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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."
Anybody actually do this? How many people really would do this at this time?
Voluntary code, no right of redress, zero transparency for your own protection, we have your best interest at heart (translated: we are scared of lawyers, and are too dumb to realise that by being selective we open the doors wide for missing the odd one and being held liable) etc etc.
From the organisation that brought you Phorm (and didn't tell you), a new violation of their own service T&Cs.
Lawyers, please sharpen pencils and expense account - BT has just dropped the soap in the shower..
Insert
BT want to police the internet? No problem.
Get all the CP and bomb schematics you can folks; It's BT's fault for not preventing access, now.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I didn't mean using TOR to route your P2P traffic through it, using it to access the page is what I meant.
I'm fairly sure the great firewall of great britain is clumsily enough set to only block access to the port 0x50 traffic, so you should be fine once you have the hash.
Aside from that, yes, China has the "Great Firewall". But they're too busy filtering anti-Chinese and anti-Communist stuff to care about petty things like our problems. Actually, the fun part is that China certainly doesn't mind if you accessed pages that your government considers "undesireable".
I mean, think about how much your government cares about anti-Chinese pages.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"They already have. The ISP I work for have been dropping any packets destined for sites on the IWF's blacklist for several years now."
I understand landline ISPs already implement the IWF's child porn blacklist, my concern now is that they will try and implement this more general blacklist on those connections.
But if the government starts to do it then (theoretically) there's somebody to hold publicly accountable for what ends up on the blacklist. At the moment, the IWF can block whatever they like and answer to no one.
Even better, once the government starts doing it, they might end up being forced to start paying ISPs to do the filtering (like they're doing with the email spying). Then it becomes a target for eventual cuts in public spending and one day may quietly disappear.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
How is this implemented?
DNS?
OpenDNS' IPs are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
DPI?
https://thepiratebay.org/
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
O2 are my mobile service provider (owned by BT) and I just navigated to thepiratebay.org with absolutely no issues.
I was using GPRS to do this rather than 3G though, so maybe that it... although that makes almost no sense.
Unless we only want to stop children downloading porn at high speed?
What kind of sense does it make to have to verify you're over 18 to access content with your G3 connection? Do a lot of people 17 and under have credit cards, their own laptop and a G3 card + service? Isn't one of the provisions of getting service being of legal age since you must sign a service contract? I'm so glad companies and governments are taking it upon themselves to be my conscience.
The website for the company I worked for was blocked too. The reason? A flatshare form on the site had the word "sex" (as in gender) on it. It was discovered when sales staff using laptops and Vodaphone mobile broadband couldn't demo our own site to clients without unlocking.
Indeed. Next question: I wouldn't touch BT with a bargepole for internet access, but unfortunately most ADSL companies require that you have a BT phone line to get their service. How do I stop giving them all my money altogether?
[FUCK BETA]
Simple private possession of 3 (for some values of) has already been criminalised, as of January 2009 - but curiously the IWF seemingly don't want to block it. Possibly because no one has a clue what exactly is meant to be covered by the law (not even the police or the Government - "it's up to the court to decide!").
Lets just bombard (DoS) IWF with reports for crap - Malware, legit pr0n, infact, any website, especially popular ones.
Actual CP can be reported to police, not lusers.
Time to outlaw "unregulated internet"
"Did you know that kid across street? He is coming out of jail in few weeks. Served 3 years for providing access to freedomNet."
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Many Belgian ISP's are currently blocking sites such as http://www.stopkinderporno.nl/ which exposes the addresses of pedophiles.
This leaves the door wide open to implement a government based blacklist of sites "The Great Belgian Firewall".
ISP's are inserting fake DNS zones for these site which point to the Federal Computer Crime Unit site, which can be bypassed by using OpenDNS.
Check out the great (and often hilarious) documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" which examines (and rips apart) the MPAA's "voluntary" "please don't call it censorship" ratings system.- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-559517494445537267 (or get the torrent, natch. I'll bet it's even available on DVD!)
The film shows how a voluntary code can seem pretty darn no-so-voluntary. Unrated or NC-17 films have trouble getting into major movie houses, getting advertising in newspapers, obtaining backing from the studio, and so on. And it shows how the ratings are biased, often arbitrary, hard to contest, and so on.
As someone in the film points out, government ratings or censorship might actually be preferable to a voluntary system, as (at least in a proper democracy) the government can be held accountable for its decisions at the end of the day. With a voluntary scheme its like boxing the Michelin man - you can land the punches but they won't have much effect.
One solution offered is to watch the watchmen. The filmmakers go to great efforts to find the member names of the review board and the appeals board, which the MPAA usually keeps a closely guarded secret.
So who's working for the IWF?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If you have a webserver, block 193.129.101.0/26 - Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). They use automated scrips to check for content that they dont like. I HATE censorship.
I would hope IWF has learned it's lesson to not block wipedia.
Actually, I hope it didn't learn it's lesson. The only way for them to die is to keep pissing people off by blocking mainstream stuff.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.