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The Promo Bay Blocked By UK ISPs
hypnosec writes "The Pirate Bay's artist promotion platform (the Promo Bay), despite being perfectly legal, is being blocked by several UK Internet service providers including BT, and Virgin Media. The Promo Bay was launched this week as a promotion platform for content creators like filmmakers and musicians enabling them to showcase their talent and work to thousands of people across the web. Even though the idea is novel, The Promo Bay has somehow found itself on a block list alongside the Pirate Bay."
If you were confused by the Napster saga, the big media companies only care about squashing competition. Napster helped their bottom line. ANd taking it down hurt their bottom line. It wasn't about infringement, anymore than the radio is about infringement.
It's about control.
If this succeeds, they're unnecessary. They are the gate keepers. An artist needs them. But they don't need artists. They can take any dancer or model who can't sing and turn them into a pop star.
lol. you're naive. Looks like you never actually read an ISP contract. The only thing guaranteed in it is that you pay the ISP. Everything else is at the discretion of the ISP.
It seems like anything that even remotely challenges today's established copyright dogma is the modern day equivalent of blasphemy that deserves absolute censorship so the old fashioned doctrine of intellectual property can be allowed to continue, unchallenged by more futuristic ideas.
What exactly is the rationale in blocking the Promo Bay? It's not and never has been the Pirate Bay. Different servers. Different owners. No complaints of copyright infringement. No cases, lawsuits or petitions to the court.
What is the process that has gone on behind the scenes to block it accross almost all of the UK's ISPs? Where is the public oversight of this process? Who met, talked and how was the decision arrived at?
Where is the scrutiny over decisions to censor the internet in a (supposedly) free and democratic country?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
There are two different websites.
http://thepromobay.co.uk/ looks to be a proxy for TPB as others have said and isn't blocked.
http://thepromobay.org/ is blocked
Curses.
The second URL should of course be http://promobay.org/
UK ISPs would block any effort by the Pirate Bay, even if they launched the Puppy Bay. Its about the source, not the content. The Promo Bay is essentially a PR tool for the Pirate Bay, and blocking that ability is as strategically important to Big Content (and their allies) as blocking actual sharing.
This sets a rather curious precedent, I wonder how much further they might take it?
The blocking?
lol. you're naive. Looks like you never actually read an ISP contract. The only thing guaranteed in it is that you pay the ISP. Everything else is at the discretion of the ISP.
Only in the US. The UK and rest of the EU have sane consumer protection laws.
This doesn't mean you can simply call them up and say "I think you're breaching my contract; I'm cancelling effective immediately. Kthxbye." and they'll let you out of it just like that. You can expect to be told in no uncertain terms you're in contract and if you cease payment, you'll be hounded thoroughly. Only way you'll get away from that hounding is likely to be a court appearance.
This isn't necessarily the end of the world - we have a perfectly serviceable small claims system designed specifically for such things and the whole point of it is that lawyers are kept out of it as far as possible. But there's no guarantee you'll win - in a case like this, there's a few factors I can think of at stake:
1. The major ISPs are already under court order to block the Pirate Bay. Your contract with them almost certainly states something along the lines of "this contract is not void if we have to block a part of our service because a judge tells us to" (and even if it didn't, nobody - neither BT nor their customer - can expect them to provide a service that they've been explicitly banned from providing).
2. Your ISP will no doubt say "This was a simple administrative error. Our customer here made no effort to establish what the problem was, nor did they give us an opportunity to resolve it. In actual fact, by the time his next payment was due we'd already resolved it".
Now working on TalkTalk though earlier today it came up as blocked
The Promo Bay isn't the same as Pirate Bay so they should unblock it
Mendacem Memorem Esse Oportet
This pretty much proves that the MPAA/RIAA is not so much about "piracy" as about maintaining control over an industry.
There no longer is a need for big record labels, and very soon there will no longer be a need for the big Hollywood conglomerates. If you look at many of the biggest blockbuster movies, once you get past the first screen for "Dreamworks" or "Universal" or "Fox" you find that the actual work (including the funding) was done independently for the most part.
For now, the big labels and studios are like aging crime bosses that still get their cut from everything that happens in their respective industries. But their day is coming to an end.
The only question now is whether the most successful indie labels and film production houses are going to try to use the same obsolete business model of consolidation or if they're sufficiently enlightened.
Either way, The Pirate Bay (and others) presents the best reason why they need to change how they do business.
Same thing with games: This week, Ubisoft released Far Cry 3 in Europe (it doesn't come out until Dec 4 in the US). Their "uplay" DRM server immediately crashed, making the game unplayable for all the people who legally bought the game, even for the single-player campaign. Meanwhile, those who downloaded the RELOADED release from Pirate Bay had no problem playing their game, whether they were in the EU or US. And still they don't get the hint. Instead of realizing that their DRM was nothing but punishment for their paying customers, Ubisoft probably came away thinking, "We need more better DRM!@!".
You are welcome on my lawn.
So if they're blocking it might be pure DNS since I use OpenDNS.
But I'm using Googles DNS 8.8.8.8 - who wouldn't?
In the US, if a service provider makes a material change to their promised services, you are allowed out of it with no strings until you make another payment. In the case of providers who take automatic payments, I've yet to see one without wording that says something like you have 30 days from the time of the change to terminate services. I do know for certain that all four of the major cellular carriers have such wording (Verizon gives you 60 days after you tell them that you have an issue with the change and they can't or won't address your concerns.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I'm on Virgin Media and the first isn't blocked, despite it being a proxy for Pirate Bay, whereas the second is blocked. Looks like they've blocked the wrong one.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Any ISP can block any traffic for any reason.. We best get used to it, it will only get worse.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's blocked on O2.
My contract is up on 19th January. I will vote with my feet. I'll switch to Andrews & Arnold who publicly state that they don't censor, filter and track. It's a whopping £4 a month more.
Fancy. We're talking about http://promobay.org/ - a completely different site.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Many US States have sane consumer protection laws, too.
We also have mostly the same Common Law protections as the UK which can cover basic contract issues.
$ host promobay.org
promobay.org has address 62.239.4.146
$ host thepiratebay.org
thepiratebay.org has address 62.239.4.146
BT gives me "Error - site blocked" for both TPB and PromoBay.org which means they've hijacked the IP address itself. What I will have to see next is if anyone goes and tell the court that BT is doing more blocking than they've been ordered. They've been ordered to block TBP, but not anything else that may be hosted at the same IP address.
My conclusion: TPB is playing one of their games. Popcorn may be recommended for this one if the ball gets rolling.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
Which is why you don't cancel the contract - you ask if you can, and when you can't you just keep finding mysterious faults which cost them more than £25/month or whatever in engineers fees. They soon get the message and you're free of contract.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
In Belgium I took a slightly different route: I went to a central store of theirs every other day for a while, to complain that the connection didn't work. After a few visits the store employees started recognizing me, and looked positively embarrased every time I showed up.
Result: It only took Belgacom ca 1 month to actually fix a connection problem, which I understand to be quite fast for them.