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."

Comments

*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a proxy is too easy... using google search as a proxy is u83r 1337 and sooooooooo different.

Re:*facepalm*

[multicoregeneral]

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.

For those that do want the easy way...

[lattyware]

The Pirate Party UK is hosting a mirror (or acting as a proxy, not sure which): http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/

What a joke

[slimjim8094]

When I read "the hard way", I expected something at least as sophisticated as Tor, but this is just stupid. Their suggestion is to use Google cache and copy the magnet link.

Please.

Re:What a joke

[girlintraining]

use Google cache and copy the magnet link.

That's not making a direct connection, that's just using cached data. The entire point of defeating censorship in this fashion is to prove that as long as a connection can be made between A and B, and a connection can be made between B and C, then even if a connection cannot be made between A and C, it can still be routed through B. That's how the internet was designed to operate.

Unfortunately, as more and more money is waved around with the demand that it not work this way, increasingly sophisticated technological solutions will have to be employed to maintain these links. At some point, thanks legislators being sock puppets for those wealthy interests, the only way to ensure democracy electronically will be to deploy tools that allow people doing things far, far, worse than downloading music to have effective anonymity and realtime communication.

These commercial interests will be responsible for the widespread deployment of encryption, steganography, and analysis-resistant forms of communication that will allow terrorist, child abusers, and all manner of truly bad people to disappear into the shadows. The internet as it is designed now can effectively screen for those types of problems, because bypassing surveillance results in network traffic that is statistically different. Efforts by Homeland Security and other similar organizations worldwide can thus be seen as promoting terrorism, organized crime, and child abuse -- the very reasons they offer up for control of the internet. If they'd just limited themselves to those factors, we would have effective controls that caught just them... but when you're using such technology to catch hundreds of millions of people, and restrict their daily activities... some of them will design effective safeguards against such measures and deploy them via word of mouth.

It's like the war on drugs: If they'd just kept it to truly harmful drugs like cocaine and heroin, those drugs wouldn't be easily accessible... but because they went after anyone who recreationally takes drugs, they made everyone their enemy... and no matter how wealthy or powerful your organization, you can't beat 100,000:1 odds.

Re:What a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now, heroin and cocaine are not dangerous. I take great offense to your post. Alcohol is far more dangerous than both heroin and cocaine combined, and there are so many deaths caused by alcohol it's not even funny.

Heroin is actually a particularly weak opiate when you compare it to some of the other legal opiods that people are taking/abusing. Hell, even my prescription of Oxymorphone is 10x stronger than morphine and 4x stronger than heroin, yet it is perfectly legal to obtain by going to the doctor. Heroin gets a bad rap because it's cheap and that makes it a good choice for junkies. Opiates are actually pretty safe drugs to use. The only long term side effect is addiction, and there are no side effects that are detrimental to your health. It's just dumb kids and junkies that run out of their drug of choice, withdrawal for a few days, have their tolerance drop tenfold, and then inject their old dose that OD. Yes, the addiction part is bad and yes, they are extremely addictive, but after a week of not using them you return to your normal self. They are not "harmful" like you've been brainwashed to think.

Cocaine is a pretty unique drug, but it's relatively safe as well. It's not an amphetamine, but it feels pretty similar. Kids are prescribed amphetamines like Adderall all the time. My GF has a prescription for it, and it is fun to take once in a while, but you would really need to take an absurd dosage to make it dangerous. Yet, millions of people are legally taking prescription meds that act very similarly to cocaine, and no one even cares.

So, we have the general population like you who are brainwashed into thinking drugs are bad because the media/government told you so. It's sad that we legally prescribe essentially the same thing that you consider a "harmful drug" to people all the time and it's ok, yet when someone mentions heroin or cocaine, everyone acts like someone who uses those is some scumbag criminal. People are going to use drugs whether they be legal or illegal. People are going to share files on the internet, whether they make it illegal or not. It's the same principle at work. And you are applying the same brainwashed logic to drugs that the policy makers are applying to filesharing, and it sickens me.

Re:What a joke

[cranky_chemist]

"Do you know what the difference is between LSD and Strychnine? Nothing; They're chemically identical, save that one is left-handed and the other right-handed."

Uh... no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine

Not only are those two compounds NOT enantiomers, they don't even have the same chemical formula (C20H25N3O vs. C21H22N2O2).
 

Re:What a joke

[dryeo]

A third of the population abuses alcohol, and most everyone has used it. If heroin and cocaine enjoyed the same level of use... let's just say population control wouldn't be an issue. The danger of a drug isn't based on how many people die from using it, but how many people per capita

A hundred+ years ago Cocaine and Opiates (mostly morphine) were very popular, with quite likely 1/3rd of the population using one or the other. Coca wine was very popular amongst the upper class and morphine was used by many. You could go into any drug store and purchase them for cheap or if you were the Queen you used the expensive stuff. People did not die just like most people don't die of alcohol abuse but if you hang out in the right places it seems to be a killer. I've known a lot of people who have died from alcohol abuse and none who have died from any other drug.
Most of the problems with both heroin and cocaine are caused by prohibition. Especially with heroin, you don't know what you're getting and if used to weak formulations a strong formulation can easily kill and cocaine has been concentrated to the point of being dangerous.
Cocaine use amongst doctors used to be very common before the procurement procedures were tightened up and doctors would be prescribing morphine or heroin much more if not for the legal implications. Shit, my Aunt was given Heroin by a doctor in a hospital when she was in labour which would have been in the late '60's.
It's the puritans that have pushed all the prohibition bs and have this attitude that if you need a crutch to get by then you're a failure. Personally I need a few crutches, the most addicting being my glasses.

*That's* considered the "hard way"?!?

[gman003]

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

Re:*That's* considered the "hard way"?!?

[Master Moose]

(fun fact: blocking any page including the characters "xxx" makes it *really* hard to write a paper on Roman Numerals)

XXX is what I would rate this article on a scale of I to C

Pfft. That's still the easy way.

[VortexCortex]

These folks claiming to be "unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way" are still doing it the easy way. They want to do it the hard way? Rally a bunch of supporters and go to Parliament and MAKE them unblock it. Rouse friends and family in support of sharing of information (the BASIS OF HUMANITY) and don't let anyone forget who the bastards are that blocked it in the first place and why they should be voted out. Get some money together and run smear campaigns on the media networks if you dare.

"Oh that's too hard", yes well, that's why it's called the HARD way.
"Oh, I'll just use $NEXT_ON_THE_BLOCK_LIST tool or service to get around the censorship", not only are they not doing it The hard way, they're just plain doing it wrong.

Re:why not just modify your host table?

[Blue Stone]

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.

Re:Only the larger ISPs are blocking it, it seems.

[Idetuxs]

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.

Re:why not just modify your host table?

[kangsterizer]

Or not. It will become *accepted*.
When that mean won't be technologically sufficient, since the blocking will have been *accepted* (we blocked for 10 years already! etc.) they will change the mean to be stronger.

They're actually smart. It wouldn't work any other way. Smart but disgusting.

Re:why not just modify your host table?

[Anonymous Coward]

One where you eliminate the middle man and sell directly from artists to customers, thus preventing the RIAA et al from stealing from its artists. It's inevitable really.