back to article Big labels try for ISP blocking on 3 more 'pirate' sites

Blighty's internet providers have been asked to voluntarily block another three sites accused of piracy by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The BPI, which represents major UK record companies, has asked the ISPs to stop people accessing Fenopy, Kickass Torrents and H33T. “Like The Pirate Bay, these websites are …

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  1. Ginger

    I hadn't heard of any of them

    Thanks for the handy heads up to some new torrent sites.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I hadn't heard of any of them

      Super, more sites to choose from....

      Look how they have blocked Pirate Bay, there is just no way I can access it anymore, I mean they've just gone and..... ;-)

    2. LarsG
      Meh

      SO, HOW MUCH TAX DO THESE

      Major players the BPI represents pay in tax?

      What you mean they live aboard, Cayman Islands you say?

      Switzerland?

      Money off shored you say?

      Only spend 29 days a year I the UK you say?

      They are as bent as the MP's that run this country.

      1. g e
        Holmes

        never mind them

        How much tax do the BPI pay ?

        1. phuzz Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: never mind them

          "How much tax do the BPI pay?"

          Well, if by 'tax' you mean 'bribes'...

          (joke obviously, ahem.)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Rule of law

      a rule of law that a person coming to court with a lawsuit or petition for a court order must be free from unfair conduct (have "clean hands" or not have done anything wrong) in regard to the subject matter of his/her claim. His/her activities not involved in the legal action can be abominable because they are considered irrelevant. As an affirmative defense (positive response) a defendant might claim the plaintiff (party suing him/her) has a "lack of clean hands" or "violates the clean hands doctrine" because the plaintiff has misled the defendant or has done something wrong regarding the matter under consideration.

      How can our courts allow such judgements in favour of the BPI and who they represent.

      1. SJRulez

        Whole thing is setting a dangerous precendent

        "the order could come more quickly than The Pirate Bay one because of the precedents set in that case."

        How long before requests are going in for blocks because a site hosts any torrent, ergo it has torrents and file share so it must be a dodgy illegal one?

        Solicitor: Torrent site, here you go look a torrent...

        Judge: Ah gotcha, where's my rubber stamp. Done.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I hadn't heard of any of them

      my thought, exactly.

      Second thought: where's me keyboard and me trusty google search...

      there, so what were those two again...

      mmm.... juicy!

      methinks I should spread the word with my pals, before they get this court order in place...

      1. mark 63 Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: I hadn't heard of any of them

        "there, so what were those two again...

        mmm.... juicy!"

        so you've been looking for new torrent sites and not found any till this article tipped you off?

        how hard were you looking?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because blocking access to TPB has *really* helped their cause.

    In fact, the people that didn't know how to illegally download now do due to the BPI making such a fuss.

    Brb, off to torrent all the things....

    1. wowfood
      Stop

      Obviously they never read this

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/16/file_sharers_buy_more_music/

      1. g e
        Holmes

        I bet they did read it

        And kept very VERY quiet about it as it largely voids their already irrelevant (to the consumer) existence.

        1. wowfood

          Re: I bet they did read it

          I wonder if those torrent sites will try using the survey as a form of defense.

      2. Potemkine Silver badge

        The truth is...

        ... they know that.

        What they want is to keep the control on distribution and avoid that people find music by themselves, so it is still easy to feed them with the very profitable subsh*tty products made by a computer and a sound engineer in two days they call "music" .

  3. ljp126
    FAIL

    I wasn't aware of any of these sites before this request

    Now I have three new bookmarks for when I need a .torrent

    1. mark 63 Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: I wasn't aware of any of these sites before this request

      so you've been looking for new torrent sites and not found any till this article tipped you off?

      how hard were you looking?

  4. Gavin McMenemy
    FAIL

    Torrentz

    I thought everybody went to Torrentz and just clicked through from there...

  5. Crisp
    FAIL

    Those must be really good sites if the BPI want to shut them down

    I bet they are really grateful for all the free advertising too!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thin end of the wedge.

    Today it is "illegal" torrent sites. Tomorrow it is objectionable speech. Governments are starting to censor online information, pull tweets and take down FB pages THEY object to.

    Coming soon, a politically correct web that will offend no one.

    1. Sparx

      Re: Thin end of the wedge.

      Slippery slope... give it a few months and we'll see what the censor next... unless people wake up and see whats happening.

      1. Crisp

        Re: Thin end of the wedge.

        Then if you want to do anything interesting, it will have to be on a .onion site.

    2. g e
      Big Brother

      Re: Thin end of the wedge.

      Coming soon the 'SubNet' - an uncensored free speech network buried within the internet.

      1. Crisp

        Re: Coming soon the 'SubNet'

        It's called Tor. Learn to love it.

  7. Kevin Johnston

    Really?

    "The existence of these sites damages the growth of Britain’s burgeoning digital music sector"

    Clearly they damage it so much it has dropped off the radar. The only 'legit' sites I can see are all either directly or indirectly US based (I count sites such as Amazon UK as a US site since that is where the money heads to before being re-directed to a more lenient tax system).

    Anyone know of a UK-created digital music sector website which is part of the aforementioned 'big labels'?.........

    Anyone?

    1. Xpositor

      Re: Really?

      7Digital?

    2. David Webb

      Re: Really?

      You beat me to the quote I was going to use. If the industry is burgeoning then doesn't it suggest that it isn't being damaged but is, you know, burgeoning? (rapidly growing).

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I saw this story earlier on The BBC News website

    Apparently the BPI are using Nielsen Net Ratings to quantify their success. I'm not sure that the statistics they are using are accurate.

    But then, I don't really care what the BPI do. Nothing they have done so far has affected me in the slightest.

    1. bluest.one

      Re: I saw this story earlier on The BBC News website

      >I don't really care what the BPI do. Nothing they have done so far has affected me in the slightest.

      Well, not yet...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    " distributing music, without paying a penny to the musicians"

    Which is exactly what we pay our musicians

  10. Mondo the Magnificent
    Devil

    Pah!

    So, they want to shitlist another three torrent sites? It will be as effective as the "blocking" of ThePritateBay.. which had very little impact on 'illegal' downloads as a whole..

    There are dozens of torren sites and the recording and film industry are fighting a losing battle, because the more the block or try to close down, the more torrent sites will emerge

    As I've said before, I am 'subscribed' to a small torren site which has quality content and decent seeds, so downloads are quick compared to most of the other torrents, even with BT's "traffic shaping"

    I use this site to download TV series and the occassional movie, but use the better known torrent sites to grab old music or selected, hard to come by tracks.

    Perhaps the recording and movie industry should negotiate with the torrent sites and possibly discuss the option for a "donate" scheme, where the monies would be controlled, audited and divided among those who believe they are hard done by illegal downloading..

    Then again, we all know that will never happen, just like preventing the download of copyrighted content..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pah!

      Interesting enough I thought about that before,

      why not have real adverts in the sidebars of torrent sites instead of ads claiming that my town is infested with russian fun women.

      If they had targetted ads like "Hey, do you know you could get this legit for £n" then I may be inclined to purchase it as I torrent, or even a donate scheme like you mentioned. I wouldn't mind paying a couple of quid a month for a decent torrent site that doesnt contain spam -the only reason I don't atm is due seeing signing up to torrent sites as painting a target on yourself.

      1. g e
        Holmes

        Re: Pah!

        I suspect like other 'well known' organisations on the planet, that it's still cheaper for them to litigate than innovate at the moment.

        As soon as the pain point is reached where the net revenues (or losses) of innovation vs litigation become more attractive then they will.

  11. Alfred

    Self-serving hypocrites

    "The existence of these sites damages the growth of Britain’s burgeoning digital music sector."

    Well the existence of Amazon damages Britain's book-selling business. Why aren't we banning that? The existence of eBay damages the entire British retail sector. Not going to ban that too?

    1. g e
      Joke

      Re: Self-serving hypocrites

      I reckon ebay might be about the only thing keeping Royal Mail afloat, actually :o)

    2. mark 63 Silver badge

      Re: Self-serving hypocrites

      Alfred,

      Its because ebay and amazon pay the owners of the stuff they sell

      duh

      1. hplasm
        Meh

        Re: Self-serving hypocrites

        Just like the BPI, eh?

  12. Steve Button Silver badge

    I hadn't heard of ONE of them.

    H33T. But to be perfectly honest I use torrentscan (tscan.eu) which gives me a selection to choose from, so it'll be like the BPI playing whack-a-mole from now on. I use Zen internet anyway, so not one of the big nasties. :)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nielsen claim that traffic to TPB has fallen

    However, I'd like to know how they're measuring that and whether they're including mirror traffic.

    1. SJRulez

      Re: Nielsen claim that traffic to TPB has fallen

      From what I can determine they aren't measuring mirrors and the overall traffic for Pirate Bay world wide has remained the same, would suggest that people have found ways round it through proxies and vpns.

      Rather interesting is how the pirateparty website is now ranked about 200 in the uk for most visited sites.... wouldn't be a coincidence that it shot up the ranks from May onwards.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nielsen claim that traffic to TPB has fallen

        TPB is still available in my part of the UK, no proxies or VPN needed.

        Anon to make it harder for bad guys

        ps. <--that's a clue

  14. Annihilator
    Flame

    "Profit"?

    "“Like The Pirate Bay, these websites are profiting illegally from distributing music that isn’t theirs, without permission and without paying a penny to the musicians, writers and producers who created it,"

    Are they just allowed to outright lie these days? Not sure where they're profitting from it, but it's certainly not through distributing music.

    1. Dan Paul
      Devil

      Re: "Profit"? Outright Lying is the norm today

      I agree that none of these torrent sites are "Profiting" from the distribution of music (maybe just barely paying the bills), but who would want to promote factual information anymore.

      All of the media lie, Big Media just lies more and louder. Apparently the bigger you are, you get to promote your own version of the truth whether or not there is ANY basis for "fact".

      Remember, you can no longer trust anything you hear or see in the media. All of it can be faked and in most cases the court of public opinion does not care if it is a fake or not.

      Never underestimate the power of ignorance. It is always easier to believe a lie when you are ignorant and uneducated which is why those in power want us all to stay that way. Conversly, the ignorant tend not to believe those who are educated (they are "too uppity").

      Therefore, PR people, businessmen, politicians etc choose to lie to the ignorant public to maintain their "talking points", who then believe the lie (Obama is a Muslim, his birth certificate is a fake etc.) and to them, the lie becomes undeniable fact because of the people who told them the lie (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh) are "trustworthy" "downhome" people who alway tell us folk the "truth".

      What BT is doing is no different, if you say it enough, it must be real.

    2. mark 63 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: "Profit"?

      "Are they just allowed to outright lie these days? "

      lets not nitpick for fucks sake.

      Yes - they profit, from the traffic they get the through the site, and profit big

      Second - that " oh well the music is not stored on our servers " bullshit is not an excuse. Music is being pirated on an unprecedented scale and 99% of the work is done by the torrent tracker sites that link all the freetards together - so yes - they are "distributing"

      much like a "drop shipper" who gets his stock sent directly from wholesaler to customer

  15. envmod

    who?

    yeah, never heard of any of them either... nice to know the BPI has such a good understanding of this matter

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dodgy figures

    The graph on the BBC shows a slow fall in traffic over a couple of months. Surely the block they put on TPB should have acted faster than that.

  17. SJRulez

    Save the Enviroment

    Don't buy CD's they end up in landfill, the BPI and the music industry are killing the planet!

    And when will they stopping moaning about the number of jobs it costing the industry.... Master arrives, gets uploaded to server, gets downloaded on iTunes or master arrives, gets uploaded to server and gets pressed on to discs. How many people does that take?

    Bottom line is this is affecting their bottom line, if they charged reasonable prices and didn't pay stupid amounts to artists and themselves i would happily pay for music (most of the time). Im pi**ed off with paying £10 when the raw materials and transport cost about a pound so I can watch MTV Cribs and see people with 50+ cars and 10 swimming pools.

    1. wowfood

      Re: Save the Enviroment

      It isn't even that. It's the fact that the top ten artists get paid insane amounts almost entirely for concerts etc. When it comes to minor artists most of them live out the back of their vans.

      The amount music artists actually get paid by record labels is naff all, compared to what the execs get. Look at Simon Cowell, he has a mansion, he has god knows how many cars and all he does for a living is say "I like your music, you're hired" or "you're shit"

      And most of the acts he hires are god aweful. The only reason he has ever signed a big talent is because he signs so many and then abandons them after their first CD doesn't sell a million. It's the shisters at the top who are costing the music industry, the same way they're costing every other industry in the world. Giving themselves paychecks in the millions and then complaining that their company isn't making as much profit as they predicted.

      1. SJRulez

        Re: Save the Enviroment

        I'd give you a +10 for that if I could.

        Totally agree, the people selling CD's are sh*t and if xfactor winners etc are what pass for talent then its no wonder the music industry isn't dead. Concerts are the way forward and in the past that was where the big names made the money, with good concert sales came good record\cd sales.

        Ed Sheeran has the right idea, he's all for cheaper or even free downloads and more focus on live performance. He's the most pirated artist in the UK and he thinks its great!

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Save the Enviroment

        "It isn't even that. It's the fact that the top ten artists get paid insane amounts almost entirely for concerts etc. When it comes to minor artists most of them live out the back of their vans."

        Big artists put on concerts to promote their records.

        Small artists play live to FUND their records - which then get them more venue to play at.

        For a brief (30 year) period, some artists managed to earn a very comfortable living from their craft, but most of the rest carried on as usual, moonlinghting from their dayjobs.

        Andrew McClusky made a statement about why OMD disbanded at the peak of their fame along the lines of "When we started, we were living with our mums and earning 50 quid a week and 10 years later when we were famous, we still were living with our mums and earning 50 quid a week. At some point you have to go and get a real job."

  18. NomNomNom
    Trollface

    There should be an age limit on using the internet and anyone who wants to needs to pass a theory exam, just like how it works for driving. One question will be "do you know downloading music is illegal?" and if they get the answer wrong they don't get a license. Then if they download music illegally their license is revoked.

    There are a few details to iron out but i think it would solve the problem.

    1. SJRulez

      One big floor already:

      "do you know downloading music is illegal?"

      Downloading music isn't illegal, just like using peer to peer and file sharing isn't illegal and has many legitimate uses such as distributing open source software etc. Downloading copyrighted works is illegal, but again that also depends what country you reside in.

      1. mark 63 Silver badge

        true - but when something is used 99.9 % for something illegal it becomes a mute point

        When music is downloded legally the non I.T. populace dont even realise theyve 'downloded'

        They think they've "put it in my itunes - innit"

        Also who the hell distrubtes open source software in torrnts? Anyone who does is surely just doing it to a see a torrent legally used rather than for any sensible reason, eg lower hosting costs.

        Thats what sourceforge is for.

        1. Vic

          > who the hell distrubtes open source software in torrnts?

          Fedora

          Debian

          Those were the first two I checked.

          > rather than for any sensible reason, eg lower hosting costs.

          It's nice to see someone with true omniscience. Thank you for showing us what the above projects are actually thinking.

          Vic.

          1. mark 63 Silver badge

            lemme guess, they are unix variants?

            what is it with those guys? always sticking their OS's into weird places like bootable usb sticks and torrents

            what stops other malicious idiots from setting up pretend torrents with bad stuff in?

            You dont see any other open source peopl doing that like open office or GIMP

            1. Vic

              > lemme guess, they are unix variants?

              No. They are Linux distributions.

              > what is it with those guys? always sticking their OS's into weird places

              Because they are useful.

              > what stops other malicious idiots from setting up pretend torrents with bad stuff in?

              Cryptography. All downloads are verifiable (and, by default, signatures are checked).

              > You dont see any other open source peopl doing that like open office or GIMP

              You do know that both Fedora and Debian are Free Software, right?

              Vic.

              1. mark 63 Silver badge

                >No. They are Linux distributions.<

                isnt that the same thing?

                >Because they are useful.<

                'spose , but it seems to me linux fans are more obsessed with installing the OS not using it . fine if thats what you enjoy i guess (get ready with your downvotes peeps!)

                >Cryptography.<

                ok , good answer that solves that problem

                >You do know that both Fedora and Debian are Free Software, right?<

                yes indeed , my point is that *other* free software is not primarily distributed in torrents

                1. sthen

                  @mark 63, Fedora and Debian are probably not *primarily* distributed in torrents either, there are lots of traditional ftp/http mirrors. And torrent download is an option for other things too e.g. libreoffice. But it's only worth the hassle to set this up for something which is frequently downloaded and fairly large.

                2. Vic

                  >>No. They are Linux distributions.<

                  > isnt that the same thing?

                  No.

                  > it seems to me linux fans are more obsessed with installing the OS not using it

                  You appear not to have met any.

                  There is plenty of traffic on the Web about installing Linux because that is what newcomers are scared of.

                  Once it comes to using it - well, it's all pretty straightforward and people just get on with it.

                  > my point is that *other* free software is not primarily distributed in torrents

                  So other Free Software that is an order of magnitude smaller than a full distro doesn't use torrents, whereas gert lumps of code several gigabytes wide do. Hmmm. Wonder if there's a connection in there somewhere...

                  Vic.

        2. David Neil
          Trollface

          3/10, try harder

          worst troll in a while, but you at least made me reply

  19. MikeyD85
    FAIL

    I think that...

    ... they'd be better off spending their monies on stopping the million and one TPB mirrors out there.

    1. John G Imrie

      Why?

      No one can get to TBP since thy blocked it.

      Ooops :-)

  20. envmod

    masses ruining it for the masses

    anyway, it's only the masses of idiots who like to listen to (and by extension illegally download) rhianna, gaga and the like that are causing all the problems. if people actually thought about what music they like and actually explored stuff beyond the mainstream, they would find that a lot of independent and non-signed stuff is available perfectly legitimately for free anyway. it's the age-old problem - most people are fucking dumb and like whatever they are told they should like. i'm totally for a mass human depopulation exersize based on music taste.

  21. Glostermeteor

    Whack a mole, whack a mole, whack a mole..........whack a mole, whack a mole, whack a mooooole.

    Good luck BPI (not)

  22. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    Is it just me

    who just keeps seeing their name as the British Pornographic Industry.

    Which would be a *much* more useful trade association.

    1. SJRulez

      Re: Is it just me

      That's part of the problem these days, half the acts out there now look good and would make good p0rn but they cant sing for sh*t, and they other half are too young for p0rn.

  23. yossarianuk

    Block patent trolls instead

    As Patent trolls do far more damage to society and technological innovation than any piracy it would be better for society in general if access to their websites were blocked instead.

    i.e :-

    - Microsoft

    - Apple

    - Oracle (patent trolls and cancerous leeches)

    - Any reference to Paul Alan (possibly the king of trolls)

  24. Amorous Cowherder
    Mushroom

    "We do not currently block access to any website without a Court Order requiring us to do so."

    A bloody good job too! Last thing we need is to hand that sort of power over to the corps, we really would need a whole new separate internet for them and us!

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not to give them ideas here...

    But wouldn't it just make more sense to block things like openbittorrent and publicbt rather than the hosting repositories?

  26. Xenobyte
    Thumb Down

    Futile

    Blocking the website of TPB does nothing. They run no trackers nor do they host anything. It's just a portal and search engine.

    There are already dozens of other sites mirroring the TPB portal and search engine and you can't win the arms race of blocking them all. Once you have the magnet link of the torrent you seek, only massive national firewalling will block you from downloading the data it refers to.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I download films

    But only Torrentino films.

  28. mattharesign
    Go

    the sky is rising apparently

    fao mark 63

    have a read of this, would you? when you have finished come back and tell us what you have learnt. Cheers ears.

    http://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is there any way we could perhaps convince the major ISP's to block access to the BPI website and to end their access to the internet.

    We could perhaps start a petition saying.

    “these peopel are profiting legally from distributing music that isn’t theirs, with permission and by paying a penny to the musicians & writers who created it,"

    "It is plain wrong."

    "The existence of this group damages the growth of Britain’s burgeoning digital music sector. We have therefore asked Britain’s six biggest ISPs to block access to the BPI"

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We do not currently block ... without a Court Order

    So they've stopped using the IWF blacklist then?

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