BT Blocking Private Torrent Sites?

An anonymous reader writes This weekend both BT and Sky implemented the new changes, making it harder for their subscribers to reach these sites. Interestingly, however, BT appears to have gone above and beyond the court order, limiting access to various other sites as well. Over the past several days TorrentFreak has received reports from several users of private torrent sites who get an 'error blocked' message instead of their favorite sites. These include the popular IPTorrents.com and TorrentDay.com trackers, as well as scene release site Scnsrc.me. IPTorrents and Torrentday are significant targets. Although both sites require prospective users to obtain an invite from a current member (or from the site itself in exchange for cash), they have over a hundred thousand active users. The error displayed when BT subscribers try to access the above URLs is similar to that returned when users to try access sites covered by High Court injunctions.

Comments

IPT and TorrentDay can go die in a fire

[Anonymous Coward]

They DDoS other sites, so they can get a bit more traffic and money. Google IPT DDoS for sources.

thepiratebay.se

[Nyder]

Not that it's related, but for whatever reason today thepiratebay.se hasn't been connectable. Apparently for a lot of USA people.

If i can't download my stuff, i will probably have to go shoplift it. Ain't no way I'm paying the fucking media companies shit for anything. Black Friday is the best day for shoplifting, just saying...

Re:thepiratebay.se

[cold fjord]

I think most people would have posted that as an AC.

Aren't you a little old for that?

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

It been down for me, for a couple days, and I have the "wonder" service called Comcrap. opps I mean Comcast, they are just comtastic!

Re:thepiratebay.se

[freeze128]

He's Nyder. What else do you expect from Davros' right-hand man?

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that every movie shoplifted is a sale as far as the media company is concerned, since it's paid. It seems silly to do that if your goal is not forced charity for the MPAA.

Re:thepiratebay.se

[cold fjord]

Point taken.

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not your best course of action, seeing that you have been caught probably 20 times

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? They have a bunch of mirrors/proxies.

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

http://proxybay.info/

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

http://uj3wazyk5u4hnvtk.onion/

Re:thepiratebay.se

[gsslay]

If i can't download my stuff

Aren't you the entitled one? It isn't your stuff.

Re: thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you've come out and admitted the truth: you're just another thief who wants stuff for free.

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Bugamn]

For a moment I read that as Davos, so I would expect his right hand to be shorter and harder to type.

Re:thepiratebay.se

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a junkie shoplifter. His worldview is pretty fucked. He probably genuinely believes he deserves his TV shows.

thepiratebay.se

[An0nymous Coward]

Works for me just fine in the Soviet Republic of Canuckistan.

tpb.pirati.cz

[ihtoit]

great mirror, pisses all over virgin media block.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[AmiMoJo]

Everyone in the UK should be using a VPN as standard anyway now. Between site blockades and illegal spying they are a necessary part of connecting to the internet here. Look at it this way, if you went to China you would want to use one, right? Well the UK is at least as bad as China.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[Anonymous Coward]

http://piratebay.rocks
also works.
(obligatory grumble about the cash-grab of the many new top-level-domains)

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[N1AK]

I really can't see why anyone who is downloading material that they could be sued for in the UK isn't using a proxy or VPN. Given how low the cost is of using a reputable one doing anything less seems like a very naive gamble.

However, on the topic at hand: It's completely unacceptable for ISPs to be limiting what websites users can visit when they aren't legally obliged to. Not only is it an even more dangerous precedent than the current government restrictions but it makes a mockery of protecting them from prosecution for the information they transmit if they are deciding what users can or can't do.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[loonycyborg]

VPN providers can and do share identity of their clients with the government.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the VPN provider. You just need to pick one that doesn't keep logs. Just knowing the customers isn't good enough for them to do anything.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[mjwx]

VPN providers can and do share identity of their clients with the government.

What if you get a VPN provider in another country, will a Czech or Taiwanese based provider share information with the UK government?

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[loonycyborg]

That might be fine in theory, but who knows in what agreements in the future those governments will engage in? Perhaps it'll even be secret and you won't even know it. I think tor is a better choice. It's distributed and not bound to any particular company or country.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[mjwx]

That might be fine in theory, but who knows in what agreements in the future those governments will engage in? Perhaps it'll even be secret and you won't even know it. I think tor is a better choice. It's distributed and not bound to any particular company or country.

Except TOR is bad for torrents.

Besides this, the nebulous threat of some global co-operation over copyright enforcement is delusional to say the least.

If such a threat became credible, you'd just switch VPN providers to another country.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[Anonymous Coward]

So don't use a 'provider' then. Why do people think they have to?

Set up your own VPN - openvpn is not hard. You will need a location, of course. If you don't have a foreign friend, you may need a 'location provider' but all they need to provide is a (virtual) machine. You set up the software, your 'provider' has nothing they can share with their government.

Re:tpb.pirati.cz

[loonycyborg]

That's only one of possibilities. Also, just someone may crack VPN provider's systems and install a tap to record all logs(same is possible with tor, but it requires most of exit nodes to be compromised which is kinda hard). And you won't even know about it. You can use i2p for torrents.

Re:Wow!

[ihtoit]

oh what you mean like facebook?

Where child traffickers frolick like fucking lambs but the SECOND you make a controversial comment your account gets shitcanned.

Hmmmm.

[SeaFox]

Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet?
Sounds like a clear case of fraud.

Re:Hmmmm.

[AutodidactLabrat]

So is the 250 GB cap.
Doesn't stop them with a Supreme Court that will not hear cases involving price-fixing and fictitious advertising.
Buy a few state judges (Crapcast just finished spending over 30 million in the last election. How much over is Citizen's United out of our sight) and you can do whatever you want to people
Capitalism and monopolism are always synonyms given enough time and positive market feedback control.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

The access is unlimited, what is limited are parts of the Internet. You must be new here on Earth, so welcome to self-censorship and such.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Barny]

Nah, just America. In Australia when they say 'unlimited' by law the connection has to be without any limit. So the only ones that post 'unlimited downloads' are the ones who oversell their back-haul and run like shite during peak times.

Re:Hmmmm.

[N1AK]

Doesn't stop them with a Supreme Court that will not hear cases involving price-fixing and fictitious advertising.

British Telecoms is an American ISP as well now?

Re:Hmmmm.

[Mike O'Hara]

> Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet?

See also literally/figuratively.

Re:Hmmmm.

[qbast]

There are other countries outside USA? Impossible.

Re:Hmmmm.

[Computershack]

Blocking access to websites when I paid for unlimited access to the Internet? Sounds like a clear case of fraud.

Your honour, I'm filing this case because BT refuse to allow me to download copyrighted material I've not paid for and which is being distributed without the holders permission....

Re:Hmmmm.

[N1AK]

Where else would all the dragons be!? ;)

Re:Hmmmm.

[Yomers]

Your honour, I'm filing this case because BT refuse to allow me to download material that is in public domain or under permissive licence, like GPL or CC.

Fixed that for you. By blocking entire TPB BT refusing it's users access to thousands of legally shared torrents. And besides, TPB does not contain any copyrighted material or links to such material - only description and hash of such files.

Re:Hmmmm.

[SeaFox]

The access is unlimited, what is limited are parts of the Internet.

No, that's part of the whole "safe harbor" thing. ISPs are not liable because they're job is simply to deliver the connection to the Internet. If they start blocking access to sites for this reason or that reason, then people are going to start holding them responsible when they don't block something else they don't like.

Re:Hmmmm.

[AutodidactLabrat]

And when did blocking become an ONLY British Telecom act?
Seriously, get the Alzheimer's test. That way you will know.

BT? Sky?

[rebelwarlock]

What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

Re: BT? Sky?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear!

Re:BT? Sky?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I saw the topic, I first thought "BT" was "BitTorrent". That didn't make much sense at all.

Re:BT? Sky?

[amalcolm]

British Telecom and Sky media: two prominent UK suppliers of broadband (and lots of other stuff, POTS and sattelite TV, respectively)

Re:BT? Sky?

[Beardo the Bearded]

That's what I thought too, and it wasn't making sense. "How is a protocol blocking a torrent site?"

Re:BT? Sky?

[SuricouRaven]

BT: The biggest ISP in the UK. Former state-run monopoly phone company, long since privatized, but heavily regulated to prevent abuse of its unique position.
Sky: Another major ISP. ADSL service. Also provides satellite TV.

Re:BT? Sky?

[oobayly]

To add further to the description of BT - a company split into three parts - BT Retail (the phone provider / ISP), BT Wholesale (who run the infrastructure and exchanges), and BT Openreach (who run the last mile infrastructure). It's supposed to mean they can't abuse their monopoly. As far as the customer is concerned, it means that reporting a fault might have to go through 3 companies and most of the time spent is the 3 companies passing the buck. They also like to charge each other and pass the cost on to the customer.

Phone lines cut out randomly

I was present as he reported the findings to his Boss and I heard his Boss say "Can you make it look like their fault so we can still bill them?" He replied "No cos he is stood here listening and watched me fix it". This was followed up with an extremely apologetic conversation between me and his Boss where he claimed he was just Kidding!!! Yeah right...That sums BT up exactly

BT Retail is basically staffed by a bunch of MBAs, salemen and shit tech support (although their BTnet tech support is actually pretty good). BT Local business are a bunch of complete wankers and will [literally] cancel your ISDN30 and recreate it so they get more commission - this resulted in 36 hours of downtime.

BT Openreach - you're not allowed to speak to - but when an engineer does come out, they are generally professional and knowledgable. However, in the above case, they will fulfill BT Retails requests to cover their arses. In the above ISDN30 case, they pretended that the failure was due to a faulty NTE-2D (Fibre termination equipment) even though we had it confirmed that our contract had been "cancelled" the day before.

We have a 100Mb/s leased line with BT, which I have to admit has been pretty bulletproof - we've had about 30s of downtime in 4 years (but is also insanely expensive). Anyhow, when we renewed out contract I told them we wanted an IPv6 subnet, this was subject to a charge of £400 as they said they needed to upgrade our bearer. This was never done, so we complained, and they said they would have to charge us £3,000 - the normal installation fee. We pointed them to the contract we signed. Now, instead of sending out a bloke to update the router, or even send out a new router, they have:
* Spliced together 26km of fibre to the exchange.
* Installed a 3rd fibre into our office
* Provided a new NTU
* Provided a new Cisco 3xxx router
* Sent 3 engineers out to do all this

I spoke to one of the Openreach guys - he shrugged and said "that's the way they like to do it". I said "it's ok, we're not having to pay the standard installation fee, just sounds like a waste of time and money though". He also explained what the bearer was (confirming my assumption) and looked pretty confused when I told him BT Local Business insisted that it had to be upgraded to "carry" IPv6 packets.

Re: BT? Sky?

[DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly]

You may never have heard of them but if you are in America, you are probably using code that both those companies developed in the late 90s since BT and Sky sent engineers to California to develop a lot of your set top box menu software and on demand services. Problem for you guys is that your still using it. Next time you're over here, have a look at the way Sky software works and you'll be insanely jealous. Far far more advanced than what I've seen in America and Canada.

Re:BT? Sky?

[Mr_Silver]

What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

Ever thought about using your favourite search engine to look them up?

There are plenty of non-USA based readers here who have to do that whenever a USA-centric article appears (which is often).

Re:BT? Sky?

[drinkypoo]

What the fuck are these things? Am I supposed to know software/brand/product/service names off the top of my head?

Yes. If they are central to the operation of the internet for a substantial portion of its subscribers, then yes, you are expected to know what they are, and lots of other things besides. You have to know the names of now-defunct corporations and even some computers and routers if you are going to speak intelligently about the internet. If this seems arduous, perhaps Slashdot is not for you.

Re:BT? Sky?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, BT is used here a lot - and is well known to be either Blue Tooth or BitTorrent depending on the article. Of course when talking about the UK, most people know it is British Telecom, but hey - you could also figure it is Baseball Tonight on ESPN. As far as Sky - yep, these are the jokers that went to court to make Microsoft rename SkyDrive - because everyone confuses cloud storage with internet access apparently.

Re:BT? Sky?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to clarify your clarification, the three companies must deal with other in this basis. They are not to interact with each other in any way other than how competing companies can interact with them. If a Virgin Media first-line can't directly schedule an Openreach callout, neither can BT Retail.
 
I agree that it's an utter ballache to get anything fixed, but it does put everyone in the same boat. The best thing you can do is be polite, provide as much information as possible on the initial call, and let the guy know that while for the purpose of this call you're regular home user, your day job is enterprise-class networking. They won't necessarily treat you any differently as far as timescales or callouts are concerned, but they might let you skip some of the lower-end scripted instructions.

Re: BT? Sky?

[RockDoctor]

if you are in America, you are probably using code that both those companies developed in the late 90s since BT and Sky sent engineers to California to develop a lot of your set top box menu software and on demand services.

Worse - if you're using the Internet, then significant chunks of the code and practices would have been developed at the UK's GPO (General Post Office), which became BT on privatisation in the mid-80s. Through the 1970s the GPO was intensely interested in the technologies needed to replace it's direct-connected telephone system with a more efficient packet-switched network, and as a state monopoly it could invest with the multi-decade payback time that is so problematical to profit-driven corporations. Look through the first couple of thousand RFCs that define "the Internet" (as well as anything does) and you'll see work by GPO staff, and associated large amounts from places like UMIST.

The short version of the history of the Internet is that "it was developed by DARPA" ; the longer, less inaccurate version is that "it was developed by DARPA and many other groups and organisations working in approximate concert". One of the largest non-American "others" was the GPO.

Down

[ArchieBunker]

Gotta be routing issue. Only after a few hops its reported as unreachable.

Who cares what the hell they are blocking??

[fustakrakich]

Just find a way to circumvent it.. and tell the rest how to to do it.

Re:Who cares what the hell they are blocking??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's helpful. Wow, I bet no one thought of that. Thank you, magnificent one.

Re:Who cares what the hell they are blocking??

[Anonymous Coward]

Proxies and Tor. The same techniques as for the last decade.

Re:Who cares what the hell they are blocking??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's helpful.

Yeah well, it beats all the pissing and moaning that all you people are doing. The solution is there. Don't try to over complicate things with all your silly masturbatory philosophies. The idea is actually solve the problem and circumvent all blockage, knock down the wall by any means available.

BT? Sky?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, youÃ(TM)re supposed to at least skim TFA, the very first words of which are ÃoeUK internet provider BTæ"

Easy enough to get around.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they start blocking by DNS, go via IP directly.
If they are blocking IP directly, either go VPN or Tor.

If they block either VPN or Tor, they will be pissing off much bigger fish then tor browsers.

If they even managed to go this for long, how do you think it would take for a fed up programmer create a new non-centralized client setup for searching directly instead of a website similar to Limewire if not limewire itself.

Re:Easy enough to get around.

[Jahta]

If they start blocking by DNS, go via IP directly. If they are blocking IP directly, either go VPN or Tor.

Running Bittorent over Tor is a bad idea. As the linked article says, look at I2P instead.

Re:Easy enough to get around.

[OldSport]

I wonder when countries are going to start outlawing VPNs. "Conspiracy to commit cybercrime" or some bullshit like that.

Re:Easy enough to get around.

[Pascal Sartoretti]

Running Bittorent over Tor is a bad idea. As the linked article says, look at I2P instead.

But it would be fine to run your browser over Tor in order to get the torrent magnet link, and then use the "normal" network with your favorite torrent application to get the actual file ?

Proxies and Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with proxies and Tor is that private sites ban the use of them, due to things like multiple accounts/IPs.

Copy pasta fail

[wonkey_monkey]

This weekend both BT and Sky implemented the new changes, making it harder for their subscribers to reach these sites.

What new changes? What sites?

If all you're going to do is copy and paste a couple of paragraphs from the article, at least pick ones that make more sense by themselves.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL Bullshit most private trackers don't even allow anonymous usage making them the worst sites for that kind of sick and twisted shit. If anything they'll be on some dark web service. Haven't you seen the various news stories over the years about cp rings being busted? They're almost always on dark servers because they're harder to track down. I'm not saying that's the only place because occasionally there are a few idiots around that ends up sending that sick shit using personal email accounts.

Now, go post your MPAA RIAA save the children propaganda somewhere else because we're not buying it.

inneffectual Whack-a-mole

[Ginger Unicorn]

Presumably they aren't allowed to block proxybay.info because that is always up, and just gives you the working pirate bay proxy du jour. I'm not sure what the significance or notability of them blocking a members only torrent site is though. Irrespective of what access people have to it, it's still a torrent site. Or am I missing something?

Re:inneffectual Whack-a-mole

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll probably get around to it. Then we'll have to use proxyproxybay.info.

scnsrc was not a scene site

[Anonymous Coward]

funny how all this happens just as my BT fibre is installed. i don't use torrents at all but it has been infuriating finding the 'Site blocked' message on loads of normal small time file hosts. i would complain but i have a VPN and would rather play ignorant.

private torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they like exclusive paid clubs with perks and stuff? I just use The Pirate Bay and Torrentz.

Well...that didn't take long...

[Anonymous Coward]

Down the slippery slope we go.......yay!

I love it when corps don't even like pretend to give a shit. They never did, but at least in the past they might have waited a little bit before abusing their new powers...

Anyways no matter what we do, we can never win. Even when the average person wins one battle, they ultimately lose the war in the long run.

They are relentless and have near infinite resources, where as the average Joe has (corporate imposed) obligations and a life to live...

Effective

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear BT / SKY

Whatever you're doing it's not working very well.

Sincerely

A. Pirate

 

So what's the lawful way?

[tepples]

So what's the lawful way to buy a download of the films Song of the South and Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night or the TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea? MPAA's new "Where to Watch" tool lists 0 results on those works' description pages. Studios don't even want to take my money.

Freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what was it?

Bittorrent is blocking torrent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that even

SCOTUK

[tepples]

UK has a Supreme Court, you know. It broke off from the House of Lords in 2009.