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BT Blocks Access To Pirate Bay
Barence writes "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay as part of a 'self-regulation' scheme with the Internet Watch Foundation. BT Mobile Broadband users who attempt to access the notorious BitTorrent tracker site are met with a 'content blocked' message. The warning page states the page has been blocked in 'compliance with a new UK voluntary code.' 'This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have "over 18" status,' the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, 'criminal skills,' and hacking. It's not stated which category The Pirate Bay breaches, although the site does host links to porn movies."
What.. the... f*ck? Is the rest of the world watching China for guidance in this matter? What's happening? Seriously, this is just insane.
Tor.
Might take a bit 'til you find an exit node in China, but then you're free.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here is how it works...
1) They tell you blocking will ONLY be used for child porn etc (they promise!)
2) Then blocking is added to terrorist material to "protect the public"
3) Then blocking is added to "violent sexual material" to "protect women"
4) ???
5) Now it is open season in the UK to block anything
Welcome to a free democracy. We're totally better than China's government, I promise ;)
....It sounds like people will have to start using Tor in the "free world."
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I'm guessing BT are targetting a particular market demographic, judging by their adverts and the pricing structure they have. For me, their service is overpriced and I can get faster speeds, a lower price and a higher (unlimited actually) data cap with other ISPs. BT seem to be going for the "bewildered middle aged computer user" market with their Home Hub and associated services.
Really then I'm not surprised that they're blocking TPB, since they're probably fairly confident that this will have little effect on the customers they're targetting, whilst it raises their reputation with watchdog groups and copyright associations.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
This is why we need net neutrality regulations. Today is TPB, tomorrow it will be something else.
Soon we will see a massive deployement of firewalls blocking everything apart from port 80 and 443. If you want to use VPN, torrents, POP email, ... pay or fuck off.
No worries hackers will find a workaround and some will be able to use the Internet the way it was meant to be.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Wikipedia explains cum shots here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_shot
...they won't do the same thing for MALWARE sites! You know, the places where people end up becoming part of a botnet.
With the Wikipedia block and Internet archive blocks in recent months I couldn't help but think the IWF was testing the water for a general power grab, trying to move far beyond their remit of producing a black list of child porn sites.
I just found this FTA:
http://www.iwf.org.uk/public/page.113.243.htm
So it's true, the IWF has decided it has to be the moral crusader of society and should now start censoring all that it feels like.
Bets on how long they try to extend this voluntary code which covers all the UK's main mobile providers to hardwired, static internet connections?
The problem here isn't BT, it's not The Pirate Bay. It's the fucking IWF again.
Time they're disbanded, the problems they cause now go far, far beyond any benefit they can ever provide.
Come on, BT? For the 92% of the planet who don't live in the U.K. BT means bittorrent.
Caveat Utilitor
And they can fuck off right now.
Other than the quoted text, what will you do about this?
I think that it generally has always been this way but the scope of what is not acceptable is expanding. The same companies provide the bulk of internet access as have provided the bulk of other communication for a long time and those companies are more tightly intertwined than ever before. The people who decided you shouldn't hear a toilet flush on TV will be the ones deciding which web sites you an visit, because they provide both your TV signal and your internet signal.
They came first for napster, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't into music. And then they came for wikileaks, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't into politics. And then they came for the pirate bay, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't into free stuff. And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was nothing left to do anyway.
If you write to the government, they can place the blame on the ISP (although, of course, no charges will ever be brought against the ISPs), but if you complain to the ISPs they will point out that the government has forced them to do this.
On the off-chance that my MP is participating this out of ignorance, rather than malice, I have written him a second letter detailing the danger of this policy and asking him to raise parliamentary questions. The last letter, unfortunately, he forwarded to the Home Office, who simply replied with a meaningless form letter, so I don't hold out a great deal of hope for this one.
[1] In the loosest possible sense of the word - the sites listed by the IWF are not available to the general public.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Abso-fucking-lutely. If BT starts doing stuff like this for home broadband as well, I'll move to a new provider who doesn't. And so will most of the rest of their customers. Do we really need to block this stuff "For the children"? or are we blocking it because people are scared of Big Content (Which, by the way, includes a number of pornography providers.) I am thoroughly sick of watching as these unelected scumfucks whittle away at our rights through lobbying and dishonest legislation. They kick up a fuss about people stealing their work, but nobody kicks up a fuss when they steal our rights by paying politicians to add secretive riders to legislation. Even people who don't file-share should be worried by this kind of move; if you read the legislation and 'voluntary guidelines' these people are producing, you'll see that they're not just interested in protecting their work; they're interested in controlling, utterly, how you use what you buy from them. DVD zoning is small potatoes compared to what these people want. They want a tiered internet, so they can control what content you see, and how fast. They want a 'music tax' so you pay them whether you use their content or not. They want 'three strikes' rules, so they can strong-arm you into obeying their rules. They want, in short, to be absolute dictators over everything we do, watch, and indeed create on the internet, and they're winning. They're winning because ordinary people are remaining silent, leaving the business of protesting to a hard-bitten bunch of activists. There nneeds to be an awareness campaign that show big content for what it is, and how it will affect not just file sharers and young computer users, but everybody who even vaguely uses the internet, including businesses. If people realise that what Big Content wants is to break their digital legs, I think they'll make it very clear that it's not what they want, with both their wallets and their votes. We need to remind politicians who they're supposed to be working for, because no amount of lobbyist money or donations will get you elected if everyone knows you're a corrupt, nepotistic shill.
Self Regulation is usually the last resort of an interest group that is seeking to avoid the hassle and constrictions of government legislation. Its usually a stalling tactic but it sometimes works. I believe its how the MPAA was formed since its not a government organizations (If it was it'd likely fall under the wing of the FCC).
These harsh restrictive laws are coming for all of us. It's just a matter of time.
What we need right now, is to plan the ways of defeating this sort of rubbish, and circulating that information while the net is still relatively free.
I always laugh when people use 'a valid credit card' as a form of age ID. I had a 'valid credit card' at 16. I mean sure, technically it's a debit card, but it works as a credit card, and I've used it on such sites without any problems.
Today TPB, tomorrow its your server. ...
Time to learn about networks, wireless, how to use other connections.
Time to become very smart and invisible.
Time to become Anonymous and say
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ya know, I miss the days of the cold war. Back then, our governments had to uphold the facade that they're the good guys and have our interests in mind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Doesn't this mean that they're voluntarily giving up common carrier status?
The old defense being that they were like phone companies, they had no responsibility in what their users did.
Well, BT just announced that they are, in some small way, taking responsibility for what their users look at.
So what happens when FOX releases yet another Summer Bomb in the theaters and decides to use Piracy on the Internet as an excuse? Well, BT banned TPB, that means since they DIDN'T ban the other sites this is partially their fault, right?
I don't care whether it's for ethical reasons, or just to save bandwidth, I welcome it.
The more draconian things get on the net, the more people shift to anonymous IP stuff. I don't personally use them (I don't have anything worth hiding, and I'd rather read a book than pirate a DVD), but free and anonymous communication is a great boon to society.
Why are you assuming I want to do illegal things? See this is the problem, people assume I want to do illegal stuff each time I access Pirate bay.
If there is any illegal activity you inform the Police and let them deal with the problem. We don't need more vigilantes.
90% of Internet is made of Porn, warez and spam. Using your logic, we should ban everyone from the net.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Mostly I agree with you, but you assume TPB is evil and somehow ISP have the right to block it. This is wrong, we have courts to decide that, not you, me or anybody else.
And another thing, I don't know where you live but most people can't choose their ISP, any company having a monopoly must be controlled.
And I perfectly understand Telcos position, still looking for a way to charge as for emails.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Problem is, the list is secret, so it's hard to tell if your ISP is blocking a page or if it's just down or gone. At least with Tor you can try again from different nodes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC