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BT Blocking Private Torrent Sites?

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-site-for-you dept.

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.

20 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. thepiratebay.se by Nyder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

    --
    Be seeing you...
    1. Re:thepiratebay.se by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

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

      Aren't you a little old for that?

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    2. Re:thepiratebay.se by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    3. Re:thepiratebay.se by gsslay · · Score: 2

      If i can't download my stuff

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

  2. thepiratebay.se by An0nymous+Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  3. tpb.pirati.cz by ihtoit · · Score: 4, Informative

    great mirror, pisses all over virgin media block.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    1. Re:tpb.pirati.cz by N1AK · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:tpb.pirati.cz by loonycyborg · · Score: 2

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

  4. Hmmmm. by SeaFox · · Score: 2

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

    1. Re:Hmmmm. by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:Hmmmm. by N1AK · · Score: 2

      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?

    3. Re:Hmmmm. by qbast · · Score: 5, Funny

      There are other countries outside USA? Impossible.

  5. BT? Sky? by rebelwarlock · · Score: 2

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

    1. Re:BT? Sky? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:BT? Sky? by oobayly · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  6. Who cares what the hell they are blocking?? by fustakrakich · · Score: 3

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

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  7. Easy enough to get around. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Easy enough to get around. by Jahta · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  8. inneffectual Whack-a-mole by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 2

    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?

    --
    (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
  9. So what's the lawful way? by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.