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Unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way Is Fun
TheGift73 writes in with a link for those of you who like to do things the hard way. "Now that The Pirate Bay is being blocked by ISPs in the UK, millions of people have a new interest in accessing the site, even if they didn't before. The reasons for this are simple. Not only do people hate being told what they can and can't do, people – especially geeks – love solving problems and puzzles. Unlocking The Pirate Bay with a straightforward proxy is just too boring, so just for fun let's go the hard way round."
Having RTFAd, the "hard way" boils down to... use Google Translate to access it.
How the hell does that qualify as "hard"? Or even, really, different from a proxy? I was using that exact* trick in fifth grade to get around stupid school filters (fun fact: blocking any page including the characters "xxx" makes it *really* hard to write a paper on Roman Numerals).
I was expecting something at least involving Tor or the like, or maybe some weird hosts file trick. Something actually, y'know, interesting.
* technically, it wasn't the "exact" same trick, as I was using Babelfish - I don't think Google Translate existed at the time - but it's close enough
It's kind of silly. I don't see how any of these (we've been using them for years at work) techniques are any more technical than a proxy, other than they kind of suck. You'll end up with broken links, images you can't see, and what not. With a proxy, you'll sometimes have speed issues, but the pages are usually complete. Something else you can do if you're not searching for new releases is go to archive.org. I think you would be shocked to find how complete their copies of pirate bay have been over the years.
I wonder, with over two centuries of completely retarded laws in England, does anyone actually take anything the government puts out seriously? The pirate bay blocking isn't the only dumb thing they've done lately. There's also the indecipherable cookie legislation that goes into effect this month that makes website operators responsible for asking permission for all cookies. Dumbasses.
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They use Cleanfeed, BT's transparent proxy.
It was created to block child pornography. Now it's also used to protect outdated business models.
When it was just blocking child porn, I dare say most people were OK with it. Now it's going to add 'copyright censorship'; soon, who knows what? Political sites, hate speech. And it'll gradually lose support and the means to circumvent its censorship will proliferate and become commonplace, making it entirely useless in doing the job it was designed for.
They're idiots. But that's not news.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I still use TPB, and I know there are more websites to search for torrents, but despite being the largest one, TPB it's a symbol of resistance.
When and if it's taken down, it will be a major lost for Pirates. MHO.