UK ISPs Hatch Plan To Block the Pirate Bay and Other File Sharing Sites

An anonymous reader writes "UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are already in talks with media rights holders to block around 100 file sharing and cyberlocker websites, it has emerged. The move comes as ISPs BT and TalkTalk won a Judicial review of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) resulting in a 2-year delay on its implementation. The voluntary code is a planned workaround to the delay in the DEA and rights holders attempt to curb file sharing. If passed the code would see rights holders pass evidence of websites that 'facilitate' illegal file sharing to ISPs who would then block access to the sites in question. However, ISPs are reluctant and are pushing for a high court judge to approve any site blocking. ... Amongst the 100 sites is the worlds most resilient Bittorrent site, The Pirate Bay and Usenet's reincarnated NewzBin2."

Comments

One month

[Manip]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

Re:One month

[jimicus]

One month, that is how long I give it before this gets used to block sites for non-piracy reasons. Like a site that talks about BitTorrent community activity or a competitor who infringes a patent for two random examples. Make my words, this will be used for political suppression even if it isn't the government doing it.

You're over two years - possibly much more - too late. The UK ISP industry already has the technology in place to block more-or-less any site they like and to administer that blocking from a single, central location which then gets pushed out to most of the big providers. The thing is it mostly went under the radar for two reasons:

1. It wasn't widely publicised.
2. It was mostly centred around blocking of child porn.

Odds on this is about adding another category to the list of things they consider acceptable to block.

(For those who didn't know about this: Citation 1 Citation 2 - and the actual organisation responsible for this list)

The thing that did come up around that time was that not only are ISPs blocking dodgy material, many are doing so in a fashion that ensures the end user is blissfully unaware it's happening - either by resetting TCP connections or intercepting with an HTTP 404. At the time this all happened, one ISP was putting up a message saying "Sorry, I can't let you see that" (so the technology used does make that possible) but that ISP was in a minority.

It's quite simple

[l2718]

These sites support the rapid free sharing of information, thus reducing the ability of authors to profit from the books they write, of singers to profit from the songs they sing, of directors to profit from the films they create. In turn, this reduces their motivation to create such works, and this reduced motivation might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Note that this isn't a silly argument -- we really need to make a tradeoff between our desire to freely deal with information (especially to do new things with old ideas, but also to profit from the creations of others), and the need for a regime where creators have a way to get paid. This tradeoff is called "copyright laws".

Now the current system is so terrible (because the incentives of the people who write the laws are very different from what average citizens want to get out of copyright law) that I don't think blocking these sites is a good trade-off, but when you discuss copyright it's important to do so in these terms.

Re:It's quite simple

[funkatron]

Hang on, hang on. On the one hand we have censorship infrastructure going on our internet connection on the other we have:

might lead them to reduce the amount of works they create for our enjoyment.

Guess which one of those isn't scary?

Re:It's quite simple

[Kulfaangaren!]

I can list a few "artists" that I actually would prefer if they reduced the amount of works they create for "my enjoyment".
* Christina Augilera
* Britney Spears
* All rap artists
* All country & western artists
* Justin Beiber
etc. etc.

Re:It's quite simple

[L4t3r4lu5]

I see your "artists are losing money" and raise you an "artists were never making money in the first place, media conglomerates were".

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

Re:It's quite simple

[rolfc]

It is a silly system because the copyright laws are made for the 19th century. What happens when people copy is that business is hit, which is fine for me. It is not to support a media industry that is the goal of the copyright laws.

We have now a system for cheap and rapid distribution of digital media, and the problem is that the media industry want to take all the profit from that. The obvious answer to that would be that the market forced them to lower the prices, but it doesnt work. The industry is using their monopoly to raise their margins instead of lowering the prices. As long as they do that, they will need laws and police to hunt those that try to escape the monopoly.

The politicians need to rework the copyright laws or deal with the media industry abuse of their monopoly. Lobbying has so far prevented our representatives do represent us.

Re:Bunch of luddites

[L4t3r4lu5]

I lose patience writing this over and over again.

A shoplifter deprives the store of property, which it then is unable to sell. A person who downloads unlicensed media deprives nobody of anything. There is no guarantee that the person would have bought the media had it not been available online. There is no such thing as a potential sale, or potential profit.

In other news...

[the_raptor]

In other news UK ISP's have noticed a sudden drop in subscription to high bandwidth/high download limit plans. They fear piracy may be to blame for this phenomenon.