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Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire Blocked In the UK
hypnosec writes "The movie industry in the UK is having a ball, as far as blocking of sites allegedly involved in piracy is concerned, as courts have asked UK ISPs to enforce a blockade on Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire and others. Getting a torrent or steaming site blocked in the UK is a mere paperwork formality, since ISPs have completely stopped defending against these orders. As it stands, a total of 33 sites have been blocked in the UK, including The Pirate Bay, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz, 1337x, Fenopy, H33T, KickAssTorrents, among others."
Personally I'm not a big user of these kind of services, but it's only a handful of the "big" ISPs who are doing the blocking. I prefer a more personal service so I use a small ISP which offers special geeky extras (full class C, reverse NS delegation etc) and they perform no such blocking. But even if I didn't it's trivial to bypass such blunt instruments.
They've started blocking searches that can lead to kiddie porn, and thus accepted the linkage.
The next step in that is mandatory reporting of any IP addresses that does those forbidden searches. Having accepted the searches are bad, it follows that surveillance of this badness will be the next step. Thus they've accepted the surveillance principle.
Copyright lobby already wants Google to block all copyright infringements from search results. (and read the New Zealand Kim Dotcom indictment, it talks about 'selectors being tasked' i.e. PRISM talk, meaning spooks are now copyright enforcers).
Likewise ISPs blocked these torrent search engines as being equivalent to torrents and in turn equivalent to the copyright infringement, thus it follows that they'll keep being asked to block ever more tangential stuff. For example, sites that list torrent search engines. Sites that discuss torrent search engines. VPN sites, and so on.
These companies exist because the public allows it. The public is getting nothing but censorship out of the bargain, giving these companies carte blanche to do whatever they please to the internet. The world is caving to the slightest whims of an industry that we would survive just fine without.
I think you overestimate the capabilities and patience of a large percentage of the population of the UK. I think these actions will shut down 80% of the movie sharing. It is a right royal pain in the bum, and personally I think the MPAA just don't understand that any action they take will have unintended consequences, but on the whole, it will have the effect they desire - most of the traffic will be gone.
They should just be careful what they wish for.
Because only a trivially small proportion of the population cares. Few have even heard about these services.
If you care about free TV in the UK then you could start by not watching or recording live transmissions, and you then have no obligation to pay the TV license -- they only waste it on extra redundancy payments for senior managers, and politically motivated nonsense stuff like moving programming oop north.
I get by on BBC iPlayer delayed transmissions, streaming to my TV through Chromecast. Possibly ITV and Channel 4 have compatible streaming services, but sadly their programmes are not compatible with me.
It's the slippery slope. Once you start slipping, you've lost static friction, and start slipping faster.
Google have already started slipping. ISP have already started slipping. It's the same thing.
Also you ignore the most significant point in my comment: the spooks spying on Kim Dotcom for copyright infringement. That's a mark of how far its gone.
http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1304/AFFIDAVIT_OF_DISCLOSURE.pdf
Page 17: "Secret//Comint/Rel to NZL,AUs,Can,GBR, USA", i.e. 5 eyes spooks network.
Page 19: "selectors of interest"
Page 19: "Kim (unreadable) not tasked due to US domain"
Page 21, "Kim Dotcom selectors - all tasked"
It has nothing to do with monarchy, this is a US corporate thing. They believe they can fix the economy by creating more IP rights to sell, in place of actual goods and services, hence insane patent laws and the NSA & it's five eyes buddies involved in a minor copyright case.
We will see in a few years or even less if big content providers make more or less money than before in the UK. I'm of the opinion that blocking free content leads to discontent, less visibility, and ultimately less profit, because people will not want to reward what could be construed as oppression.
As I read the comments, it looks like people are missing a bet on what the practice that the cariers are doing can provide.
People are noting that techincally competent people can easily bypass the restrictions, and others are noting that the vast majority of the public is not sufficiently technically competent to work around it.
I'm reminded a bit of the drug dealer situation in most places. It's trivially easy for most people to find a supplier for nearly any drug that someone has an interest in getting. Most people don't go looking for them for whatever reason, but it's not because they don't know where to go, or at least if they thought about it a bit they could figure it out. The same is likely to be true of media content.
So, user George doesn't know how to get around these filters, but it's likely that one of George's friends does, or one of George's friends knows someone who can. If this ever became a significant issue, I suspect that people would set up secure chat servers (or even a https based site) where they let their neighbors know they can request whatever movie they are interested in, and through a bot on the server they get back a link to the file already downloaded, or to the file being downloaded, and they can start watching. The link may be to a torrent proxy that goes and gets the bits of the files from other people offering the same sort of a service, and none of the people providing this service actually have copies of the files maintained on their systems either. (Yes, that somewhat defeats the purpose of a torrent, but the idea is to provide a service to end users, not necessarily be a good torrent netizen.) To reduce the likelyhood that the person providing the service is adversly affected, he or she may require that the 'customer' run a torrent proxy on their system that the load of torrent traffic gets distributed across. Better operators will do something like build their software package to prevent spam bots from running on the customer's computers. That may even be all that the customer is asking for from the service provider, and the torrent operation may be going on completely transparently to them.
I know, that seems complex. But from an end user perspective for the movies, it looks like I log into a secure web server, identify the movie I want to watch, and get a link to that movie. I click on that link, and I start watching the movie. Perhaps George texts or IMs a movie title to Bill, who texts back a URL that George then enters in their web browser, or even follows right on their phone or pc.
In time a network of providers of the service will exist, or several networks. It might be done through something like IRC, and the various providers will check to see who's closest to the end user and get a link close to them.
You never know...
Guess they'll have to route around this damage in the network.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think you overestimate the willingness of people to put up with crap. Especially once they learned that there is another way. People are probably willing to accept various hardships thrown at them by the manufacturers of DVDs and BluRays ... until they learn that it is trivially easy to circumvent those unskipable trailers and other junk that cuts into their movie watching pleasure. It's not even the money, in my experience.
You really think someone who wants to see the latest episodes of his favorite show will let something like that block keep him from doing it? Even the last tech illiterate dimwit manages to type something akin to "how to get around that bloody brit ISP torrent block" into Google search, and then follow the step by step instructions this will almost invariably result in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, that took all of thirty seconds.
Trackers *are* blocked and taken offline all the time. That is, if there were any trackers left, most are gone. BitTorrent has different methods now to discover peers. PEX, DHT and LDP for peer discovery, Magnet links to replace .torrent files. You essentially can't block bittorrent without extremely "expensive" Deep Packet Inspection, essentially eavesdropping on every consumers internet traffic 100% of the time.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I know of people who were refused entry in the US or denied a green card because they had hosted a Tor node before.
Royal Dutch Shell is not British. It's Dutch. They have a royal family too.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
We gave them an inch, and ... the results were as expected.
No sig today...
I think you overestimate the capabilities and patience of a large percentage of the population of the UK. I think these actions will shut down 80% of the movie sharing.
Don't really agree with this. The people [that I know of] that torrent are *not* tech savy, however they are more than capable of googling something along the lines of "BT piratebay blocked"* which will give them a workaround on the 2nd link. I think the best way to describe it is "never underestimate the ingenuity of someone who doesn't want to pay anything"
* Typing "BT pirate" immediately suggests BT pirateproxy. These people don't know need to understand what a proxy is, all they know is that a proxy lets them get to stuff they not allowed to see.
So taxpayers should pay to put people in jail to protect the entertainment industry's outdated business model?
The same group who often book their sales in tax favourable jurisdictions should also get to put people in jail at your and my expense? I thought jails were for real crimes? Isn't copyright violation a civil matter in most nations?
Speaking about putting people in jail, how many times have the various recording industry's been charged with abuse of monopoly, price fixing, etc?
Those examples on the other hand are not CIVIL matters and the penalty can include jail time (again in most nations) but no one has ever served it.
Here (canada) they were charged with selling compilation CD's without paying the royalties. Now if a person does this it is considered piracy and in the US they charge you $20,000 per song but what do you think happened to them?
So yeah, lets jail people because laws to prevent people from doing some things always work (cough)Prohibition (cough)... Even the government realized it needed to update its business models....
*This* Industry however is not necessarily the source of all entertainment. There was a time when the industry did not exist, but entertainment still existed.
The entertainment industry in the states dates back to Stephan Foster.
In 1850, P.T, Barnum paid Jenny Lind $167,600 in advance for her first American tour, plus expenses. That is $4,557,076 adjusted for inflation. The contract would be renegotiated upwards as Barnum's promotion machine built up steam.
There would be profits from sheet music sales, product endorsements and so on.
Barnum's share would come to about half a million good-as-gold tax-free dollars. In the first decade of the telegraph, The first quarter-century of the railroad, Everything essential is in place for the evolution of a mass popular culture rooted in professional entertainment.
I don't like thieves much better than you do. I can't stand the thieves who run the entertainment industries. Unreasonable copyright laws that last beyond the authors lifetime are insane money grabs, that should have been killed thirty years ago or more. Take down notices for works that never did belong to any corporation. Refusing to recognize fair use. Moving works of art from the public domain, into corporate control. Multi-million dollar settlements against common users (as opposed to industrial grade pirating and distribution operations).
I don't know if you've ever read this article:
!Alles in ordnung!
http://striderweb.com/blog/tag/books/
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Actually it's worse than that.
There are real threats to a country's economic, political or other stability. People who actually want to harm a country or companies in said country. Terrorists as well as people embezzling or laundering money, tax evaders and other criminals that actually cause a noticable, real harm to your country. Who in turn do have a pretty good reason to mask their traffic and route it through various means of VPN and other techniques to shield it from surveillance.
Now, these people are few and far between. A sensibly staffed police force with some background in online security can easily spot them, pinpoint them and ferret them out. Why? Because there is very little reason for Joe Randomuser to have a lot of VPN'ed traffic running. You can actually take a quick look at most "odd" connections and examine them.
This option goes out the window when everyone does it. Yes, they're all actually breaking a law. But a law that has close to zero impact on your economy. And yes, even if you're the US. Compared to embezzlement and tax evasion, the loss to the country due to torrents is negligible. But now you have a LOT more people who will act like criminals and you can't easily spot the real, dangerous criminals anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
distribution of stolen American property
That is not true in any way, shape, or form. The AC has a really damn good point that you can't simply negate by saying it's within the NSA's job description.
Having law enforcement involved in simply copyright disputes is highly concerning. The NSA being involved brings it to a level or ridiculousness akin to the President going door to door collecting unpaid dues for the paper boy. "How far off the mark have we gone". Indeed.
No such thing as theft involved and you're continuing to perpetuate a myth that is quite dangerous to freedom and our society. Specifically, that ideas and their expressions can be owned, and that by not complying with the explicit wishes of the owner you are engaged in acts of "theft".
I'll be real simple here. A copyright in of itself is just a container for legal entitlements (aka rights) granted by the people to the creator. Only the creator can ever exercise those rights. It's called legal standing. To "steal" the "property" one must in fact steal the legal standing. That can be only done with fraud and contracts negotiated under duress with the creator. Not from some pimple faced teenager on bit torrent. All that ever happens is copyright infringement . This, the vast majority of the time, involves cases that belong in civil courts. Only the mass duplication, distribution, and profit over copyrighted works is worth the intervention by law enforcement for society's behalf.
What part of copyright law being used the way it's now being used doesn't scare the crap out of you?
- Weak, and often proven absolutely falsified and incorrect, reports and statistics attempting to show direct fiscal damage of epic proportions to justify changes in the law - DMCA, copyright enforcement, CISPA, treaties and negotiations with other countries being examples.
- The creation of laws curtailing our freedoms in ways that were never agreed upon by society at large. Who the fuck thinks they can tell us we can't skip over commercials
with technology in our own homes? How dare they tell me there are Prohibited User Operations on my DVD player? It's my fucking DVD player, my fucking DVD, my fucking money that left MY wallet. Yet, they have the unmitigated gall to stand in my living room by proxy through technology paid for with my money telling me what to do in my own home. Make a televised skit of that shit and see how many people you can get to agree with you to let that happen.
- The dramatic loss of privacy and anonymity through the unprecedented and largely unchecked grabs for mass surveillance capabilities. All of it for.... yep.... terrorists. Yet, not being used against a single terrorist. More and more they use these tools to come to the aid of a single side in a copyright dispute and in some notable cases, arrest and detain people only interested in actions that were damn well known to be fair use .
You bet your ass I'm just as concerned as the AC is about a US intelligence agency being used unfairly in a civil dispute. It may not affect you directly now, but you just wait, keep that line of thinking up and you will have the government you deserve. Then after some time, you will have the country you deserve.
One bereft off a middle class anymore. Just the ruling elites and the slaves. A country run with the abhorrent idea that an idea and expression can be owned forever and that all must prostrate themselves before the elites for the right to use advanced technologies. One where no single person, or group of persons, in a garage could ever hope to build a multi-billion dollar company from nothing since the barrier to entries are so damn high. How could they be low? Over a half million patents in a smart phone these days. Ridiculous software patents will run a muck in your country inhibiting, or outright preventing, innovation by the "small guys". You already have your "who files first" bullshit in the USPTO. That har
There is nothing wrong with expecting all TV and movie entertainment to be free. This is the future and companies that do not understand this are destine to meet newspaper companies, book stores and video rental shops in the afterlife.
Paying for entertainment is a thing of the past. Especially paying for simple delivery. There is no need to pay for distribution since all citizens now pay directly for that bandwidth through their ISP.
Any system of delivery that delivers their content with 30% advertising mixed in and cannot figure out how to do this for free is destined to DIE.
Currently, there is a limitation on quality video and music due to channel limits that are funnelled through the paid distribution network. This allows the distribution companies to milk the consumer for far more then it is worth. This system is supported by a huge waste of marketing and advertising used to brainwash young minds into accepting the concept of a "blockbuster" or "superstar", that is sanctioned by the distributors.
Once the public finally wakes up and lets go of paid distribution entertainment, the flow of quality media will be far greater. Only then can we begin to discuss what is fair for consumers to pay back to producers for their work.
In the meantime... dont accuse consumers of stealing. The only ones stealing today are the commercial distributors.