Hundreds of IP Addresses Make Pirate Bay a Hard Target

jones_supa writes "Last week The Pirate Bay added a new IP address which allows users to circumvent the many court-ordered blockades against the site. While this proved to be quite effective, the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN has already been to court to demand a block against this new address. But that won't deter The Pirate Bay, who say they are fully prepared for an extended game of whac-a-mole using the hundreds of IP addresses they have available. Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and the end is still not in sight."

Comments

oblig. leia

[niftydude]

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Re:oblig. leia

[tnk1]

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Just remind me not to be on Alderaan when he's in the process of figuring that out.

Re:oblig. leia

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a question of substance, it's a question of style -- you can't just walk in and say Star Wars sucks, you have to pose your opinion of it as a quote or reference from some other SF/F/other geek-friendly-genre work. For example, dissing Star Wars in Klingon would have gotten him applause.

Re:oblig. leia

[Mr2cents]

Great. Now entire hordes of geeks are grabbing for their light sabres, and the entire discussion will be about Star Wars, instead of TPB. Well played, MPAA.

I wonder if they have IPV6 support

[Chrisq]

I wonder if they have IPV6 support, unfortunately searches on "the pirate bay" are blocked here at work. If tey do they could add billions of IP addresses!

Re:I wonder if they have IPV6 support

[grahamm]

Buying a whole block would probably not work, as then it would be simple to block the whole block.

Re:I wonder if they have IPV6 support

[SirDice]

http://thepiratebay.se.ipv6.sixxs.org/ Not blocked via DNS nor via IPv6. None of the injuctions seem to cover IPv6. I'm actually wondering if BREIN knows IPv6 exists.

Re:I wonder if they have IPV6 support

[FridayBob]

I wonder if they have IPV6 support, unfortunately searches on "the pirate bay" are blocked here at work. If tey do they could add billions of IP addresses!

That was my thought as well. Keep in mind that IPv6 addresses are often allocated in /64 and /48 subnets, so it's possible that's how the anti-piracy groups will be seeking to block them. Still, even if they attempt to block by the /48, that still leaves thousands of billions of these address ranges in which to hide. But, even with IPv4 it sounds like the TPB has address space to burn.

It's stupid, really. IMO, all that's necessary to end this ridiculous cat and mouse game is for the entertainment industry to offer streaming services to the masses at reasonable prices (per movie/show/series/episode/album/song) and all this bad behavior will be unnecessary on both sides.

Poisoned forever?

[weave]

So Pirate Bay goes around and getting new IPs and I assume releasing the old ones. Then what? Imagine getting a new netblock for your own stuff and finding out it used to be a PB IP. How do you go about getting that unblocked all around the world.

Re:Poisoned forever?

[dontclapthrowmoney]

That'd make for some interesting firewall logs. Also, from TFS:

an extended game of whac-a-mole using the hundreds of IP addresses they have available

I also would have expected that it wouldn't be that hard for the courts to find out what IPs TPB already own, so they can block them proactively?

Re:Poisoned forever?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also would have expected that it wouldn't be that hard for the courts to find out what IPs TPB already own, so they can block them proactively?

Start using the IP addresses of politicians' websites as claimed alternate IP addresses, see if you can get the court to order the blocking of people who will not take that sort of thing lying down. (Yes, it would cut multiple ways at once but the shitstorm would be funny.)

Re:Poisoned forever?

[mepperpint]

I would think the IP addresses would be useless forever. It would likely take way more effort than it is worth to get them unblocked. Even if the court lifted the block, it would be hard to guarantee that they had been unblocked by every ISP out there. If this goes into overdrive, we might have a new compelling reason to switch to IPv6 as larger and larger swaths of IPv4 addresses become dead.

Re:Poisoned forever?

[SJHillman]

The last place I worked had an issue like this. We switched ISPs and found that two of the four new IPs assigned to us were blocked by a number of other ISPs and services for spamming. That took a few weeks to get it mostly straightened out, although we were still on some block lists six months later when I left. A friend of mine found that his newly registered domain name was blocked by a lot of places for spam as well, seems the previous owner of the domain may have been Russian...

Meet the Internet

[betterunixthanunix]

The Internet is not just some fancy cable TV system; websites are not channels, "access devices" (read: personal computers) are not "view only," and BitTorrent is not some service that can be shut down. Millions of people want to share and download their entertainment; I would guess that they outnumber the people running the various businesses that are still struggling to adapt to this "new" technology. How about instead of fighting a battle that can never be won, we tell the copyright industry that they need to adapt or die?

Re:Meet the Internet

[TheGratefulNet]

there will be very little financial incentive to create the content we enjoy

for over a decade now, there hasn't been much on tv or movies worth watching.

'content we enjoy' is now shifting. I get my 'content' via typing and reading what's online. the story lines on modern movies and tv really suck, the acting sucks, the commercials deter from the whole thing and I mostly lost interest in mainstream 'entertainment'.

it would not bother me one tiny bit if ALL the major studios went out of business. same with record labels.

I would not lose one bit of sleep or feel at all like we've lost anything valuable.

maybe I'm just getting too old for tv and movies; but it lost all its magic, like I said, about a decade or so ago. now, its a total waste of time and an insult to my intellect every time I try to watch anything current.

hours spent on the one-way tube seem wasted, to me. hours spent ENGAGING people online via conversations seem much more stimulating and interesting to me.

old one-way media is a has-been and I expect it to fade as other people get disillusioned, like I did.

let the studios rot and fade away. good riddence! seriously. other stuff will fill the void.

Re:Meet the Internet

[lexsird]

Now that would be entirely too logical. But while we have whore politicians who will dance for whatever jackass pays them the most, they will make laws that burn us. We are to blame partially. We don't hold politicians accountable for their betrayals. They should be terrified to cross us. They should ponder that big fat bribe as a death sentence. We also need to get rid of legal bribery, the whole process of lobbyists needs run down and beat out of our system with extreme prejudice.

When you look at this issue it's just systematic of larger issues that plague us. Until we the people get back our government from big money, they will continue to bend us over and jam whatever they wish up there. It's problematic, because asking the current power holders in government to fix this is like asking the fox to fix the hen house.

Here is something to consider, they could tap into this and make money instead of whining about it. They are missing out on fortunes by not adapting to the times and technology. So it makes me wonder, are they just damn stupid or are they just an excuse to try to clamp down on the Internet by the powers that be because they are frightened of it? It's probably both, come to think about it.

Politicians didn't give a rat's fat ass about this until the "Arab Spring" that materialized out of Internet social networks. Then factor how the London riots were guided by the tech as well, and you get paranoid "powers that be" that are afraid we will collectively snap out of this dream world they have fabricated for us and come howling in one giant unstoppable mob for their heads on sticks. OWS was looking scary to them, and if the media didn't get on it's job of either completely ignoring it and covering it up or smearing it into oblivion, they were going to have to do something drastic to avoid mass revolution via the Internet.

But thankfully for them, the movement has been contained. The American public has proven apathetic to it's citizens exercising Constitutional rights being beat down and gassed by thug military forces aka the police. OWS members have been successfully painted as filthy dirty hippies instead of modern patriots, they are now on the proper watch lists and the steam is out of the movement.

They can now go back to letting the Internet function and use it to spy on us via social networks. They get to have their cake and eat it too.

That explains volumes, no? It's not hard to impress upon dolts in office who can't set up their own email with scary stories of "cyber criminals, terrorists and warfare". Lion, tigers, and bears! OH MY! For the children!!! Release the Kraken!

Silly rabbit, Tricks are for kids! It's all about control, the entertainment industry are just retards who pay the bribes to get them to do what they want to do to begin with and to have an excuse. It's incumbent upon us now to fight back and shove it all up their asses.

Oh, joy.

[perrin]

IP addresses tend to change hands. The "bad guys" get new IP addresses, while some innocent bystanders gets the old, tainted ones. It is hard enough to get an IP address off a vigilante style blacklist, but how bloody hard would it not be to get it off a court ordered IP block? The block would likely be in a different country altogether, or perhaps several countries at once.

They are really starting to mess hard with the core structure of the internet. But of course, these big cartels do not care. They get their slightly higher profits, and as usual someone else gets to sort out the mess later on.

Re:An example

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Photoshop. I know it well, and can do things in it far easier than I can in GIMP, largely because of experience, but I do not have the time to invest to learn GIMP well.

If I want to make a quick button for me website, or clean up a photo, or make a nice card from my girlfriend, it is the tool I go to.

Dude, if you have time to make yourself nice cards from your imaginary girlfriend, you have enough time to learn GIMP.

Geez.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Wait until they find out that TPB is only one of many torrent sites.