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Torrentspy Disables Searching For US IPs
dr_strang writes "Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states: 'Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy. Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy's decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws."
Did someone say tor?
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Seems I just can't win with searches anywhere today.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I wonder if this can be accessed from the United States through Tor.
I also wonder if I have to start worrying about other sites blocking American users simply out of fear & safety from the United States MPAA/RIAA run court system? I used to feel sorry for Chinese people who had to suffer from their government's censorship and now I have to wonder if I'm going to start suffering from other servers censoring me based on my government's actions.
My work here is dung.
Someone create a privatized wiki-torrent where people can put up their own torrents. That way you can never be sued cause you're not responsible for the contents.
Non-US proxy usage skyrockets globally.
How am I supposed to support artists if I can't steal their work? Buy CDs and movies?
The more popular tor gets, and the more traffic in the network, the better it'll be for the entire 'net. One click of the my "tor" option under "FoxyProxy", and I was able to submit searches no problem.
Method of processing duck feet
I was afraid that the lockout would affect Canada too, but it works just fine for me. So yeah, they have the whole localizing IP addresses thing down pat.
In related news, I get a banner add offering to help me "Find my real sex partner in WATERLOO". But how will Americans find their "real sex partners" without this valuable service?
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
"I also wonder if I have to start worrying about other sites blocking American users simply out of fear & safety from the United States MPAA/RIAA run court system? I used to feel sorry for Chinese people who had to suffer from their government's censorship and now I have to wonder if I'm going to start suffering from other servers censoring me based on my government's actions."
Ah yes. The right to be entertained being denied to Americans. Next up, the government stops you from getting fat.
they should have redirected the search results to this page, same result...
I never understood why people get all excited about the piratebay and torrentspy. They are shitty trackers filled with horribly named, low quality garbage.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
When one site goes down, another appears. There is balance in the Universe.
"Did someone say tor?"
And why would legitimate downloads need Tor?
Canadian users are also blocked
European laws are not as strict as the the US one's, and they are not really enforced a lot either. I think this will be seen more often in the future.
I know it's lame to be using AOL in the first place, but it would be nice if they were using a decent geo-ip list.
Isohunt, Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, Mininova, (reincarnated) Suprnova. Shall I go on?
"That would potentially be fantastic. If we can make Congress understand that excessive copyright and patent regimes put the U.S. at a technological / competitive disadvantage, that's part of the war in getting change."
Oh right! Not having unlimited access to this is really setting the US back technologically/competitively in the world market. Who do you think your fooling with that argument?
"Of course, Congress might be just as likely to respond in some insane, drunken, counter-productive way as well, which is why I used the word "problematic" above."
Or maybe they'll see through the smokescreen and realize that the majority of torrents fall within the Queen Anne limits. And there's even some that haven't been released
Alright, but maybe not. I'm a Canuck and I enjoy the fact that my country has a different view on this issue. I don't understand why the MPAA spends so much money and efforts against downloaders where they loose a majority of their money due to pirate bootleg copies being sold inside the USA and around the world? I wonder if the MPAA polled movie goers and found out how many that do download movies still go to movies in the Theatre? Has it increased their interest since movies became easy to download? Do they watch more movies they normally would of skipped otherwise because they're watching so much more on the Internet via their computer?
Also, isn't this kind of action biting the hand that feeds them? Didn't Napster actually increase sales because it stimulated interested in music? Could MPAA be suffering the same short-sighted vision because their top executives are disenfranchised from the general public?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Just use a web anonymizer for the search.
So why not use Torrentz.com? It searches all the big sites including Mininova and TPB.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
JAP is imho easier to use than TOR, and since it is based in germany you know that it will get by every time.
As a Canadian working in the US I feel that my socialist, lax copyright rights are being violated by this blanket ban. This is a travesty, how will I download my shareware torrents now?
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
Why yes, I can see why someone would want to hide the fact that [IP address], downloaded Ubuntu (grab some attention).iso.torrent from the rest of the world.
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I stopped using torrentspy.com when they put up all those annoying ads on it. Their search has been pretty lame lately. Mininova, piratebay and a host of others offer a lot more. So good riddance, good bye Torrentspy.com. I hope you lose a lot of money from the lost ad revenue from US internet users.
Buhh bye!
I just wish the tor network remained for normal surfing anonymously and not warez.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Torrents suck, anyway...you have to upload to random people you don't know, get spied on by various other people about what you're doing, deal with low-quality crap and fake files all the time, etc.
Usenet alt.binaries.whatever is much better, higher quality, no fake files, you might have to buy a subscription to a Usenet host though (Usenetserver is $1/day pay as you go or $19/month to max out cable.)
because TorrentSpy was never any good in the first place. Good riddance.
the Torrentspy search is working for me like it always has, and i live in the US. i'm also very sure i'm not using a proxy. is this just me?
That's funny, I just deleted my torrentspy search box in Firefox yesterday because I got tired of waiting for them to reinstate comments. Torrent sites without comments are useless to me because there's so much shit floating around.
I've been using Btjunkie.org lately. They have comments and lots of files. Often I would find things there I couldn't find on Torrentspy anyway.
thats why al gore invented proxies. but over all it's ok because we can atleast still see the ads with the boobies!
Maybe this will wake US citizens up to eroding personal liberties.
Fuck you torrentspy, now I'm going to have to use a foreign proxy just to get there?
A lot of you seem to be missing the point here..
Instead of letting you all search their site and comply with US law to report you all, they made it so you couldn't increminate yourself.
So good riddence you say?
How about, "God Speed you crazy Pirates, God Speed"
shrill faction of the American political left
That means nobody then. The USA does not have a political left...
Here at /. I have seen evidence of middle of the range viewpoints, right wing and extreme right wing.
As far as can be seen then, you are saying that Michael Moore belongs to something that does not exist. Is this to say that he is independent and following no guidance beyond his own opinions?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Virtually everything that is legally copyable for distribution and is available via bittorrent can be found without the need for a dedicated torrent search engine anyways because a link to a torrent is often available right on the creator's website. At least, that's my experience. I use bittorrent fairly regularly but I've never once needed to resort to using a torrent search engine to find what I wanted.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I live in the USA and think that all drugs should be legalized, prostitution and unlicensed gambling too, no age limit for drinking, free condoms/needles, no "voluntary" labeling of music/movies for profanity, nudity, violence... real, free, socialized public communication media (airwaves, phones, etc), socialized medicine and home/health insurance... radically more democracy (a little bit of republicanism is a good thing though), ugly public spaces as media for visual art, and definitely no banning of transfats/cigarettes/fun poisons du jour.
Anyway, I can't tell what the left is anymore... I get the feeling I can only be called a radical.
Why not? Torrentreactor, btjunkie, fenopy, bushtorrents, meganova
If you go to torrents.to, it will search various sites for you. Even if you just visit, you can read their list of sites that they search. So, if you only know of a few sites, and your sites get shut down, now you'll know what other sites to go to.
This is, of course, for the express purpose of identifying torrents that are legal/ethical to download.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
well done tspy. prolly they don wanna get screwed or they are pisses at the US
OK, but how do you know? How can anybody know?
Theoretically, Newzbin can help me find binaries, but the search function is pretty basic. If you're looking for something without a known, reasonably rare text string in the file name in a known format, then you'll inevitably wind up with nothing or thousands of hits. Newzbin also refuses to index binaries posted to non-binary groups; I realize that's something that shouldn't happen, but it does and those files need to be searchable.
As for text entries to Usenet, I can't find a good search solution. Google Groups has, far more times than I can count, failed in my testing. More times than not, I can be looking at a post in my newsreader, copy some unique text from it, enter that text to Google's search, and get back zero results.
I have a premium provider. I have an account with Newzbin. I've been downloading binaries since back when I had to paste together multipart binary files in a text editor to get them to work on my 286, in between autoposting multiple messages to Compuserve. I am no dummy when it comes to all this. I sincerely hope I've overlooked some wonderful resource, but my current take on the situation is that the lack of good search makes usenet a really lousy alternative these days.
Way to post off topic, on your own topic.
That...that really takes something special.
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Your signature is such an overused stupid argument. Science isn't faith. They key component about science is you can always learn more and attempt to prove your hypothesis. It only takes faith to believe in science if you're too stupid or lazy to verify what you're being told is true. The key component to faith is that you ACCEPT your hypothesis without any proof. Your post is just a lack of understanding in both the scientific method (evolution) and faith.
Because we all know that there's no way the RIAA could discover the existence of a public network used by millions of people since before the web even existed. After all, how could the hired guns at the RIAA discover anything except through reading Slashdot?
"Yes, 'cause it's not their knowledge to begin with. Why would someone else NEED to know that I'm downloading Ubuntu? "
It makes it easier to legitimize P2P and increase Linux awareness when you all aren't ping ponging bits all over the world, and encrypting the fact that it's even a legitimate download.
"I'm not saying I don't masturbate. I am saying that it's none of anyone else's business if/when I do."
It's our business when your actions affect us in a negative way. Hiding illegal acts behind the privacy veil means that when there's a REAL need for privacy, it will not be there to enjoy.
You just have to use a Proxy browser like myproxybrowser.com and get the torrent.. then its a free for all
If you haven't accepted Dawkins' dichotomy, then maybe you've accepted Biblical literalists. If you support freedom, these people are not your allies. Please make your faith an informed one; truth should not be a political matter.
Wikileaks, no DNS
"Thanks to a cultural obsession with (fighting) child porn in the US, I would expect just the opposite - No sane American would allow exit connections unless they had high enough 3rd party traffic to claim basically no control over or knowledge of the vast majority of the content (ie, an ISP, and they rarely give anything away)."
You don't need any "porn" justification to deny Tor. Human nature tells you that any resource made available to the public is going to be abused. Be it increasing bandwidth usage, fall guy for the cowardly, or middle man to something you'd never agree to if you knew.
If those who think that "information wants to be free" is a god given right? Then do what civil rights leaders did and stand up and be counted. Instead of slinking in the encrypted shadows like a common thief.
Of course, this would be a bit annoying if you find you have to switch it on for torrentspy and then switch it off when you want to surf in general (without the inherant lag).
4 64/). It automatically connects directly/via proxies depending on the URL.
Apparently, you have never heard of FoxyProxy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2
Pray tell, then, what does one have to do to qualify as a documentarian? Tell the truth?
I'd say "Make a genuine attempt at creating an accurate portrait of reality." "Absolute truth" is probably unknowable through our limited faculties, but it's still a worthy goal.
Can you point out the parts in his movie where he doesn't tell the truth?
It's not what he says, it's what he doesn't say. "Dihydrogen monoxide can be deadly if inhaled!" That's a true statement, but is the listener any better informed than he was before hearing it? I would argue that he is not. The best case scenario is that he will investigate my statement and discover its relevance and context, but the most likely scenario is that he will simply parrot it to others.
My co-workers, for example, were outraged that Cuba has better healthcare than the US. Is that really true? Well, if "universal no-fee coverage" is your metric, then yes. But if you include average quality of care -- bankruptcy or not -- most people are better off in the US. (Personally I'd much rather be alive and bankrupt than dead and financially secure, but I agree that ideally, citizens of a civilized society should not be faced with such a dichotomy.)
Can you point me to a single documentary that does not contain any editorial bias? Can you point me to anything published ever that does not contain any bias?
That's a red herring. If everybody takes a test, and you get most of the questions wrong, pointing out that nobody got a perfect score (or even that everyone else failed), would not be justification to give you a passing grade. More importantly, eliminating bias isn't a prerequisite for accuracy. I'm biased to believe that 1+1=2.
At any rate, I believe the GP's point was not that Michael Moore produces films that are inconsistent with the content and format of a typical documentary, but rather that his films fall so short of the mark of a good documentary that they are hardly worthy of the title. And he explained that quite clearly with the pr0nography comparison. (Sorry, work filters.. not trying to be 1337).
I do agree that the US has gone downhill in many areas in recent years, and lack of universal healthcare is a glaring shortcoming. And some of us are doing what we can to fix things.. I just hate having someone like Moore on my side. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be dissatisfied with the state of affairs; there's no need to invent falsehoods, and in fact, it only makes things worse because it makes everyone on one side of an issue look like an idiot. Like some dolt who says "antivirus is important to protect you from hackers!" Bush did the same thing with Iraq, and now look where we are. I'm not saying we should be there, but it's an excellent example of how public support turns against you and credibility suffers when you tell half-truths and/or outright lies, no matter how well intentioned. Shortcomings and risks of a plan should be met head on, along with legitimate complaints, not gingerly avoided with cherry picked "facts" and stories about rainbows and lollipops.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
30 minutes until an American teenager makes one?
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha that's pretty funny.
ah crap, I'm in Australia, it's just a matter of time... maybe they wont notice us
Then the terrorists have already won!
...read that as "Torrentspy Acts to Protect Piracy"? :)
if your using a torrent in the US that we need to be educating others in torrents suchas southafrica ansd others that dont have torrents and its not our fault that others who dont have bytes and computers cant access torrents and how thats not fair and stuff so pls if you know someone who doesnt have torrentspy like um help them out suchas telling them how to use it
Unless they're blocking users from China and other totalitarian countries, this is just a politically motivated move by the administrators of TorrentSpy.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
Having web sites and services in the rest of the world cut off U.S. IP addresses might be a way to get U.S. users to get the attention of their congress critters. Especially if the sites put the messages like "Contact your government representatives about your screwed up laws." I would not blame the rest of the world to just cut us loose.
http://unblocktorrentspy.com/ well that was quick.