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Pirate Bay, IsoHunt Blocked In India

Posted by timothy on from the say-it-is-not-so dept.

New submitter unmole writes "It seems that India's Department of Telecom has instructed ISPs to block popular torrent trackers like the Pirate Bay and IsoHunt. Visitors now see a page (Screenshot) informing them that 'This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT),' with no additional details. The Department of Telecom has not made any public announcement to this effect. This comes months after an Indian court gave the green signal for prosecuting social networking sites."

15 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Not Blocked by alphabetsoup · · Score: 5, Informative

    Tried it just now, both sites works perfectly fine. Probably a problem with the ISP.

    1. Re:Not Blocked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Works fine here in India as of now.

    2. Re:Not Blocked by monzie · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a Reliance 3G data card. Pirate Bay, IsoHunt and a few other sites ( including pastebin ) are blocked.. On a different ISP, (AirTel ) it isn't. (yet).This anecdotal evidence suggests that either the directive is optional for ISP's or some have chosen to ignore it. Moral of the story - Just choose a good ISP.

    3. Re:Not Blocked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Postsing as AC obvious reasons:

      This order has been passed on only some ISP's without getting any direct order from court. List of ISP's Blocked/Unblocked info.

      - Reliance Communications Data Card: Yes, both blocked
      - Reliance Wireline, Mumbai/Gujarat: Yes, both blocked
      - MTNL Delhi/Mumbai: No
      - Airtel Delhi/Bangalore/Mumbai/Pune/Chennai: No
      - BSNL Bangalore/Pune/Andhra Pradesh/Gurgaon: No
      - Tata Pune: No
      - Sify Pune: No
      - Hathway Mumbai: No
      - Syscon Infoway: Yes, both blocked
      - Zylog Wi5: Yes, both blocked
      - Aircel Ahmedabad: Yes
      - Vodafone 3G, Ahmedabad/Maharashtra: Yes, both blocked.
      - Tikona, Mumbai: Yes, both blocked.
      - You Broadband: No
      - 24Online Kolkatta: Yes
      - Connect, Punjab : Yes, only torrents.

      I will be more worried, if two biggest ISP Airtel and Tata communincation started to block site. Every other small isp goes through either TATA or Airtel In India.

      The solution is simple switch DNS (a list of free dns provider is here http://theos.in/windows-xp/free-fast-public-dns-server-list/ ) and use VPN / proxy site. More info is posted at http://torrentfreak.com/india-orders-blackout-of-vimeo-the-pirate-bay-and-more-120504/

    4. Re:Not Blocked by hihihihi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Moral of the story - Just choose a good ISP.

      i agree overall with this sentiment, but fact remains its not so easy specially if you live outside centers of town...
      most of the places the only choice is BSNL (the "Big Setup, No Link" (almost) govt. monopoly) or Reliance datacard. BSNL Service is unreliable as hell (i had connection for 3 months, out of them for 2 it never worked!) and if Reliance dumps you, there is no options for most of the rest people!

      --
      everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
    5. Re:Not Blocked by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The block is being done by Reliance on Reliance connections because a major movie released by Reliance is being released

    6. Re:Not Blocked by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thank you for releasing that reliable comment.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  2. US pressure by Kotakee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This has been made after countless amount of pressure from the US. I don't think there would be any reason for India to do it otherwise - they are shooting themselves in the leg by not allowing people to get free content (yes, by violating copyright). In the long run the country would be much better and richer if they gained foothold in technology and knowledge by any means necessary. Hell, this is how US become to be what they are now - by blatantly ignoring European copyrights. Of course, US doesn't want to allow that so they can stay in power.

    1. Re:US pressure by Kotakee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In simpler terms for the readers in the grand land of America:

      - India has no reason to fight against pirates
      - US income mostly consists of copyrights and patents instead of actual goods
      - US constantly bullies the whole world so that their largest revenue would stay secure.
      - India would, long term, make their country much better and knowledgeable by letting their people pirate whatever they want, like tools for coding, operating systems, photoshop, whatever. Currently they have little money.

      Conclusion - US pressures India and other countries.

      About US violations of copyrights in the past. It's fully known that US blatantly ignored any and every copyright and law that Europe had back then. This is how they gained power by openly abusing other countries and their people.

    2. Re:US pressure by fredprado · · Score: 5, Informative

      After WWII US had taken minimum damage and had a good industrial base. On the other hand, Europe was devastated but its countries held most of the profitable patents. US solved the problem by voiding any non-US patent and allowing its companies to produce whatever they wished regardless of any European claim to their products (not unlike what China does today). That is what in good part made US the greatest economical superpower in the world. US was not the first and won't be the last to realize that ignoring external patents is the way to go if you really want to develop your country.

  3. Let Them Eat Cake by lobiusmoop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given that the GDP of India in 2011 was $1389, compared with $48,387 for the USA, I really don't think sales of CD's and DVD's are going to sky-rocket after blocking torrent sites.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  4. Re:DNS? by santosh.k83 · · Score: 4, Informative

    IP address of thepiratebay.se is 194.71.107.15 IP address of thepiratebay.org is 194.71.107.50 IP address of isohunt.com is 208.95.173.130

  5. Not true by jalfreize · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is not true, or at least wildly inaccurate. The main Indian Government-owned ISP, BSNL, has not blocked any of these websites. Many of the private ISP's haven't either. There is one private ISP -- Reliance Infocomm -- which is owned by the Reliance ADA Group, which happens to also have considerable interests in content generation (they produce bollywood movies, and also are major financial backers to Spielberg's Dreamworks SKG). They are known to block torrent/video sharing sites during prominent movie releases.

  6. Reliance Media has an upcoming Movie release by ami.one · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reliance Media has an upcoming Movie release scheduled in 2 weeks.

    This happens every time just before a new movie release. It'll be back to normal after that. The few other ISPs are probably going through Reliance. None of the other large ISPs have done this.

    Its just to reduce the chance of a leak before the release, which has happened a few times in the past and is at times disastrous for the movie as it gets reviewed before opening day. Then if its good it gets downloaded a lot, while if its bad there's are less viewers turning up in theaters.

  7. MAFIAA Fire!!! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MAFIAA Fire!!!

    A FireFox plugin to defeat blocking of PirateBay and other trackers.

    It's ONLY DNS, after all... Save all your cryin' for the Queen.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."