back to article Blighty's telcos set to CHOKE off another fistful of piracy gateways

More websites serving as gateways for Brits seeking pirated content online are set to be blocked by the country's biggest ISPs. The Register understands that 21 sites are on a new hit list, after the UK's courts told Virgin Media, BT, BSkyB, TalkTalk, EE and O2 to comply with an order to kill access to sites that tout torrents …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More power to them...

    I'm all for this - The Man has the comfort of knowing he's busy doing *something* while the rest of the world carries on regardless...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: More power to them...

      regardless is right, as you can still get to the bay on BT and Virgin using other domains.

      They are not really doing anything of consequence except blocking a few URL's.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: More power to them...

        And since it is now so easy to do we could open this up to anyone - with our own version of the DMCA.

        If you see a site that you think violates copyright, just email "iwanttodestroyacompetitor@gov.uk and it will be banned in the UK

        1. Tom 35

          Re: More power to them...

          "If you see a site that you think violates copyright, just email "

          Followed by...

          If you are important, and see a site that you don't like, just email...

    2. DF118

      Re: More power to them...

      Shhh! Don't tell them!

    3. Bill Neal

      Re: More power to them...

      ...while the rest of the world gets a list of cool sites to check out. I'm sure they appreciate the publicity. /s

  2. DrStrangeLug
    Go

    If the worse comes to the worse

    You can always find solace in the arms of SpotFlux.

  3. Kaltern
    FAIL

    The Ignorance of Copyright Cocks is still as high as always I see.

    You think these people will ever understand that blocking websites will never stop people accessing them? Since TPB was 'blocked', there are now more proxy sites than there are countries who have blocked the site! (probably).

    So basically... it'll actually makes such sites MORE ACCESSIBLE!

    1. pPPPP

      And how many lawyers care about that? They'll get paid for all the hard work they've put in fighting the war against online piracy. New house, new sports car, big holiday.

      12 months down the line, a bunch of new popular download sites will be compiled. Back to court then. They'll get paid for all the hard work they've put in fighting the war against online piracy. New house, new sports car, big holiday.

      12 months down the line........

      It's got nothing to do with protecting music/films etc. It's about making money for lawyers. Same as the constant patent battles in the mobile phone industry.

  4. Nigel Brown

    Its down to personal choice

    but my favourite torrent search engine is Google............

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

      Re: Its down to personal choice

      And we cant block google because they can afford better lawyers than we can due to all those pesky UK taxes they avoided paying

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Its down to personal choice

        ...not to mention using Google Translate as a proxy (just translate an English site from $random_language to English and that gets you through most blacklists, in case you didn't know...handy if someone's firewall is cramping your style)

  5. MikeyD85

    Torrentz

    As torrentz only serves to aggregate info and link to other torrent sites and doesn't host any links to the actual torrent file / magnet links, surely we must also block Google.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Torrentz

      ... and as the court is actively promoting those sites by naming them, we should also block the UK legal system (well, until it's idiot-free, which will be never, until lawyers are required to pass an IQ test before being allowed anywhere near the Internet)

      More fun, however, would be for everyone to upload a torrent link to legitimate downloads - say, Linux distro of your choice - to each of these sites, then all club together to raise the funds to sue the idiot who granted this order for blocking access to legitimate content.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Torrentz

        "More fun, however, would be for everyone to upload a torrent link to legitimate downloads - say, Linux distro of your choice - to each of these sites, then all club together to raise the funds to sue the idiot who granted this order for blocking access to legitimate content."

        Except they already have a counter for it in that, since the content is legitimate, the content can safely be hosted in places other than torrent distribution sites. Sites like, maybe, the distros' own websites, which IINM most of them keep at least one. In their minds, the primary reason the torrent sites exist is because there is no legitimate place for them otherwise. It's like saying, 'Where else can pirates find haven except in a pirate's cove?"

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Torrentz

          The reason torrents are a popular dissemination method, is because it can get very expensive for a site to host a very popular file (the site-owner has to pay bandwidth costs), so instead if a file is torrented, those costs are dispersed among users/downloaders/uploaders (which cost reduction helps if you distribute free software of course).

          1. Charles 9

            Re: Torrentz

            But hosting the Torrent file on their own website can serve the same effect, which is what I'm saying. There is logic to this. Why else would the other torrents be hosted in "haven" websites other than they have no place to call home? That's why I use the "pirate's cove" argument.

            If a torrent is for legitimate content, these torrents can be hosted on mainstream websites legally. Most of the distro sites I've seen are more than capable of hosting torrents for their own distros, and since it's for THEIR OWN content, hosting these torrents on their websites puts them in no legal trouble and also allows them to provide some safeguards like hosting hash files for verification.

      2. Ben Tasker

        Re: Torrentz

        More fun, however, would be for everyone to upload a torrent link to legitimate downloads - say, Linux distro of your choice - to each of these sites, then all club together to raise the funds to sue the idiot who granted this order for blocking access to legitimate content.

        The argument they use is that the sites contain more infringing content than they do legitimate downloads. So what needs to happen is the uploading of loads of stuff, and then an attempt to get the order overturned.

        1. Mr Flibble

          Re: Torrentz

          Technically, they don't actually contain the content…

          1. Charles 9

            Re: Torrentz

            If they contain the content ENABLERS, they're as guilty as hosting the content. It's like taking a key impression and passing it along to someone to burgle a place while supposedly keeping you one step removed: thing is, you can still be nailed as an enabler.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks...

    I haven't heard of a couple of those sites! Thanks for the heads-up. I get the feeling they are shooting themselves in the foot with these takedowns.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Could the register

    Please keep us updated as to the names of any more sites blocked by the numpties so i can add them to my list of TOR favourites...

  8. Daz555

    21 URLs blocked. Another 1021 new ones to choose from.

    Genius.

    At the very least the block list lets us know which torrent sites are probablty quite good - and therefore we know which ones are worth finding proxies for.

    Dear "The Man". Thanks for the heads up.

  9. Eguro
    Meh

    Opera turbo = in-browser proxy service

    Just in case you want to access the ruling a bit quicker to be informed about these horrible horrible sites...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmm

    1) Setup website 'mumblysomething_downloader.com' or even 'Download_Pirated_Stuff_Here.com'

    2) Do not put anything on site apart from the homepage and a picture you took yourself of a kitten.

    3) Wait for takedown requests.

    4) Sue person who initiated takedown request for loads a mullah

    5) Profit?????

    6) repeat as desired.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmmm

      Thing is, you're not running a business off the site. Most you can likely get back from them is the domain fee if your site gets stripped. More likely, the provider may see the name as a red flag and deny it to you before you even register.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    with the help of everyone's matey: Google.

    choke this matey then. And, to make sure, power down the country. And pull the blanket over the sky, for those persky terror-pirates, whoc dare use solar energy. Wind power? No worries, we have it covered already!

    meanwhile, in the real world....

  12. Martin-73 Silver badge

    Virgin media spokesman: "Like the spineless morons we are, we refuse to fight this, we just want your cash"

    1. Shagbag

      The Jeeny he out of the bottul. Fucks to MPAA.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You want the ISPs to spend the money you pay them fighting a case they cannot win given there's precedence in uk law? Only one moron here it seems...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        No precedence.

        There exists a court order - for a completely unrelated websites - which was uncontested. This does not really set precedence as no law was proven to have been broken. If it had been contested by the ISPs and they'd lost then it might have set precedence.

    3. pPPPP

      >Virgin media spokesman: "Like the spineless morons we are, we refuse to fight this, we just want your cash"

      You mean "We couldn't give a fuck because we have a monopoly over the UK's cable infrastructure and we will continue to make money regardless".

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    thanks for the list...

    I only knew about TPB....;-)

  14. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    The (invisible?) elephant in the room.

    This all gets everyone used to the idea of sites being blocked en-masse. After a while with just a little bit of mission creep nobody notices when they start blocking sites 'not in the public interest'.

    1. monkeyfish
      Black Helicopters

      Re: The (invisible?) elephant in the room.

      ...and with all the comments on here, I'm pretty sure el reg forums will be the first to go! Good job el reg, your like a canary down a mine shaft.

  15. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Errr

    1 set up aws account

    2 script setup of ssh server

    3 tunnel your traffic to it

    4 terminate the ssh server and refresh daily

    5 block that fuckers

    1. bexley

      Re: Errr

      where do i begin....

      Amazon are big enough to be in the same group of companies that have a fat pipe right out of their data centre and into the intelligence agency cloud.

      You need to use a credit card to set up an aws account which unless you have obtained on under a different identity, makes you very easily traceable should the need arise.

      It's too much hassle for the average internet user to do, they will simply move on and in some cases go legit.

      Amazon, can at any time, apply their own blocking methods and since they are american, probably will at some stage.

      it's a nice try but far from ideal. Your ssh tunnel is commendable though, providing that it terminates somewhere safe and out of reach, say russia or india perhaps.

    2. Law

      Re: Errr

      Or pay slickvpn (or a million other VPN sites) less than 20 dollars for 12 months of unlimited access to any site in the world from any country.

      Hell of a lot easier than aws and scripts... takes 2 seconds to hit connect from US option.

  16. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Obvs

    Obvs use a prepay amazon card to pay for your aws account

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Obvs

      Most prepaid credit cards I know require you to register them before you can use them for purchases and before you say gift cards, most of THEM are blocked by e-tailers BECAUSE they can be used unregistered (they do that to get off the hook for potential money laundering).

  17. randommagic

    Still trying to screw us over!

    We should all be thankful that big business, the government and lawyers understand very little about how the internet works.

    I am all for paying artists for their hard work and skill but paying a music company who screwed same artists over, stealing all their rights and leaving them penniless I definitely won't. If an artist received a reasonable amount of money from the cost of an album then we would all happily pay because we love what they do but the music company gets an excessive cut of that money. The only way real bands make money is through live concerts these days which I will gladly pay to go see but the ticket sellers screw us over making us pay them excessive fees for selling us a bit of paper.

    So the bands get screwed, the fans get screwed. Big business makes more money than they deserve and they wonder why piracy is the biggest bandwidth user on the internet. Do companies like Sony really think they can persuade pirates to go legit? Ha!

    1. Mr Flibble
      Pirate

      Re: Still trying to screw us over!

      Yes. Same goes for other media.

      As usual, symptoms are being attacked.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't think the Telco's do that much really. They follow the letter of the law, as they must, but not much more. After all who would want 10M+ broadband just to send email, surf the net, play games, and watch IPlayer? If they were ever really effective in blocking sites, then a lot of people would ditch those "High Speed" connections and just go for the cheapest one that fits basic needs. I really don't think that the service providers are that keen to cut their own throats.

    1. JamesTQuirk

      "I really don't think that the service providers are that keen to cut their own throats."

      I don't think so either, seeing they have just done NOTHING to really stop it, maybe slowed first time users, thats all, GOOGLE is a torrent search engine it finds all for me, it gives torrents in results, even if u dont look for them, will they block access to that ....?

  19. This post has been deleted by its author

  20. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    The *only* blacklist UK users need to keep in mind.

    Virgin Media, BT, BSkyB, TalkTalk, EE and O2

    The currently hold about 93% of the UK market.

    They are all s**t.

    There are something like 400+ ISP's in the UK (but be careful you're not using a sock puppet of one of the 6 listed).

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A poor attempt at censorship.

    The block is only at the DNS level so selecting an alternative DNS host or putting the IP address in your hosts file is enough to evade the blocks... should you need to.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yawn, more pointless censorship for the mainstream media mafia, and cronies.

    This is such a waste of time, resources, and currency, and is de-facto corporate subsidy paid for by us tax, debt, and inflation slaves; f'ing corporatist thieves!

    I do what I do because the rotters ripped me off for years, including via taxes and other costs, so I'll keep reclaiming compensation for this, indirectly, to compensate for their theft and inconvenience; this nonsense won't stop me.

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