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British ISP Ordered To Block Links to Pirate Site
An anonymous reader writes "A UK High Court judge has ruled that BT must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies. Justice Arnold ruled that BT must use its blocking technology CleanFeed — which is currently used to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse — to block Newzbin 2. 'Currently CleanFeed is dealing with a small, rural road in Scotland,' ISPA council member James Blessing told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. 'Trying to put Newzbin and other sites into the same blocking technology would be a bit like shutting down the M1. It is not designed to do that.' Digital rights organisation the Open Rights Group said the result could set a "dangerous" precedent. "Website blocking is pointless and dangerous. These judgements won't work to stop infringement or boost creative industries. And there are serious risks of legitimate content being blocked and service slowdown. If the goal is boosting creators' ability to make money from their work then we need to abandon these technologically naive measures, focus on genuine market reforms, and satisfy unmet consumer demand," said ORG campaigner Peter Bradwell."
...court orders pavements(sidewalks) ripped up to prevent bank robbery.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
I love how trivial this is to get around for the pirates, too. First thing I thought was 'URL Shortener.'
But of course, anyone that really cares would use a VPN and this wouldn't affect them in the first place.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I wonder:
1. How much this will cost the ISP, especially considering the growing number of sites that provide links to warez. If you only block a few, other will pop up and it will be ineffective. Block many and it will probably have an impact on required infrastructure.
2. If they can block sites that link to material, how will they handle services that get you to sites that link to materials? For example, VPN services and proxies.
3. Will this make warez software improve so no link sites are even needed? Maybe decentralized technologies similar to freenet will become popular for sharing those links.
... God-only-knows-how-many to go...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
1.) Went to court, and were granted a ruling that the actions of the site in question infringed copyright, once the judge had listened to the evidence on each side.
2.) Went to court again, seeking an order under s97A, CDPA 1988, that BT should block access to the site, and a judge granted it, having listened to the evidence on each side.
3.) Will go to court a third time, to discuss the measures in question with BT, to determine what is proportionate.
My instinctive reaction is against site blocking, but, as long as the laws on copyright stand - a debate in itself - this seems roughly the right procedure, giving multiple levels of legal scrutiny before imposing an order, rather things being done on a voluntary basis?
Disappointed that BT are rolling over on this. It's the thin end of the wedge, and once they make it known that they are willing to censor one site then every special interest group and their dog will be getting court orders to silence parts of the web they don't like - well in the UK at least.
I've endured half a decade of being told I'm a tinfoil-hat-wearing maniac for suggesting that the IWF - already in a strange, anti-competitive position of being a private charity endorsed by government and given special legal privileges - is a slippery slope and that technology based on its list would eventually be used at a judicial level to block other sites.
It required lobby groups to step up the pressure in the courts. We've seen that over the past few years. It required an Act to consolidate the views of these lobby groups and set the legislative view of Internet censorship. That was the DEA. Next comes implementation.
Abusing children is wrong and the law has a duty to stop it.
Censoring 0s and 1s does not stop children being abused, but it does provide a framework for censorship.
The IWF list's implementation has not stopped any child abuse, but it has sat as the foundation stone for the Great Firewall of the UK.
Every one of you geeks who works for an ISP which has caved into government pressure to implement the list should be ashamed. You are the problem.
I am a capitalist. And as a capitalism is obvious to me that the warez networks are distribution channels. I have see people download free software from these networks, stuff like openoffice, that is a free download elsewhere, and would download faster. This means to me that people is using these networks purelly for the convenience.
ABSOLUTELLY NOTHING will stop people from download whatever want from the internet. What we can do, as a society, is to ask for a reform of the bussines model. Theres a busines model that seems to work, the one of App Store, Netflix, Steam, etc... a wide range access to very cheap or free content. If things like Netflix are not profiteable enough, then change the tax systems, etc... so these type of systems are more profitable. That way the "old economy" that don't work anymore can move to a new economy that work.
I don't want to lose my rights, like free expresion, privacity, etc.. so I will work to protect then,even if that means protecting people that want to warez stuff. Don't force me to fight this war.
-Woof woof woof!
is available on BAILII.
(BAILII - British and Irish Legal Information Institute - is a very valuable resource indeed, for lawyers and those who simply want to understand the laws affecting their lives. legislation.gov.uk is another useful resource.)
How can I add Google, Bing and Jeeves to this list? I want to see how that works out?
this technology is only able to block this evil childpr0n????
BT = British Telecommunications. But, I had to open up the court order PDF to find this. I'm not sure if you can even find what it means on their website.
then court will ban use of all vpns....PWNED.
and BT are more than happy to be ordered to use the technology in this way. They are a huge corporation and want control over your access and content. This order brings them one step nearer to what they want.
The plan:
1) People protest at proposal
2) Say you are doing it for some reason most people can sympathise with.
3) Word the legislation loosely so that it can be applied to other cases
4) Wait a bit
5) Apply it to other cases
As Microsoft and Apple are always involved in new cases of having stolen people's patents, doesn't that make them unrepentant patent pirates who should be blocked?
Newzbin hosts small portions of metadata and not the actual binaries. This means it can be _trivially_ circumvented using tor.
It can even be done in a sort of auto-whitelist fashion using cascaded proxy approach: https://eiiggesgzqlfbmpd.tor2web.org/ (SFW, tor hidden service to a text-only howto).
I had never heard of that site. It's got some good stuff. Thanks, Justice Arnold, for bringing it to my attention and that of so many. Now learn about the Streisand Effect.
Why are all file sharers always grouped up with "websites featuring child sexual abuse"?
I understand that some people don't agree with file sharing, that's fine. But they need to stop likening gas station gum theft to bank robbery and child rape.
This order is a lot like an unarmed bobby trying to prevent crime, yelling "STOP! Or I'll shout 'STOP' again!"
I guess it's too much to ask for politicians to understand anything more complex than a digital wristwatch. As such, they have no clue that this measure will have virtually no effect. But what's worse is the telecom companies who are using this as an excuse to put in all sorts of anti-competitive filtering and so forth. How long until we find out that they were "inadvertently" blocking access to legitimate websites that just so happen to be run by their competitors?
The biggest websites that link to pirate sites are popular web searches. Google, yahoo, ask, etc.
Good luck blocking them without being swarmed by their lawyers.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
This might turn out to be excellent news. If 1000 BT customers downloaded child porn to prove that CleanFeed is total bullshit, they would most likely all get arrested and harassed by law enforcement for being pervs, even if they did it just to make the point, Now that legitimate content has been added to the filter, if 1000 BT customers each download 10 seconds of totally legal newzbin content through CleanFeed they will be able to very effectively demonstrate that the whole filtering issue is a waste of time. They have just handed us the tools to take this down publicly.
(to the tune of More, More More by "The Andrea True Connection"
Tor, Tor, Tor.
That's how you browse it, that's how you browse it
Tor, Tor, Tor.
That's how you browse it, that's how you browse it
I really hope they implement something more trivial than a poisoned DNS cache. Because i want this to force customers away from BT, they are such a shit ISP
Had not heard of that site before this case... I must go visit it on my OpenVPN connection on my BT ISP
How is the entire internet subject to an industry which the world can live without? How did they amass this kind of power?
They have no respect for the natural rights of others, so why should we respect the artificial (copy)rights granted to them by the government?
I now have another place to find movies and tv shows. The selection available through bittorrent, rapid share, and gnutella is rather limited to the newest stuff. The older stuff can be very difficult to find, if at all.
THANKS MPAA!
Instead of instructing BT to block traffic to a site which doesn't actually provide any copyrighted materials, why would they not instruct BT to instead block the sites which DO? If "A" provides links to "Z", and Z is the offender, blocking traffic to A will only inevitably result in "B" being created, which also points to Z. And then they have to come back and block B. And so the cycle goes, when they could go right to the source.
Long signatures suck.
Take a look here:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1 ...and then read this pdf:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/cleanfeed.pdf
Where every file is a virus. Man if your going to shut down a website shut down this one.
I would like to take this time to thank the British courts for introducing me to yet another pirate website, and many more to come!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkmcupFx3FQ
Some hard truth.
Barbara would be proud.
like http://law.cornell.edu, except for the British Isles instead of the US?
Its not trivially easy to throttle since there are too many IPs and they are always shifting and it gives you anon bittorrent/emule (or anything else people decide to write for it as its designed to enable anon P2P unlike Tor).
Forget internet justice. If it was up to me, anyone guilty of sexually abusing a child would be immediately executed. Sick Fucks.
Guess they have to block things like bing, yahoo and google then since those sites commonly provide links to pirated movies
Thanks UK courts for making sure everyone knows about all the best torrent sites.
Sure, they were just thinking of the children when they took the first step down the slippery slope of implementing censorware, and now they're enjoying a big fat gulp of the inevitable result: "Well, since you can block that thing, you can also block this other thing."
I think I'll write a few letters to the appropriate authorities about how easy it would be for them to block a few other things that I happen to find offensive. Some of them, such as McDonalds Corporation, are even harmful to children.
All of the tech world was crying out over the introduction of such filters that were going to be used for child porn but overextended to include at first piracy and then other speech that was less acceptable and then on to speech that is currently free.
Off course the powers-that-be had this intention all along and the opposers vilified as child pornographers. Now it's too late, sites will be arbitrarily added and won't be able to removed fully ever again.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Isn't it about time UK ISPs' site blocking capabilities were turned against the British Government, police and courts? Even a temporary blockage against these neo-fascists might be salutory. After all, what gives them a 'right' to remain unblocked?