Slashdot Mirror
High Court Orders UK ISPs To Block More Torrent Sites
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The website blocking phenomenon has continued today in the UK, with the High Court adding three major torrent sites to the country's unofficial ban list. Following complaints from the music industry led by the BPI, the Court ordered the UK's leading Internet service providers to begin censoring subscriber access to Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy."
Unlike when the Pirate Bay was blocked, none of the ISPs contested this. They did, however, refuse to block things without a court order. Looks like the flood gates have been opened. On the topic of filesharing, Japan arrested 27 file sharers, using the recent changes to their copyright law that allow criminal charges to be brought against file sharers.
Suddenly six strikes that end with a slap on the wrist doesn't look so bad.
The law has obviously not caught up to the Tech Community...
There Can Be Only One...
wireless p2p darknets that are completely independent of isps, dns, etc.
This only applies to the bigger ISPs.
An easy solution (for now at least) is to change ISP.
When the law begins to not represent the morals and wishes of the people. The Australian tax payers are building a high speed fibre optic content distribution system that will allow content producers to sell us their copyrighted product and they have the gall to claim that we will be using it for piracy.
FUCK you content producers, I'm going to lobby the government that we should be taxing copyrighted content to subsidise the delivery system that the people have paid for,
A world-wide attack requires a world-wide response. Are you going to let Anonymous fight your fight for you or are you going to do something about it yourself?
"Oh, look! A new shiny Apple product and new episode of American Idol. Out in the same week! OMG!"
Sigh...
I'd rather risk jail time than pay the absurd prices they levy on media. Have you seen the price of a Blu-Ray in Japan?
Are these sites pulled from those ISPs' DNS servers? Do they block the IP address (which could easily be changed)? Non-Brits want to know.
It's a little more complicated than that in practice, but the general idea is sound.
If you a) don't download infringing content in the first place; and b) do not ever share your internet connectivity with anybody else who might, I might suggest that you'd be pretty safe from harassment.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I have good reason to believe that criminals use the telephone system to distribute plans to commit crime. It is time to shut down these criminal aiding telephone systems.
And the roots of the next step in the evolution of non-corporate-sanctioned file-sharing began.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
This is a blessing in disguise - Its a chance to stop stealing content (lets be honest here) and buy stuff through legit channels. The reason I started pirating in the first place is that a 700 mb xvid was vastly more convenient than going to the store, bringing home a dvd wrapped in annoying plastic with easytear perforations that never work and sitting through an FBI warning with nonsensical forced previews. This is all resolved, Hollywood has listened and there are tons of ways to stream movies (only the movies and non of the crap). Piracy is gone in my world, I thank Hollywood for listening to us.
1. Rent a seedbox.
2. Torrent like mad
3. Download secure and unrestricted from private seedbox
4. ???
5. Profit
There is a very easy way to avoid being arrested for file-sharing ... don't do it.
Currently this is modded Score:0, offtopic. How on earth is it offtopic?
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Not downloading is no protection or excuse. There are countless examples of people wrongly targeted. BBC Watchdog covered it a few years ago and had an expert example the computer and router of an elderly couple who were accused to make sure a) they didn't do it and b) they were not hacked. The detection system is broken and targets people at random.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
For those who do not know it And that is only part of it. The whole thing can be found here.
I hope they also block this torrent site They seem to be collecting a lot AND it is a UK site.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I still cant phantom why the ISPs should work for free for the lobbies of the media corporations.
Because GP's voice is counter to the belief some Slashdotters hold which conflates piracy of games/movie/software and other consumer media with sharing of knowledge and information. There's a vocal (and popular) contingent among us who would elevate the act of downloading and consuming the latest movie without compensation to the level of scientists freely sharing data or dissidents networking with each other without encumbrance.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I'm as much as pro-piracy as the next guy, and I was wondering why are we using BitTorrent for warez so extensively? The feds have to only kill the index website and there goes your "peer to peer". Sure, you can still have your torrent files and magnet links, but finding them just becomes rather hard.
On the internet all it takes is one hole. One weak link in the chain.
This will achieve nothing. It will solve nothing.
Determined users will find ways around it if they have not yet. This will not generate revenue and just feed the hate for the MAFIAA
It's not even about legality. Look at any banned substance, if there is a demand for it, there will be a supply. This ruling follows a token law that has no bite, has no teeth and is actually counterproductive. I did not even know about those other two sites until today.
Maybe the way forward is to also take out a super injunction not to make the ruling public. That'll make sure no one knows.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
How on earth is it offtopic?
file-sharing != copyright infringement
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Which basically defines the people with at least a modicum of common sense, and obviously excludes you.
But hey.... if it makes you feel better, you are feel perfectly free to shout at me that I was wrong if that turns out to be the case. Until then, however... wait and see.
I expect the number of genuinely false allegations (that is, innocent people whose networks go completely unused by people whose actions they are not prepared to be held accountable for) in this particular system to be relatively low.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Considering how those file sharing accusations reek more and more like carpet bombing, I wouldn't count on it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And c) didn't have grandchildren (or anyone else) who might have used their internet on a personal laptop?
Okay, their detection method is fatally flawed for reasons I will present in a moment, but first I'll make the more general point that they have never sued anyone who bothered to turn up and content it in court. They know their evidence is weak and would be shot down, so they rely on people just paying up and drop it the moment you challenge them.
Their system works by gathering IP addresses from a tracker. Many trackers now seed themselves with some random IP addresses to break this. TPB has had doing it for years before they shut their's down. If you pay for the deluxe service they then try to connect and download some of the data from you, to prove it is a real client and not a fake.
So they have an IP address that they claim to have downloaded from, with a screenshot of it happening. Note that you can easily fake these via a handy web site: http://piratbyran.org/bevismaskinen/ . An IP address doesn't identify you, it identifies an internet connection. Maybe, assuming ISP records are correct. Keep in mind that we don't have any process by which they can take your computer or router away for examination, so that is all they have going to court. Maybe more than one person uses that router. Maybe someone hacked it. You are under no obligation to investigate for them. They have nothing, and have been told as much by judges repeatedly.
It's a scam. Speculative invoicing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
.. I do not know about you, but I am done pirating.
On a more serious note, do the people making those decisions recognize the amount of ill will created by their actions? If I was not so old and did not care the new shiny everyone and their mother needs to have, I would probably start pirating out of spite...I am certain teenagers don't do things they are expressly forbidden from doing..
But maybe I am ageist; I do teach the old folk basic computer skills for my volunteer work. Last week the first question was how do I get the free music on the interwebz..
So mpaa and their equivalents listen up: Tempus fugit... adapt or perish
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
They can order in one hand, and shit in the other. Which do you think will fill up first?
You seem to have completely overlooked that I was only talking about false allegations being low with regards to people's networks who go completely unused by people whose actions they are not prepared to be held responsible for.
If they were hacked, or more than one person uses that router and they aren't prepared to take responsibility for that person's actions, then of course all bets are off.
But in typical slashdot pedantry, people here are far more worried about exceptions than they are in noticing that the general rule might actually work for the most part, and the infrequency with which it doesn't (which is still theoretical, at this juncture) may very well be low enough to be manually managed.
One of the major problems I have with the copyright alert system they've implemented (I really only have two, but this one's the biggest one) is that when they make an allegation about you, they don't even make an attempt in the allegation to tell you what it was, exactly, that you allegedly did... it's just a vague form letter that doesn't identify one single thing about the alleged infringement, not even the *TYPE* of content that was supposedly infringing, let alone when, or what, or where.
But, the good news about that is that it won't carry any weight in court for them, should it go that far. The text of the alert makes far too vague an accusation to be usable, even if it *were* true. One might as well make the general accusation that "person XYZ lied" without actually specifying exactly what was lied about, where the lying happened, or when.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We seem to be heading towards the direction of streaming content, both audio and video, where the consumer pays $X per month for a selection of content. That's fine if you prefer that model (and it's a decent model - there's plenty of content that's probably only worth a single view/listen anyway), but unfortunately this seems to be the only legal outlet that's available for legit, digitally-distributed movies and videos from the big guys.
In other words, I still can't legally download TV shows or movies in a DRM-free format to be kept on my server and viewed at my leisure. No-one seems to offer that option for a high-quality file, basically - the answer they give is the streaming services. I like my digital library that's under my own control and not at the whims of the vendor, but most of it is constructed from either pirated material or ripped from DVDs.
Music is fine as there are still plenty of music sites selling legal content DRM-free, but video is mostly elusive. I WANT to buy video to run offline, but it's all streaming these days and I suspect the younger generation won't care after a few years anyway.
Raenex is a dickhead
"On the topic of filesharing, Japan arrested 27 file sharers, using the recent changes to their copyright law that allow criminal charges to be brought against file sharers."
According to TFA
"Existing legislation against uploaders of copyright content already provided for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($108,202) fine."
Given that all the arrests were for uploading or otherwise making available pirated goods, I would say this comes under the pre-existing law, and not the October 1st update.
Personal attack aside (nice how our enlightened /. community allows personal attacks on some ideas?), you've not made a counter-argument or explained how media consumption (1 way exchange of information) should be elevated to the same level as idea sharing (2 way exchange of information). In simpler terms, explain how a guy getting the latest Batman movie and watching it in his bedroom is morally and ethically defensible to the same degree as a scientist sharing data with another scientist, or a political dissident passing information to another dissident.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
To distill it even further, explain why you believe information for consumption is morally equivalent to information for collaboration. Slashdotters tend to conflate the two just because they are all "information", but I beg to differ.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Information is information. You can't control ideas no matter what form they take or purpose they were intended to fulfill. The distinction you seem to think is so clear, made based mostly on the intended use is largely irrelevant and exists only in your head. It is even an immoral distinction as it tries to impose upon others what they should do with ideas based on the will of the creator. A creator who used thousands of years of information available in the public domain to "create" his work and feels in the right to take ownership of the result and sequester it from the same public domain that made 95% of the work for him.
You can keep differing as much as you wish, but in the end it is just an stubborn and illogical paradigm you imposed upon yourself.
Additionally, trying to enforce ownership to information is not only absurd and immoral, it is actually impossible in this day and age. Even more the useless efforts to keep trying to enforce this control take huge amounts of public resources which are not used to the benefit of the people who generated them, trample people's constitutional rights and threaten net neutrality.
Copyright has to go and it will go, because most people don't want it anymore, don't think it is necessary anymore and simply won't obey without force, and forcing these many people to do something they do not want is simply impossible.
A question - what are your views on the GPL?The GPL relies on the laws of copyright for enforcement. Should a corporation (say) be able to use GPLd code in a proprietary product because copyright is an " illogical paradigm" that "has to go and it will go, because most people don't want it anymore"?
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
GPL is a reaction to copyright. Its sole reason to exist is to combat proprietary software, which wouldn't exist in a world without copyright. In the absence of copyright GPL has no reason to exist. I see no problem with a corporation using former GPL software in a world where proprietary software didn't exist.
Damned be the Great Goo of Grey Typewriters that are Voters of Habit who distort elections and prevent anything to be done this decade and maybe the next.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
It's a little more complicated than that in practice, but the general idea is sound.
If you a) don't download infringing content in the first place; and b) do not ever share your internet connectivity with anybody else who might, I might suggest that you'd be pretty safe from harassment.
Try not to feed anoymous trolls. This moron is posting about people being arrested for file sharing but this thread is about sites being blocked which has nothing to do with prosecution or being arrested.
Given the choice between:
1) A campaign of over the top prosecutions on parents just because their kids downloaded something illegally because the kids don't agree with the concept of copyright.
2) Trying to play whack-a-mole to block access to sites that specialise in distributing content they have no legal right to as they pick up market share from the last site that was shut down.
I would much rather they carried on with option 2. It is a mere annoyance letting people who want to break the law carry on doing so, it lets the government be seen to be doing something (even though it is ineffective) and far more importantly it does not involve the possibility of prosecuting people and fucking their life over with a fine and criminal record that is with them for the rest of their life.
I dont read
Bits are bits.
Any system capable of distinguishing copyrighted material from other material is also entirely capable of locating political dissidents and isolating the source of information leaks. You can't create a tracking device that spontaneously stops working when placed on the wrong person, either you track everyone and destroy privacy, anonymity and free exchange of information and ideas, or you don't. Trying to separate copyright material from everything else is just trying to draw a line in the sand on a beach to stop the waves coming in. It can't possibly work, the laws of the physical reality prevent it.
The GPL is not a reaction to copyright. What it is is a reaction against closed-source software. Even without copyright there would be closed-source software - you cannot force someone to distribute the source code with a distributed binary. The GPL is there to ensure that GPLd software remains open source (i.e remains "free"), and to do this it uses copyright. Indeed the aims of the GPL require copyright.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
That is a secondary concern, combating copyright and proprietary software is the primary concern of GPL as I told you. Even if you close your source, if there is no copyright to protect it, it can and will be reverse engineered if there is enough interest for that. In the end whatever is achievable with GPL can always be achieved if there is no copyright.
I agree that all source code should be always disclosed. The user has the right to know what a program is doing in his system, but using copyright is the wrong way to enforce it, and an inefficient way to achieve this goal. That is a goal that can only be achieved by regulating the software industry and making the source code disclosure mandatory.