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UK ISPs Secretly Start Blocking Torrent Site Proxies

Posted by Soulskill on from the slowly-winning-the-war dept.

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."

6 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Block all proxies? by Karganeth · · Score: 5, Funny

    When will they begin to block general proxies, as they can be used to access blocked sites?

    1. Re:Block all proxies? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't know why this was modded funny because it is the logical conclusion of this process. The BPI and their American counterparts have been pushing for search engines to introduce copyright filters by default for years, blocking all torrent sites outright. Ideally they want a whitelist of approved sites to be returned when searching for anything music related. Rankings would depend on BPI fees paid, to ensure no indie sites get too popular.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:How futile. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  3. Solution. by AndyJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Install Opera.
    Turn on turbo browsing mode (Icon bottom left.)

    PirateProxy.net now working again for me on Virgin.

    --
    Never be afraid to ask. Wisdom must be gathered before it can be given.
  4. They should consider themselves lucky. by gallondr00nk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Not ISPs, at least not at ISP level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hi

    I just attempted to setup a proxy on my dedicated server at a datacentre in France.

    It was blocked instantly

    Tried a few other things, also blocked instantly

    Tried running the webserver on port 800 thinking perhaps transparent webproxying at the ISP level was blocking it

    It wasn't.

    Got someone in japan to try it, it worked, got someone on a different ISP in the UK to try it, blocked.

    There's clearly some sort of packet inspection going on and anything that comes up TPB is blocked in the UK.