The Pirate Bay, BitTorrent Websites To Be Blocked In Australia, Federal Court Rules (abc.net.au)
New submitter AnonymousCube writes: The Federal Court has made a ruling that will result in internet access for Australians being censored. Five websites are to be blocked after being deemed to be copyright infringing, most notable of which is The Pirate Bay. Internet service providers are given the choice of how they will implement blocking, but the result will be that when a user visits a blocked site they will be redirected to a warning page telling them the site cannot be accessed. Other sites being blocked are the BitTorrent websites Torrentz, TorrentHound, and IsoHunt, and the streaming service SolarMovie.
This is going to work how, exactly?
There was a huge fight about three years ago when the then Labor government's Senator Conroy tried to ram through internet censorship in Australia. The uproar was sufficient that the now marginal conservative government will not touch it. But now there is another attack from the courts, which is more difficult to deal with.
(Conway, incidentally, has taken up a lucrative job lobbying for gambling in Australia.)
Methodology is being left to the ISPs. Which means it will most likely be a DNS block. People just need to point their routers at the google DNS and it is circumvented.
As for the foxtel muppet he's claiming aussies don't use VPNs. Uh huh, right. That's why we have had legislation put through explicitly saying defeating geoblocking with VPNs is ok. Cause no one in Australia uses a vpn... Nope no one.
A simple proxy server should be enough in this case.
This tactic may work where legal alternatives are available, work and are reasonably priced. However given the amount of content that is unavailable or grossly more expensive than in the USA, purely for commercial reasons, I suspect cost/hassle of VPNs and proxies will not stop people using them.
Australia has been on a slippery slope for while so this comes as no surprise, they can expect a lot more of this tampering. I guess they are just trying to keep up with the UK.
There are any number of other places you can get content from so this block wont mean much to people who know the right things to plug into their choice of search engines...
The "Pirates" need to start running for office. They need to start re-working governments to stop this madness because if they don't, we will all live in the Cold War East Germany.
The Pirate Bay, BitTorrent Websites To Be Blocked In Australia, Federal Court Rules (abc.net.au)
Australian Torrenters, for those of you who haven't met him yet, allow me to introduce our new friend Virtual Private Networking...
Dear Australia,
Relax. Already a solved-problem. The more popular the site, the more mirrors they haven't managed to ban yet. This is the sole benefit to politicians having absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They actually believe they can beat us on our own home turf.
Love, UK&Ireland
The sun will be blocked if viewed without paying for copyright.
Please direct us to where we can pay the toll sir.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Your company will buy an account with your ISP. A card with the company brand in the back of your "modem" will make the network part of your bands office network.
A very secure link from a home to the office. Set bandwidth, 24/7 support but for work only.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Aren't both of those defunct already?
VPNs can be banned.
Really? You might be able to sell your method to the Chinese government.
No sig today...
I wonder what the next 5 sites will be. And the 5 after that...
Slipperly slopes are slippery.
No sig today...
SolarMovie seems nice. Thanks, Barbara!
How does this work when travelling and using someone's wifi, exactly?
Claus
I have voted for the pirate party #1 since they started here!
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
Can Aussies just set their DNS server to some place outside of Australia? Or is it more complicated than that?
copy-written content
Do you even know the difference between copyright and copywriting? Hint: the latter refers to creating the text of an advertisement. Unless...
Offering access to copy-written content is illegal
That sounds like you're obligating ISPs to install an ad blocker.
What about things that people create that they WANT to be distributed over torrents?
That depends on the answer to the following: How can such an author be sure that he didn't accidentally copy a substantial portion of someone else's work?
Oh hey! We found the guy who voted for them. Awesome.
No one else cared.
wile torrents will never die in there usefulness game clients using them and for downloading other large files the days of the huge pirate sites are dead. most pirates have moved to other means and back to privet sites. and wile i know piracy will never go away th thing is why pirate anything these days cant afford 60$ game with another 100$ of dlc wait a year get the goty edition with all dlc for 20$.
Until I read this I didn't know SolarMovie was a thing. Good job Australia.
I wonder what the next 5 sites will be. And the 5 after that...
Slipperly slopes are slippery.
Since it is easier to create a new domain than it is to add a new domain to the ban list, it won't matter.
We already know that whack-a-mole is an ineffective strategy for censorship. All this will do is give foreign VPN providers more business.
They can be banned, just like guns, drugs, prostitution, abortion*, and so many other things.
Doesn't mean people won't still use/get/do. They're just banned and therefore illegal...so only criminals have them. #facepalm
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I wonder what the next 5 sites will be. And the 5 after that...
Slipperly slopes are slippery.
The next 5 sites will be 4 of the exact same sites, on their new ip's, and a clothing retailer, because... oops.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.