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British Ban Spikes Pirate Bay Traffic
New submitter sleiper writes "Today sees UK ISPs begin to block access for their subscribers to the Pirate Bay URL. Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin Media and O2 have already blocked access and the UK's biggest provider, BT, are currently reviewing their legal position. This access ban however has seen The Pirate Bay's traffic spike to 12 million more page views than their previous daily record. It seems obvious that a message is being sent, that this type of censorship is not the way forward. The Pirate Bay keeps on sailing.""
I suspect most of the traffic is folks testing whether their ISP is imposing the censorship and if it is doing that testing whether proxies and/or VPN and/or OpenDNS/GoogleDNS or other methods circumvents that censorship.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
It's hard to believe that a country banned it before the stupid americans.
...probably said this would happen.
A spike is a sudden decrease, while a surge is a sudden increase. Think of volleyball: a spike sends the ball downwards.
It took me three minutes to find a workaround to Virgin's block.
this law is un-enforceable and is just done to keep loud expensive lawyers quite and well paid.
Cool. Gonna go fly the air to the grocery store, which is shopping all over the place.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
The proper way to handle this is to prosecute individuals who use The Pirate Bay to download copyrighted material. Having ISPs block access to any part of the Internet is not the answer. They can find copyrighted software elsewhere or, I can just see this happening: somebody creates a website to forward requests to ThePirateBay and return the results.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is already out there??
someone using torrents is already kind of "technologically advanced", it should be no problem for them to go to the pirate bay without the url.
If I were in the UK I would be accessing it via whatever proxy I could, constantly, over and over and over.
I am on sky and can still hit TPB
Are users in the U.K. able to access TPB mirrors?
Let me show you my thing; it's the most advanced on the planet.
I couldn't possibly find another site to replace it.
Is it just me or does the man in the Censorship icon have red mascara on?
Then I better not hearing any whiny bullshit from the UK about "internet freedom" in China seeing as most banned sites in China are just American porn which is illegal in China the same way Pirate Bay is illegal (and now blocked) in the UK.
The Pirate Bay keeps on sailing.
I get what you're going at and all, but this metaphor doesn't work. A bay can't sail. If you said something like "The pirate ship sails on!" we would still get the reference to the logo.
I can't wait till the next step, blocking access to websites that provide instructions on how to access the pirate bay. Then they have an excuse to censor anything they like.
I really don't support censorship, but I'm afraid it has to get much worse, before it wakes people up to what is going on.
Streisand-effect at full force!
Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin Media and O2 have already blocked access
I use sky and can still access TPB.
I'm more concerned with what they will start blocking now they have a precedent, wouldn't surprise me in ten years if you have only government licensed sites and a seriously crazy darknet going on, I think they'll come to regret trying to censor when they realise they have lost all control . I'm on virgin and had a check, yes t's blocked but it took me ten seconds to be able to access it anyway.
spill check don't always work.
And still do if they weren't backed be MPAA, RIAA, or any agency that is pro-SOPA and the like. So all of EA is banned in my book, for those reasons and others. The indie scene is becoming more popular and a lot more fun than pro-games anyways, so it's all good. And who can say no to Iron Sky? lulz
Well, that was *really difficult* to circumvent. (clicks picture of onion).
I was just waiting to use my Firefox Torbutton addon; I can confirm it works nicely.
Torbutton off:
"Sorry, the web page you have requested is not available through Virgin Media.
Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to this site in order to help protect against copyright infringement."
Torbutton on:
[Image: The worst part of censorship etc.]
"Search Torrents | Browse Torrents | Recent Torrents | TV shows | Music | Top 100
Preferences Languages
All Audio Video Applications Games Other "
(Text copy/paste, images not copied)
I made a point of starting several torrents just to stick two fingers up (=US 1 middle finger at current exchange rate).
Next: Are they going to try blocking TOR?
Can someone point to a quality warez release of Rosetta Stone? Most that I have found at TPB and other places seem a bit shady (could contain malware or are said not to work).
Don't give Americans a bad rap when the person they voted-in makes poor decisions after the election:
Give them a bad rap when they fail to VOTE THEM OUT!
https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/ - this link lets you get onto to pirate bay without even having to bother to use a proxy yourself! GG government
to make something interesting to the masses is to ban it LOL Much better than thousands of words of advertising.
Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin Media and O2 have already blocked access and the UK's biggest provider, BT, are currently reviewing their legal position.
At the moment Sky, Talk Talk and O2 can access the Pirate Bay fine, although I have no doubt this won't last for long.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We is smart cause we can blow all of youze up if wee want too!
We gots plans wif atum bums, an uh big armee!
An R skools is the bestest in duh wurld..
(sarcasm)
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Fixes in bold:
The US is very proud of getting away with claiming to be a democracy and even fooling the most naive among their citizenry into believing this claim.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
In. Your. Face.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
In the UK on BE Broadband, and still able to access it :) No idiotic blocking here and BE have said on their forum that if they're legally forced to block, then they will be distributing information (as they have done already) on how to circumvent it.
I love my ISP :) Even members of their staff quoted on the forum, "Information should be free."
but I didn't speak up because I was no pirate.