10 ms·

The Pirate Bay: “The Battle of Internets is About to Begin”

241 points by Uncle_Sam 15y ago

BonoboBoner 15y ago
"In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal." How can some small EU working group even dare to discuss my human rights in a secret meeting without any democratic legitimacy?
- tomjen3 15y ago
  They don't need legitimacy - they have guns. Fortunately we have compilers and computers so the fight isn't going to be fair.
  - anonymoushn 15y ago
    Legitimacy is actually made out of guns.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      No it is made out of consent of the ruled. The moment they loose consent they become the oppressors.
      - Deestan 15y ago
        Being oppressive doesn't remove your legitimacy. As long as you can hold on to being the government (guns!), you make the laws and are by definition legitimacy itself.
        r00fus 15y ago
        Don't confuse power and legitimacy. This is one of the major reasons why India isn't ruled by the British now. British had power, Gandhi and the peaceful revolutionists had legitimacy... guns can only project so much power.
        mvalle 15y ago
        Guns are the only form of power. Sometimes you just don't have enough guns.
        getsat 15y ago
        One could argue that money is more powerful than firearms. How much power and influence do corporations wield? I don't see many CEOs packing heat.
        danenania 15y ago
        They can influence those who do.
        mvalle 15y ago
        Case in point: Gaddafi
      - calpaterson 15y ago
        You might say that morally it should come from consent, but descriptively, legitimacy comes from having a monopoly on force and not being totally, utterly hated.
    - getsat 15y ago
      Legitimacy comes from: Democracy, e.g., election as described by customs or laws Tradition, e.g., a monarch's son becoming the next monarch Charisma, e.g., a charismatic leader such as a tribe leader, dictators like Hitler, etc. The military junta currently running Burma/Myanmar has a lot of guns, but it is not legitimate.
  - mariuskempe 15y ago
    Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha legendary.
- teamonkey 15y ago
  They can talk about whatever they like, it doesn't mean it will pass. This working group has no authority on their own.
- lutorm 15y ago
  Do I detect a small amount of sarcasm about the democratic structure of the EU?
- vixen99 15y ago
  This is symptomatic of the whole EU enterprise. You might ask how it is that a totally non-elected person like Baroness Ashton, the so-called High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union and Vice President of the EU (I repeat, no one elected her bar a coterie of the elite in the EU) can call for the EU to be given a seat on the UN Security Council. By the way, the president of the EU is unelected as well. Oh, and the EU finances have not been passed by the auditors in 13 years. I apologize for this off-topic comment but a little background for non-EU folk is useful in considering this latest EU nonsense regarding the internet.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    Civil servants, government ministers and heads of state in many if not most democratic countries are not elected directly by the people. There's nothing special about the EU in that regard.
  - omouse 15y ago
    It's a symptom of government to reduce one's freedom and human rights.
  - calpaterson 15y ago
    Haha! Complaining that no one elected Baroness Ashton is like saying that no one elected Georgy Zhukov - almost no one in the EU is elected.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  The democratic legitimacy of that working group derives from the democratic legitimacy of the governments that send their representatives. I'm not happy with these proposals at all, but it's not exactly unusual that such proposals are being worked on by civil servants and ministers.
schrototo 15y ago
Here's the link to the actual story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-over-EU-Great-Firewall-proposal.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-ove...
- joshes 15y ago
  >“The Presidency of the LEWP presented its intention to propose concrete measures towards creating a single secure European cyberspace,” according to brief minutes of the meeting. The secure European cyberspace would have a "virtual Schengen border", it adds, referring to the treaty that allows freedom of movement within the EU but imposes controls on entry to the bloc. There would also be “virtual access points" whereby “the Internet Service Providers would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU ‘black-list’”, the proposal says. Wow. Not only is it a terrible-sounding idea when heard second hand, it is even worse when heard straight from the horse's mouth. "A single secure cyberspace" sounds an awful lot like "A single secure SOCIETY!" It's as if Emperor Palpatine and the MAFIAA elite got together to determine the most efficient way to deny people of their rights for the sake of greed and power. How can anyone possibly hear what they are saying in these plans and not recoil with horror and disgust? It runs counter to all ideals and freedoms that the West purports to stand for. Sheer absurdity.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    It is the classic case of what happens when you apply the old rules (stuff like Schengen) to completely new areas where they don't apply at all.
    - mattmanser 15y ago
      Why don't they apply at all? They just don't apply because no-one has made them apply yet. Years ago one could get copied tapes and access banned materials in flea markets and back rooms. It was illegal and yet people did it. Neo-Nazis traded banned reading materials just as Christians traded illegal bibles in China. While the internet has made the flow of information easier, it's not the case that it invented the practice which has probably gone on since the invention of speech. All the internet has done has given us the ability to get involved in illegal practices much easier than they did before.
citricsquid 15y ago
meh. I think this proposal is bad, but why can't a site that is not screwing others over come forward and be the public face of "championing" it? Thepiratebay being a large voice against it will just harm the cause, "oh thepiratebay is breaking the law and losing musicians money and they are anti-censorship so censorship must be good to stop that illegal stuff".
- AJ007 15y ago
  Are you one of those people who believes that the damage done by intellectual property "piracy" exceeds its benefits? How is the Pirate Bay screwing anyone over more than draconian copyright laws which have been extended decades and decades beyond what the law originally intended while criminal enforcement is provided by free thanks to taxpayers?
  - citricsquid 15y ago
    If someone creates content it is their choice whether or not it's given away for free or if people must pay for it. If you create a song you can give it away for free, sell it for $0.99 or sell it for $900, that's your choice. I agree some of the copyright laws that exist are silly, but it should still be the content creators choice what happens with that content (or if they sell the rights then the new rights holder etc etc). Your desire, my desire or anyone else's desire for that content (be it music, video, game, program, image) is not more important than the wants of the person who created it. Anyway my point was just that TPB is not a good voice against this, it would be like having Hitler being against anti-freespeech laws, it would make it much easier to justify those laws because of Hitler.
    - hack_edu 15y ago
      Don't mean to put words in his mouth, but I believe he's saying the laws are draconian. Few argue for the outright abolition of IP, and the content you talk about should be protected to encourage the producer to prosper. Its just the "Life + 70 Years" that is draconian.
boscomutunga 15y ago
The religious war between pirates and copyright will always continue.
- pjscott 15y ago
  Did you read the article? The issue here is internet censorship; the Pirate Bay guys are just getting involved because they tend to also be opposed to censorship.
FrojoS 15y ago
Already, to some extend, Europe is not a part of the Internet anymore. At least here in Germany, I personally consider it fraud when Internet Service Provider offer "Internet access". Wrong label! After returning from the US I got extremely frustrated that I wasn't able to listen to Pandora anymore (I'm even paying) or watch many of the best Youtube videos that happen to use popular music as background. When I recently got access again, over my US friends University VPN, I felt a bit like a former east German, who managed to tweak his radio so he can listen to "west stations".
- mortenjorck 15y ago
  That's not a reasonable comparison, though. Pandora or YouTube access isn't being censored by the German government. It's being withheld on the other end due to old-world notions of regional broadcast rights. Pandora and YouTube haven't paid the rights holders for the right to "broadcast" in Germany, so the licensors insist that they cut off access to Germany from the source. What is being discussed in the article, however, is indeed censorship. If EU State Security gets its way, it will indeed be like East German radio.
  - FrojoS 15y ago
    Sure, I know, but still, thanks for pointing this out explicitly. Its true, I tried to provoke a bit and its not a totally faire comparison. However, its still against the idea of the Internet, when I can only access certain content from certain locations, no? And its also somehow censorship, though the proper term may be "regional broadcast rights". Its true, that the German government does not actively support this, but I don't see them fight it either. For instance they could insist, that different regional broad cast rights, especially online, should be baned by the WTO. We do similar thing for inter-EU trade all the time. This new law, like so many, who try to come over the backdoor of European law, is definitely on a different level. I just wanted to point out, that its already far from roses and unicorns here.
    - jodrellblank 15y ago
      "Against the idea of the Internet" is not like being unconstitutional, but that seems to be the kind of weight you are giving it. Maybe they don't like the idea of the Internet?
Sandman 15y ago
So what if they do erect this "virtual wall"? People will just access those sites through some non-EU based proxy. Unless they block access to each and every non-EU based proxy, of course.
- halfasleep 15y ago
  Where would you put your proxy to be clear of both "think of the rights holders" and "think of the children" as valid reasons to filter your access ?
  - Sandman 15y ago
    So, what you're saying is that EU countries would block access to the proxies in other countries because of these reasons that you mention? Possibly. They might try to do that, but I'm not sure that they would succeed. There are too many proxies, and new ones pop up practically ever day. Unless they block access to any non-EU server, in which case EU becomes North Korea.
- eru 15y ago
  Oh, it's probably not about making it impossible. Just about inconvenience. The Chinese firewall can also be easily circumvented.
- bcaulf 15y ago
  Of course you are right that it will be a leaky wall due to the nature of the Internet. But it will increase the cost and hassle and reduce bandwidth. And that is good enough to prop up publishing industry revenue.
ErrantX 15y ago
They will sell this with "think of the children" thing again, I am sure. Pisses me right off. We fought this in the UK in the disguise of deep-packet filtering at the ISP's, that one floundered from the off but dragged out its demise for a good while before being sheleved. Then France gave it a go with Loopsi, and unfortunately they seem to have managed to set a precedent for filtering/monitoring/blocking. It was only a matter of time before the EU got involved.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Its interesting that they don't mention Usenet. For those of you to young to remember, what you now call "The Internet" was originally "ARPAnet" (and then DARPAnet) which was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) but they had lots of rules about what you could and could not do on their network (as was their perrogative). Some folks who wanted to be on the network didn't "qualify" because they were either too small, or not germane to the research goals. Other folks chafed at the restrictions. My first encounter with the ARPAnet was in 1978 when I started at USC which had a node on the net (USC-ECLC) which was a DEC KI-20 running Tenex. When I graduated and went to work at Intel they weren't connected to the ARPAnet but they were running a 'usenet' node via modems and software called 'netnews'. The node, intelca, and the guy running it (Ken Shoemaker) were in my building at Intel. Since Ken was open to having the 'new guy' help out so I took on some fairly simple tasks of keeping it running. Usenet was a simple store and forward network where nodes would call each other periodically on the phone and exchange data which was destined for other sites. Addressing was in the form of 'host!host!host!host!user' where each 'host' was a hop and if you could move something along you did. Anyway, today, it is entirely possible (see the TOR network) to build a network which runs across the existing communications structure but uses a set of protocols that are 'invisible' (in the sense of firewalling and monitoring etc) to the host network. It makes building something which does what Usenet did (create a network with less authoritive oversight) much easier than it was in the past. I would not be surprised if such networks already existed although I am not aware of any at this time.
- joeyh 15y ago
  Prophet (http://syncwith.us/ http://syncwith.us/) was originally talked about as a way to build a darknet or sneakernet. Perhaps some are still pursuing that, though the main public development has to do with building SD on top of it and using it for distributed bug tracking. I'm sure you know usenet still exists. It's weird to hear it described in the past tense. :)
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > Its interesting that they don't mention Usenet. Well, that sort of is the first rule of Usenet.
- 15y ago
aphexairlines 15y ago
The "copyright lobby"? Where is the technology lobby? I'm disappointed in our industry, especially given the enormous market caps of tech giants.
robbles 15y ago
this just might be the most elaborate example of Godwin's Law I've ever seen.
rmc 15y ago
Clarification: The Pirate Bay is not totally blocked in Ireland. The largest broadband supplier (Eircom with about 80% residential market) block it. No other ISP in Ireland block it. Several others (eg UPC) are actively opposed to blocking it.
eitland 15y ago
Seems like focusing on pirates now would be like running a campaign against burglary in 1939 /instead/ of mobilizing against nazi Germany?
mahrain 15y ago
One of the issues is that "we" as internet community tend to protest online, for instance by blocking a site (DDOS) or sending tweets to politicians. Europe doesn't realise this and might mistake the lack of angry people in the streets for "not caring" or "no problem", while complaining about "hackers" taking down web sites. I'm afraid that there are only two options, either this gets blocked by the European Human Rights Court (article 10, freedom of speech) or we are going to get into a situation where we're China: internet filter plus many many tools to circumvent it. I guess it's our first response to develop the latter and claim "we'll just use Tor / Freenet / VPN" but IMHO preventing the instatement of a filter in the first place would be a more noble struggle.

241 points by Uncle_Sam 15y ago

"In February, a secret meeting of the European Union’s Law Enforcement Work Party (LEWP) resulted in a worrying proposal." How can some small EU working group even dare to discuss my human rights in a secret meeting without any democratic legitimacy?

tomjen3 15y ago
They don't need legitimacy - they have guns. Fortunately we have compilers and computers so the fight isn't going to be fair.
- anonymoushn 15y ago
  Legitimacy is actually made out of guns.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    No it is made out of consent of the ruled. The moment they loose consent they become the oppressors.
    - Deestan 15y ago
      Being oppressive doesn't remove your legitimacy. As long as you can hold on to being the government (guns!), you make the laws and are by definition legitimacy itself.
      - r00fus 15y ago
        Don't confuse power and legitimacy. This is one of the major reasons why India isn't ruled by the British now. British had power, Gandhi and the peaceful revolutionists had legitimacy... guns can only project so much power.
        mvalle 15y ago
        Guns are the only form of power. Sometimes you just don't have enough guns.
        getsat 15y ago
        One could argue that money is more powerful than firearms. How much power and influence do corporations wield? I don't see many CEOs packing heat.
        danenania 15y ago
        They can influence those who do.
        mvalle 15y ago
        Case in point: Gaddafi
    - calpaterson 15y ago
      You might say that morally it should come from consent, but descriptively, legitimacy comes from having a monopoly on force and not being totally, utterly hated.
  - getsat 15y ago
    Legitimacy comes from: Democracy, e.g., election as described by customs or laws Tradition, e.g., a monarch's son becoming the next monarch Charisma, e.g., a charismatic leader such as a tribe leader, dictators like Hitler, etc. The military junta currently running Burma/Myanmar has a lot of guns, but it is not legitimate.
- mariuskempe 15y ago
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha legendary.
teamonkey 15y ago
They can talk about whatever they like, it doesn't mean it will pass. This working group has no authority on their own.
lutorm 15y ago
Do I detect a small amount of sarcasm about the democratic structure of the EU?
vixen99 15y ago
This is symptomatic of the whole EU enterprise. You might ask how it is that a totally non-elected person like Baroness Ashton, the so-called High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union and Vice President of the EU (I repeat, no one elected her bar a coterie of the elite in the EU) can call for the EU to be given a seat on the UN Security Council. By the way, the president of the EU is unelected as well. Oh, and the EU finances have not been passed by the auditors in 13 years. I apologize for this off-topic comment but a little background for non-EU folk is useful in considering this latest EU nonsense regarding the internet.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  Civil servants, government ministers and heads of state in many if not most democratic countries are not elected directly by the people. There's nothing special about the EU in that regard.
- omouse 15y ago
  It's a symptom of government to reduce one's freedom and human rights.
- calpaterson 15y ago
  Haha! Complaining that no one elected Baroness Ashton is like saying that no one elected Georgy Zhukov - almost no one in the EU is elected.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
The democratic legitimacy of that working group derives from the democratic legitimacy of the governments that send their representatives. I'm not happy with these proposals at all, but it's not exactly unusual that such proposals are being worked on by civil servants and ministers.

schrototo 15y ago

Here's the link to the actual story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-over-EU-Great-Firewall-proposal.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8481330/Alarm-ove...

joshes 15y ago
>“The Presidency of the LEWP presented its intention to propose concrete measures towards creating a single secure European cyberspace,” according to brief minutes of the meeting. The secure European cyberspace would have a "virtual Schengen border", it adds, referring to the treaty that allows freedom of movement within the EU but imposes controls on entry to the bloc. There would also be “virtual access points" whereby “the Internet Service Providers would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU ‘black-list’”, the proposal says. Wow. Not only is it a terrible-sounding idea when heard second hand, it is even worse when heard straight from the horse's mouth. "A single secure cyberspace" sounds an awful lot like "A single secure SOCIETY!" It's as if Emperor Palpatine and the MAFIAA elite got together to determine the most efficient way to deny people of their rights for the sake of greed and power. How can anyone possibly hear what they are saying in these plans and not recoil with horror and disgust? It runs counter to all ideals and freedoms that the West purports to stand for. Sheer absurdity.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  It is the classic case of what happens when you apply the old rules (stuff like Schengen) to completely new areas where they don't apply at all.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Why don't they apply at all? They just don't apply because no-one has made them apply yet. Years ago one could get copied tapes and access banned materials in flea markets and back rooms. It was illegal and yet people did it. Neo-Nazis traded banned reading materials just as Christians traded illegal bibles in China. While the internet has made the flow of information easier, it's not the case that it invented the practice which has probably gone on since the invention of speech. All the internet has done has given us the ability to get involved in illegal practices much easier than they did before.

citricsquid 15y ago

meh. I think this proposal is bad, but why can't a site that is not screwing others over come forward and be the public face of "championing" it? Thepiratebay being a large voice against it will just harm the cause, "oh thepiratebay is breaking the law and losing musicians money and they are anti-censorship so censorship must be good to stop that illegal stuff".

AJ007 15y ago
Are you one of those people who believes that the damage done by intellectual property "piracy" exceeds its benefits? How is the Pirate Bay screwing anyone over more than draconian copyright laws which have been extended decades and decades beyond what the law originally intended while criminal enforcement is provided by free thanks to taxpayers?
- citricsquid 15y ago
  If someone creates content it is their choice whether or not it's given away for free or if people must pay for it. If you create a song you can give it away for free, sell it for $0.99 or sell it for $900, that's your choice. I agree some of the copyright laws that exist are silly, but it should still be the content creators choice what happens with that content (or if they sell the rights then the new rights holder etc etc). Your desire, my desire or anyone else's desire for that content (be it music, video, game, program, image) is not more important than the wants of the person who created it. Anyway my point was just that TPB is not a good voice against this, it would be like having Hitler being against anti-freespeech laws, it would make it much easier to justify those laws because of Hitler.
  - hack_edu 15y ago
    Don't mean to put words in his mouth, but I believe he's saying the laws are draconian. Few argue for the outright abolition of IP, and the content you talk about should be protected to encourage the producer to prosper. Its just the "Life + 70 Years" that is draconian.

boscomutunga 15y ago

The religious war between pirates and copyright will always continue.

pjscott 15y ago
Did you read the article? The issue here is internet censorship; the Pirate Bay guys are just getting involved because they tend to also be opposed to censorship.

FrojoS 15y ago

Already, to some extend, Europe is not a part of the Internet anymore. At least here in Germany, I personally consider it fraud when Internet Service Provider offer "Internet access". Wrong label! After returning from the US I got extremely frustrated that I wasn't able to listen to Pandora anymore (I'm even paying) or watch many of the best Youtube videos that happen to use popular music as background. When I recently got access again, over my US friends University VPN, I felt a bit like a former east German, who managed to tweak his radio so he can listen to "west stations".

mortenjorck 15y ago
That's not a reasonable comparison, though. Pandora or YouTube access isn't being censored by the German government. It's being withheld on the other end due to old-world notions of regional broadcast rights. Pandora and YouTube haven't paid the rights holders for the right to "broadcast" in Germany, so the licensors insist that they cut off access to Germany from the source. What is being discussed in the article, however, is indeed censorship. If EU State Security gets its way, it will indeed be like East German radio.
- FrojoS 15y ago
  Sure, I know, but still, thanks for pointing this out explicitly. Its true, I tried to provoke a bit and its not a totally faire comparison. However, its still against the idea of the Internet, when I can only access certain content from certain locations, no? And its also somehow censorship, though the proper term may be "regional broadcast rights". Its true, that the German government does not actively support this, but I don't see them fight it either. For instance they could insist, that different regional broad cast rights, especially online, should be baned by the WTO. We do similar thing for inter-EU trade all the time. This new law, like so many, who try to come over the backdoor of European law, is definitely on a different level. I just wanted to point out, that its already far from roses and unicorns here.
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    "Against the idea of the Internet" is not like being unconstitutional, but that seems to be the kind of weight you are giving it. Maybe they don't like the idea of the Internet?

Sandman 15y ago

So what if they do erect this "virtual wall"? People will just access those sites through some non-EU based proxy. Unless they block access to each and every non-EU based proxy, of course.

halfasleep 15y ago
Where would you put your proxy to be clear of both "think of the rights holders" and "think of the children" as valid reasons to filter your access ?
- Sandman 15y ago
  So, what you're saying is that EU countries would block access to the proxies in other countries because of these reasons that you mention? Possibly. They might try to do that, but I'm not sure that they would succeed. There are too many proxies, and new ones pop up practically ever day. Unless they block access to any non-EU server, in which case EU becomes North Korea.
eru 15y ago
Oh, it's probably not about making it impossible. Just about inconvenience. The Chinese firewall can also be easily circumvented.
bcaulf 15y ago
Of course you are right that it will be a leaky wall due to the nature of the Internet. But it will increase the cost and hassle and reduce bandwidth. And that is good enough to prop up publishing industry revenue.

ErrantX 15y ago

They will sell this with "think of the children" thing again, I am sure. Pisses me right off. We fought this in the UK in the disguise of deep-packet filtering at the ISP's, that one floundered from the off but dragged out its demise for a good while before being sheleved. Then France gave it a go with Loopsi, and unfortunately they seem to have managed to set a precedent for filtering/monitoring/blocking. It was only a matter of time before the EU got involved.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Its interesting that they don't mention Usenet. For those of you to young to remember, what you now call "The Internet" was originally "ARPAnet" (and then DARPAnet) which was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) but they had lots of rules about what you could and could not do on their network (as was their perrogative). Some folks who wanted to be on the network didn't "qualify" because they were either too small, or not germane to the research goals. Other folks chafed at the restrictions. My first encounter with the ARPAnet was in 1978 when I started at USC which had a node on the net (USC-ECLC) which was a DEC KI-20 running Tenex. When I graduated and went to work at Intel they weren't connected to the ARPAnet but they were running a 'usenet' node via modems and software called 'netnews'. The node, intelca, and the guy running it (Ken Shoemaker) were in my building at Intel. Since Ken was open to having the 'new guy' help out so I took on some fairly simple tasks of keeping it running. Usenet was a simple store and forward network where nodes would call each other periodically on the phone and exchange data which was destined for other sites. Addressing was in the form of 'host!host!host!host!user' where each 'host' was a hop and if you could move something along you did. Anyway, today, it is entirely possible (see the TOR network) to build a network which runs across the existing communications structure but uses a set of protocols that are 'invisible' (in the sense of firewalling and monitoring etc) to the host network. It makes building something which does what Usenet did (create a network with less authoritive oversight) much easier than it was in the past. I would not be surprised if such networks already existed although I am not aware of any at this time.

joeyh 15y ago
Prophet (http://syncwith.us/ http://syncwith.us/) was originally talked about as a way to build a darknet or sneakernet. Perhaps some are still pursuing that, though the main public development has to do with building SD on top of it and using it for distributed bug tracking. I'm sure you know usenet still exists. It's weird to hear it described in the past tense. :)
w1ntermute 15y ago
> Its interesting that they don't mention Usenet. Well, that sort of is the first rule of Usenet.
15y ago

aphexairlines 15y ago

The "copyright lobby"? Where is the technology lobby? I'm disappointed in our industry, especially given the enormous market caps of tech giants.

robbles 15y ago

this just might be the most elaborate example of Godwin's Law I've ever seen.

rmc 15y ago

Clarification: The Pirate Bay is not totally blocked in Ireland. The largest broadband supplier (Eircom with about 80% residential market) block it. No other ISP in Ireland block it. Several others (eg UPC) are actively opposed to blocking it.

eitland 15y ago

Seems like focusing on pirates now would be like running a campaign against burglary in 1939 /instead/ of mobilizing against nazi Germany?

mahrain 15y ago

One of the issues is that "we" as internet community tend to protest online, for instance by blocking a site (DDOS) or sending tweets to politicians. Europe doesn't realise this and might mistake the lack of angry people in the streets for "not caring" or "no problem", while complaining about "hackers" taking down web sites. I'm afraid that there are only two options, either this gets blocked by the European Human Rights Court (article 10, freedom of speech) or we are going to get into a situation where we're China: internet filter plus many many tools to circumvent it. I guess it's our first response to develop the latter and claim "we'll just use Tor / Freenet / VPN" but IMHO preventing the instatement of a filter in the first place would be a more noble struggle.