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"Piracy Filter" Blocks TorrentFreak for 4 Million Sky Customers

Posted by timothy on from the type-one-and-type-two-errors dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Website blocking has become a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. Opponents of both voluntary and court-ordered blockades have warned about the potential collateral damage these blocking systems may cause, and they have now been proven right. As it turns out blocked sites can easily exploit the system and add new IP-addresses to Sky's blocklist. As a result TorrentFreak has been rendered inaccessible to the ISP's four million customers."

14 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. There we have it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why censorship of the internet is a fucking stupid idea.

    1. Re:There we have it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Government officials usually have no real opinion on this due to a lack of understanding. They just act on lobby groups that are usually sponsored by Hollywood and other corporate interest groups.

    2. Re:There we have it by SGT+CAPSLOCK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is to be expected of what I've come to call the "Corporate Internet".

      Governments and corporations have inherited our tubes, and I think that by now they're pretty confident that it's going to be acceptable for them to control and limit the content that ordinary people have access to.

      It's been like this for a while now; once you learn the ropes and (more importantly) learn to obey all the rules, you'll fit right in!

    3. Re:There we have it by davydagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      there were people/corporations/governments that though the holocaust was a good idea. /godwin, but to prove a point that every bad anti-social oppressive idea does actually work for some people, the people in charge at the expence of everyone else.

    4. Re:There we have it by blackest_k · · Score: 5, Informative

      you didn't read the article did you?
      It was actually a bit of clever manipulation by a torrent site who discovered sky was automatically blocking other ip addresses the torrent site was listing as alternate site addresses. So they performed a little experiment listed the torrent freak site as a mirror and sky automatically put a block on that ip address. Thus demonstrating how Sky's automatic blocking is flawed and fairly useless.

      Its a bit more complicated than that but summing up Sky thought they could automate whack a mole and instead managed to give control over blocking to the sites they want to block.

      Torrent freak were informed and agreed to be a target before hand. I think facebook was also targeted but with little to no effect due to the number of addresses assigned to facebook its believed.

      --
      Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
  2. Re:So, What You're Saying is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    TorrentFreak isn't a site that allows you to conduct piracy. It's a news site that posts content relevant to file sharing.

    This would be like shutting down newspapers because they speak about other crimes.

  3. Re:So, What You're Saying is... by ClaraBow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So very true! The masses in the UK will suddenly acquire the necessary means to get around the filters. The word proxy will become a household word, just like it has become in school that filter the internet.

  4. Add DNS for "legitimate" sites by grahammm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the blocks are applied to any IP address pointed to by a blocked site, maybe as a demonstration a blocked site should add the IP addresses of all of the major UK political parties, BBC iPlayer, Youtube, Netflix, lovefilm etc. If mainstream media sites get (automatically) blocked then perhaps the backlash might force TPTB into either removing the requirement to block or require the ISPs to use a blocking mechanism with less potential for collateral damage.

  5. The whole article in a post by ConaxConax · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm a Sky user in the UK, and I am here to post the text of the article:

    "Website blocking has become a hot topic in the UK in recent weeks. Opponents of both voluntary and court-ordered blockades have warned about the potential collateral damage these blocking systems may cause, and they have now been proven right. As it turns out blocked sites can easily exploit the system and add new IP-addresses to Sky’s blocklist. As a result TorrentFreak has been rendered inaccessible to the ISP’s four million customers.

    stop-blockedFollowing a High Court ruling last month, six UK ISPs are required to block subscriber access to the popular TV-torrent site EZTV.it.

    The actions EZTV faces are not the first taken against a torrent site in the UK. The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and several other “pirate” sites have been blocked by previous court orders and remain inaccessible by conventional means.

    However, over the past couple of days Sky subscribers noticed that the blocklist had been quietly expanded with a new site that’s certainly not covered by any court order – TorrentFreak.com.

    Our site first became inaccessible on Wednesday night, only to be unblocked 14 hours later. However, about an hour ago it was again added to the blocklist.

    The recent blocking spree is causing confusion among Sky subscribers who have no idea why TorrentFreak is longer accessible. However, we can confirm that the problem lies with Sky’s filtering software that is supposed to enforce the court-ordered torrent site blockades.

    The owner of EZTV informed TorrentFreak that he used Geo DNS to point UK visitors to TorrentFreak’s IP-address. Soon after there were reports that our website had become inaccessible to Sky users."

  6. The fun that can be had by TheP4st · · Score: 5, Informative

    EZTV should have their DNS servers point to SKY's IP addresses and sit back and watch as hilarity ensues.

    --
    "I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
  7. Re:oooh, big scary corporations! by firex726 · · Score: 4, Informative

    FYI this site is not a tracker or place to download torrent files; it's a new sites that posts articles, and only articles relating to filesharing.

  8. Re:This makes me think of Wrath of Khan by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Kahn was quoting Melville; Kirk was his whale. And Star Trek is more known to most slashdotters than Melville.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!
  9. Re: Who cares? by Rockoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It makes the news interesting when you see it from both sides.

    Notice how easily they convinced you that there were only two sides...

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  10. Re:So, What You're Saying is... by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the UK is now in the leauge of China, and Iran as far as internet access goes.

    You might want to try that again.

    I'm in China right now, and I've no trouble accessing either TorrentFreak or TPB.

    (And no, I'm not using a proxy or VPN, just a bog-standard residential connection.)

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.