Irish SOPA Used To Block Pirate Bay Access

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Ireland's own SOPA Act has finally struck home. Today, the Irish High Court ordered all ISPs to begin censoring the The Pirate Bay. After earlier attempts were struck down, this case was brought by EMI, Sony, Warner Music and Universal music under new copyright laws brought in last year. This follows the largest ISP Eircom already having voluntarily blocked the Pirate Bay after previous legal action. Despite some early indications that some ISPs would appeal the decision, it now appears that like Eircom, they have quietly given up. Pity; IT was one of the few industries Ireland was getting right."

Comments

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[Rik Sweeney]

All the downloads on TPB are legal.

Serioulsy how fucking hard

[future assassin]

can it be to take the lawyer money and build the damn distribution websites aleady. If people with no money can do it in their spare time, I guess the answer is the studios dont want to. Then WTF are you in the business for? Seriosuly are these mother fucker so out of touch with reality?

Re:Serioulsy how fucking hard

[bill_mcgonigle]

I guess the answer is the studios dont want to.

correct.

Then WTF are you in the business for?

They believe they're in business to maximize their profits, not to make customers happy. Now, a good business functioning in a free market would accomplish both at the same time, but the *AA get to rest on copyright instead, effectively calling in the government's guns to enforce their stupid business model.

And guess who's subsidizing that stupid business model by paying for those men in guns? That's right, the same people who are getting hosed at the other end.

We probably either ought to give up our taste for pre-recorded entertainment or our system of government. Or maybe both.

Re:Serioulsy how fucking hard

[Rod Beauvex]

This not about money. It never was. It is about control.

Re:Serioulsy how fucking hard

[X.25]

Huh? If you want legal access to movies and music there are a plethora of distribution sites; Amazon, Netflix, itunes, etc.

Sorry, Netflix is not available in your country yet.

Amazon Instant Video on Samsung devices is currently available in all 50 states of the U.S., District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

I am not even going to try iTunes (since I don't own any Apple devices and I don't watch movies on my computer).

Re:Serioulsy how fucking hard

[jenningsthecat]

This not about money. It never was. It is about control.

Yes, it IS about control. It's about clinging to a past that they were able to understand and manipulate, rather than forging ahead to an unknown future with different rules that require different competencies and a different kind of creativity. And it's about a sense of entitlement too - they believe that with all of the pillaging they've managed to do over the past six decades or so, they've somehow earned the right to continue in that vein.

But it's also about money, because they are incapable of seeing how they can continue to profit in the age of unstoppable file sharing. Deep down, they're scared. They're finally experiencing the kind of fear, resentment, and ultimately, powerlessness they've put countless recording artists through. And I say "Good!"

Re:Serioulsy how fucking hard

[X.25]

Huh? If you want legal access to movies and music there are a plethora of distribution sites; Amazon, Netflix, itunes, etc.

I mean, what really hurts is that Amazon are cunts and don't bother informing you about geo restriction until you actually try to watch/download something (they let you go through trial setup and also set auto-upgrade option on, even though you might not be able to use Prime at all - I presume they'd just charge me $79 after a free 'trial' if I didn't disable this 'feature'). I just tried it again, and still works the same. Argh.

And they still wonder why many people download "free" things from the trackers/etc? It's not because they are free, but these brainless droids still haven't figured that part out.

Sigh.

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its pretty hard to find any downloads on the PirateBay.
Since they don't host anything..

Precedents, not specifics

[intermodal]

I'm more concerned with the precedent this could set than with specifically seeing the government block TPB.

Rogers in Canada has also started blocking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing is actually returned back unlike the spam page that an incorrect URL leads you to, but the site became inaccessible for most not long after the UK ISP story was posted, coincidentally. You can still easily connect through a proxy so it's obviously just a simple firewall on Rogers' part, but it's nothing that's been announced either.

Re:How hard is it to not buy their products?

[RoknrolZombie]

Disney free? Are you sure? Are you really REALLY sure?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney

A quick glance shows me that Touchstone is part of Disney, and they are a pretty big movie company...if you own movies, you probably own some of theirs.

And this illustrates the fundamental problem with the "take my business elsewhere" suggestion: I can boycott Disney, but unless I happen to know that Touchstone or ABC are a part of Disney, I may still be giving them my business. It's like last year when people were bitching about the factories in China and how we all need our precious iPhones - only to find out that the Androids, Dells, and damn near everything else that we work with are manufactured in the same facility (not sure if 'droids or Dells are built there or not - not relevant to my point).

Until there is an independent company out there producing decent material - and that company is forthright about who owns what - anywhere you go is likely going to further contribute to the problem (regardless of the problem you're experiencing, be it the MAFIAA, oil companies, grocery stores, etc)

Re:How hard is it to not buy their products?

[GameboyRMH]

TPB hosts only 100% legal material. Some of that legal material includes infohashes that, when processed by a BitTorrent client, many steps down the line, will eventually lead to other material not hosted on TPB which may or may not be legal.

They've rightly refused to comply with takedown notices since they ask for 100% legal material to be taken down, or the takedown of material they are not hosting.

I don't know why they even bother

[marsu_k]

Here in .fi, some operators were ordered to block thepiratebay.org and associated domains. The blocks ranged from simple DNS blocks, trivial to get past, to blocking actual connections to certain IP adresses, depending on the ISP.

Among the blocked domains was piraattilahti.org (that would translate to "pirate bay") - but at the time being, it forwarded to effi.org (local EFF). The block on piraattilahti.org was lifter after a while. Now, when you visit piraattilahti.org, it functions as a proxy to thepiratebay.org, so you can get there no matter what ISP you use.

The point being, these kinds of blocks are completely futile. Those interested in pirating content will continue to do so (and while TPB is undoubtedly a large tracker, it is hardly the only one), and ISPs will not certainly implement such blocks out of charity, so ultimately the costs will be paid by the subscribers. The only way to reduce piracy is to offer legal (and reasonable) alternatives. Currently, between subscriptions to Netflix/HBO Nordic/Spotify, I personally pirate very little - I do like to pay the content producers, if I'm able. But if I'm not, arrrrrr it is (Comedy Central, should you be listening, I'd gladly pay for Daily Show and Colbert).

Re:I don't know why they even bother

[gravis777]

so (and while TPB is undoubtedly a large tracker, it is hardly the only one),

For them to be a tracker, they would have to host torrent files, and they haven't in years.

Re:I don't know why they even bother

[CaseCrash]

(Comedy Central, should you be listening, I'd gladly pay for Daily Show and Colbert).

Grab the Media Hint extension for Chrome or Firefox and you'll be able to watch them on Hulu. I don't know if it works on Comedy Central's website or the colbert/dailyshow's own websites, but I know it let me use netflix, hulu, and pandora when I had to go to Belgium for work a couple months back. It makes those sites think you're in the US.

You might have to side-load it since it doesn't always seem available in the extensions "store" or whatever.

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[Thanshin]

Now a false statement is less false is written in common language?

I think I'll need a list of common language statements that reverse the falsehood of a statement. I'll start the list:
- "in" = "by using": e.g.: "Yes, your honor, we found child porn IN his computer."

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[Luckyo]

You can only "download" web pages and magnet links from piratebay now. Not even torrent files are available, other then linked from torcache.net.

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

And to clarify the EU thing, Sean Sherlock, at the time claimed this law to be required for compliance with EU obligations. Lying bastard of a man! He blamed the EU rather than admit that either he's on the take or is seriously a power crazed gobshite.

If this was a requirement, I don't see all other EU nations rushing to meet it. No, Sherlock got something out of this. Knowing the cunt, it could something as small as a Little Mermaid DVD box set (region 1, you langer) and a bag of oranges. He's been an irritating mannequin-faced wanker since his days in Mallow as chief pencil organizer for the local Aspergers society meetings. Absolute shambles if a man, and he looks like a rubberized robot.

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[nabsltd]

You can only "download" web pages and magnet links from piratebay now. Not even torrent files are available, other then linked from torcache.net.

TBP still serves torrent files for torrents that don't meet the minimum requirements for seeder and leecher count. Check a link and you will see that the file comes from a .piratebay.sx domain. It's also easy to show that it's not coming from torcache, as there are torrent files available on TPB that aren't on torcache.

I can't recall the exact numbers used as thresholds, but it's about a total of 10 peers.

Re:What?

[davester666]

Yes. Now the US must "harmonize" their laws with those in Ireland, otherwise the terrorists and child molesters will win.

Re:Making it harder to pirate?

[mcgrew]

I've never had problems finding legal content there. Have you ever looked? If you did look and found nothing you're doing it wrong.

The Paxil Diaries is there, I seeded it myself. Musician friends' work is there; they, too, seeded it. I've been begged by folks to release The Paxil Diaries in hardcover so they could buy a copy. Guess where they heard about it? The internet. Guess where they got a copy? I emailed it to them for free or they got it from TPB. Now that folks kinda know me they'll buy the next one.

I wouldn't have that dozen Asimov books on my shelf had I not read his stuff for free at the library.

The MAFIAA knows that piracy doesn't hurt sales, study after study has shown this. However, if you buy two indie CDs from my musician friends, that's ten bucks you don't have to buy a MAFIAA CD and the MAFIAA did lose a sale; we don't have unlimited supplies of cash.

Competition hurts sales. The fight against piracy is a fight to keep their independent competitors invisible. As Doctorow says, nobody ever lost any money from piracy but many have starved from obscurity.

That's why the internet is so scary to the old media. Nobody needs them anymore because of it.