ADSL service. Also provides satellite TV.

      • Re:BT? Sky? (Score:5, Informative)

        by oobayly ( 1056050 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @05:51AM (#48473011)

        To add further to the description of BT - a company split into three parts - BT Retail (the phone provider / ISP), BT Wholesale (who run the infrastructure and exchanges), and BT Openreach (who run the last mile infrastructure). It's supposed to mean they can't abuse their monopoly. As far as the customer is concerned, it means that reporting a fault might have to go through 3 companies and most of the time spent is the 3 companies passing the buck. They also like to charge each other and pass the cost on to the customer.

        Phone lines cut out randomly [tek-tips.com]

        I was present as he reported the findings to his Boss and I heard his Boss say "Can you make it look like their fault so we can still bill them?" He replied "No cos he is stood here listening and watched me fix it". This was followed up with an extremely apologetic conversation between me and his Boss where he claimed he was just Kidding!!! Yeah right...That sums BT up exactly

        BT Retail is basically staffed by a bunch of MBAs, salemen and shit tech support (although their BTnet tech support is actually pretty good). BT Local business are a bunch of complete wankers and will [literally] cancel your ISDN30 and recreate it so they get more commission - this resulted in 36 hours of downtime.

        BT Openreach - you're not allowed to speak to - but when an engineer does come out, they are generally professional and knowledgable. However, in the above case, they will fulfill BT Retails requests to cover their arses. In the above ISDN30 case, they pretended that the failure was due to a faulty NTE-2D (Fibre termination equipment) even though we had it confirmed that our contract had been "cancelled" the day before.

        We have a 100Mb/s leased line with BT, which I have to admit has been pretty bulletproof - we've had about 30s of downtime in 4 years (but is also insanely expensive). Anyhow, when we renewed out contract I told them we wanted an IPv6 subnet, this was subject to a charge of £400 as they said they needed to upgrade our bearer. This was never done, so we complained, and they said they would have to charge us £3,000 - the normal installation fee. We pointed them to the contract we signed. Now, instead of sending out a bloke to update the router, or even send out a new router, they have:
        * Spliced together 26km of fibre to the exchange.
        * Installed a 3rd fibre into our office
        * Provided a new NTU
        * Provided a new Cisco 3xxx router
        * Sent 3 engineers out to do all this

        I spoke to one of the Openreach guys - he shrugged and said "that's the way they like to do it". I said "it's ok, we're not having to pay the standard installation fee, just sounds like a waste of time and money though". He also explained what the bearer was (confirming my assumption) and looked pretty confused when I told him BT Local Business insisted that it had to be upgraded to "carry" IPv6 packets.

    • You may never have heard of them but if you are in America, you are probably using code that both those companies developed in the late 90s since BT and Sky sent engineers to California to develop a lot of your set top box menu software and on demand services. Problem for you guys is that your still using it. Next time you're over here, have a look at the way Sky software works and you'll be insanely jealous. Far far more advanced than what I've seen in America and Canada.

      • if you are in America, you are probably using code that both those companies developed in the late 90s since BT and Sky sent engineers to California to develop a lot of your set top box menu software and on demand services.

        Worse - if you're using the Internet, then significant chunks of the code and practices would have been developed at the UK's GPO (General Post Office), which became BT on privatisation in the mid-80s. Through the 1970s the GPO was intensely interested in the technologies needed to repla

    • What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

      Ever thought about using your favourite search engine to look them up?

      There are plenty of non-USA based readers here who have to do that whenever a USA-centric article appears (which is often).

    • What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

      Yes. If they are central to the operation of the internet for a substantial portion of its subscribers, then yes, you are expected to know what they are, and lots of other things besides. You have to know the names of now-defunct corporations and even some computers and routers if you are going to speak intelligently about the internet. If this seems arduous, perhaps Slashdot is not for you.

  • Who cares what the hell they are blocking?? (Score:3)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @03:10AM (#48472613) Journal

    Just find a way to circumvent it.. and tell the rest how to to do it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well that's helpful. Wow, I bet no one thought of that. Thank you, magnificent one.

  • Easy enough to get around. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If they start blocking by DNS, go via IP directly.
    If they are blocking IP directly, either go VPN or Tor.

    If they block either VPN or Tor, they will be pissing off much bigger fish then tor browsers.

    If they even managed to go this for long, how do you think it would take for a fed up programmer create a new non-centralized client setup for searching directly instead of a website similar to Limewire if not limewire itself.

    • Re:Easy enough to get around. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jahta ( 1141213 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @08:13AM (#48473295)

      If they start blocking by DNS, go via IP directly. If they are blocking IP directly, either go VPN or Tor.

      Running Bittorent over Tor is a bad idea [stackexchange.com]. As the linked article says, look at I2P instead.

      • Running Bittorent over Tor is a bad idea [stackexchange.com]. As the linked article says, look at I2P instead.

        But it would be fine to run your browser over Tor in order to get the torrent magnet link, and then use the "normal" network with your favorite torrent application to get the actual file ?

    • I wonder when countries are going to start outlawing VPNs. "Conspiracy to commit cybercrime" or some bullshit like that.

  • This weekend both BT and Sky implemented the new changes, making it harder for their subscribers to reach these sites.

    What new changes? What sites?

    If all you're going to do is copy and paste a couple of paragraphs from the article, at least pick ones that make more sense by themselves.

  • inneffectual Whack-a-mole (Score:3)

    by Ginger Unicorn ( 952287 ) on Thursday November 27, 2014 @06:33AM (#48473095)
    Presumably they aren't allowed to block proxybay.info because that is always up, and just gives you the working pirate bay proxy du jour. I'm not sure what the significance or notability of them blocking a members only torrent site is though. Irrespective of what access people have to it, it's still a torrent site. Or am I missing something?

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