Slashdot Mirror
UK ISPs Secretly Start Blocking Torrent Site Proxies
An anonymous reader writes "Several UK Internet providers have quietly added a list of new sites to their secretive anti-piracy blocklists. Following in the footsteps of Sky, the first ISP to initiate a proxy blockade, Virgin, BT and several other providers now restrict access to several torrent site proxies. The surprise isn't really that proxies have been added to the blocklist, but that the music industry and ISPs are failing to disclose which sites are being banned."
This isn't torrent sites, it's services that allow you to circumnavigate ISPs that are already blocking access to torrent trackers.
The big issue here is that there is a secret list of what's blocked, which could be far more than copyright infringement. Doesn't that worry you a little bit? Can't you see where all this monitoring and secret blocking is leading, and that there is no public overview on those who control it all?
At the minute, they're locked into a futile game of whack-a-mole. It makes me laugh sometimes; the BPI have more or less veto power over the major ISPs in the UK and all they can do is flail around blocking a few sites and proxies. I imagine some bitter, humourless executive in the bowels of the BPI shaking his fist and screaming "CURSE YOU INTERNET!"
I say they're lucky, as I suspect in five years time they won't even be able to play whack-a-mole. What with censorship by various states, the NSA revelations and increasing authoritarianism, I think the next "generation" of P2P, web and messenger services are going to be anonymous. Tor we all know about, and I notice I2P shows a lot of promise. File sharing will likely be the first breakthrough anonymous application, but I2P supports far more than that and other services will quickly follow.
I think encrypted, anonymous services will essentially be game over for censorship.