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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."

9 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 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. 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.

  4. 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
  5. 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."
  6. 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.