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No Pirate Bay for Comcast Customers

Posted by timothy on from the blame-brownian-motion dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a PC World article, according to which "The Pirate Bay is unavailable for customers of Comcast, even as the torrent site remains online for other users. Problems began early Thursday morning, when several Comcast users told TorrentFreak that they were having issues with The Pirate Bay. Commenters at Techland and Engadget are confirming that they can't access the site." Right now, I'm on a Comcast connection in Pennsylvania, and get an "Ooops, could not connect" message when I try to reach The Pirate Bay.

22 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Inevitable by Jaysyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And so the building of the Comcast/NBC walled garden begins.

    --
    There is a war going on for your mind.
    1. Re:Inevitable by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a good thing we don't have revolving doors between corporations and the government committees that regulate them. Otherwise we might have FCC Commissioners working in the FCC and then being rewarded by employment by the companies they were regulating, like going to work for NBC/Comcast. Oh, oops.

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/regulator-to-join-comcast-after-ok-of-nbc-deal/2011/05/11/AFSSl6zG_story.html

    2. Re:Inevitable by MyFirstNameIsPaul · · Score: 5, Informative

      Everyone may be jumping to conclusions:

      Update: Comcast just got back to us reaffirming that it is not the cause of this issue. "We're not blocking PirateBay and reports online indicate users from several ISPs around the world are affected." As we originally mentioned we're seeing those reports too, and many of you in the poll below are showing this isn't necessarily a Comcast-specific thing. So the question remains: what kind of a thing is it?

      --

      I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.

    3. Re:Inevitable by Asklepius+M.D. · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm confused. You say that net neutrality legislation is likely to make actions like the blocking of TPB happen, and yet it HAS happened in the current non-regulated environment. If that's true, it makes more sense to advocate for net neutrality which only has a possibility of promoting such events rather than advocating the status quo in which such events are guaranteed (have actually occurred). Of course there is the third option - that you have a brilliant alternative to net neutrality that will solve this dilemma, in which case please present your solution for peer review.

      --
      He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
    4. Re:Inevitable by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 4, Informative

      I just signed up with Comcast a month ago.
      When I called to inquire about their service, I specifically asked if they had a bandwidth cap.

      They LIED. I asked repeatedly in several ways just to make sure, because I'd heard that they did have a cap. I explained that I am a heavy user, download a lot, stream video, etc. I was repeatedly assured that there was NO limit on the amount of bandwidth you could use in a month.

      The sales rep was not some uninformed contractor in another country, they were a Comcast employee right here in my town where Comcast has a headquarters.

      Of course, I found out right away that they DO have a bandwidth cap, 250gb per month. My account page has a meter on it.

      Never believe a thing these corporate persons say. Corporate persons are lying sociopaths.

      --
      This space available.
    5. Re:Inevitable by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yep. That's what happens when you have unconstitutional federal regulations

      Why you filthy, lying, ignorant son of a bitch. You dare to claim that Comcast/NBC is blocking websites because of a government regulation instead of because of simple greed, trying to get people locked into their own sources of content?

      "Net Neutrality", which is a government regulation is the only way to prevent stuff like this from happening. I'm betting you know all this.

      The power to protect = the power to take away

      Really? Did you make up that poetic little couplet yourself? You know goddamn well that if the internet is NOT protected, if they let the broadband providers into the content-providing business, if they let broadband providers decide which websites you can visit and which ones you can't, The Internet as you know it is going away for sure. You're going to lose the ability to choose whichever web site you view. When Comcast starts its own movie streaming website, you think they're still going to let customers go to Netflix and get the same speeds as their own service?

      There are two possibilities here: 1) You are stupid and 2) you are stupid, dishonest and working to spread lies.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Inevitable by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Informative

      Tracert from Chicago comcast customer. (as image because of slashdot's lame lameness filter)

      http://i.imgur.com/x26hd.jpg

      Problem is in Sweden, not here.

    7. Re:Inevitable by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Informative

      I doubt it was an intentional lie. They're just incompetent, which is different.

      I called a while ago and they told me no caps. I said I was certain they were wrong and asked them to ask their manager. The manager told me they had caps. As well as any lazy google search.

      Sometimes its incompetence, not malice.

      The nice thing about comcast is that Im not on any contract. So if they piss me off, out they go. No ETF or other BS. I dont have that freedom with dishnetwork, tmobile, or if I went with Uverse.

    8. Re:Inevitable by anyGould · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, I found out right away that they DO have a bandwidth cap, 250gb per month. My account page has a meter on it.

      So, did you call back and ask why your uncapped account has a cap? Pointing out that you did ask repeatedly and were assured there was no cap? Asking them to dig out the call recording (y'know, "for quality assurance purposes") to confirm that you were told that there was no cap?

      Or, in short - did you actually do anything about it besides complaining here?

  2. More than Comcast by thesaint05 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Engadget is reporting that it's not limited to Comcast. I'm on FIOS and I can confirm that it's unreachable as well.

  3. It's not just Comcast by DanTheManMS · · Score: 5, Informative
    Comcast already stated that they're not blocking TPB and that it's affecting other ISPs too.

    Several Comcast users have written in to say they can't access the website, but we've also heard from at least one Virgin Media customer overseas and a Rogers customer in Canada who are also having problems accessing the site.

    Further comments in that thread suggest that it might be a problem with the LAN on their end, perhaps a routing issue or something.

    1. Re:It's not just Comcast by hedwards · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd be surprised if Comcast was going to open themselves up to lawsuits like that. Since they haven't been filtering connections for infringing materials they haven't been liable for infringement. If they started to filter for materials and block sites for it without being ordered to do so by a court, they'd be opening themselves up to all sorts of liability.

    2. Re:It's not just Comcast by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps. Didn't Comcast claim not to be sending reset packets on P2P traffic, too, though? They don't exactly have goodwill to spare or a reputation for honesty.

  4. Comast has allready sad by fredan · · Score: 4, Informative

    that they don't block The Pirate Bay.

    http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-May/036088.html

    1. Re:Comast has allready sad by Seumas · · Score: 4, Informative

      Remember that one time (a year or two?) when they said they didn't throttle torrent traffic?

    2. Re:Comast has allready sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Carl Sagan quotes get you an automatic +5 on all posts.

      Time to put that to the test:

      The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights — I don't know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate.
      --Carl Sagan

    3. Re:Comast has allready sad by Zibri · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, let me try!

      "The more you look like a samurai, the better your chances of survival."

  5. Way to be slow on the draw by Rurik · · Score: 5, Informative

    That was the news THIS MORNING. Then it was found that Pirate Bay couldn't be accessed by anyone. Web server died. It sounds like they segment traffic to certain web servers based on IP ranges for load-balancing, and the one for the Comcast group died. No big conspiracy here.

    And why link to PCWorld? Who are they? TorrentFreak broke the news and continually updated it through the day. They should be cited:
    http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-blocked-the-pirate-bay-110512/

    1. Re:Way to be slow on the draw by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why? Because it's almost certain the "anonymous reader" happens to be staff at PC World, just like all those InfoWorld submissions that always come from staff there.

  6. Re:DNS or IP blocked? by Seumas · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, it's blocked along the Comcast route somehow. Even using a non Comcast DNS server won't resolve and you can't ping the IP, either.

  7. Re:DNS or IP blocked? by The+Moof · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's neither. It appears TPB itself is having problems. There's a better article here -
    http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-blocked-the-pirate-bay-110512/
    which states

    Update: After affecting only Comcast users for about 15 hours, The Pirate Bay seems to be inaccessible pretty much everywhere now. The Pirate Bay team is looking into it. (Update: one webserver died, should be back for most people who are not on Comcast now).

  8. Re:Internet Censorship begins with Comcast by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...Except that Comcast is a goverment-established monopoly in many areas. Don't believe me? Try to get a fast upstream connection and set up your own networks for people to connect to. You will either be 1) immediately shut down by the government or 2) sued out of existence by the major network providers.

    This just emphasizes YET AGAIN the importance of net neutrality laws. We absolutely, positively MUST force network providers to be just that--dumb pipes--and nothing more*.

    *Unless you specifically ask them not to be; for example, I wouldn't be opposed to Comcast providing a premium "parent-friendly" tier of service where they agree to block sites for you if you want, or a "custom priority" tier where you can set up QoS settings to make sure traffic you deem important gets through, that kind of thing. Though I wouldn't subscribe to such services, it should be well within their rights to offer.