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High Court: The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs
- sebkomianos 14y agoI wonder what would happen if TPB started operating as a general search engine. Like, Google, let's say.
- TamDenholm 14y agoDoes anyone know when this comes into effect? Also, does it only affect the ISP's mentioned in the article or ALL ISP's? Guess i'll just have to use a TPB mirror from now on then...
- seabee 14y agoOr VPN through a server located outside the UK. As far as I know this is dealt with on a case-by-case basis (i.e. just these ISPs and just TPB) because it's a civil matter - the govt would need to make a new law to force all ISPs to block The Pirate Bay and similar websites.
- naich 14y agoOr a VPN within the UK, as long as it's not one of the ISPs mentioned here.
- drucken 14y agoFive ISPs - Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media. Sixth ISP, British Telecom, has requested a few more weeks to further consider its position and the claimant, BPI has agreed. However, since these ISP, in particular Virgin Media, cover by far the largest broadband users in the UK, for most intents and purposes this affects the whole UK.
- rlpb 14y ago> However, since these ISP, in particular Virgin Media, cover by far the largest broadband users in the UK, for most intents and purposes this affects the whole UK. It will cover the majority of non-piratebay users. The piratebay users will just switch to one of the ISPs that is not one of those five.
- hobin 14y agoErr... No, they won't. Switching ISPs is the most time-consuming thing to do when all you want to do is visit a site that is being blocked. There are many more practical approaches.
- anons2011 14y agoAre we trying to emulate China or Iran? Obviously a block like this for any tech-savvy person is absolutely meaningless.
- af3 14y agoyep! tunnelr?
- viraptor 14y agoThat's advanced technology! Not needed really: google: site:thepiratebay.se windows Cached site from google includes the magnet link.
- rmc 14y agoThe UK has also censored Wikipedia in the past.
- dabeeeenster 14y agoReally? Link?
- beedogs 14y agoThis may be what he is referring to: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081207/1805293043.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081207/1805293043.shtml
- njs12345 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_W...
- jentulman 14y agoSaying 'The UK' is a little over the top possibly, I think this is a reference to this, http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_amid_child_pornography_allegations http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_...
- debacle 14y agoClearly this will stop piracy.
- monsterix 14y agoWell what do we have here? A <sarcasm> tag. :)
- VMG 14y agoProbably not, but it will make it more difficult for users that aren't tech-savy. (I know that was sarcasm btw)
- fredley 14y agoAnd there will be plenty of tech-savvy people ready to make it easy again, in exchange for ads/money/malware.
- debacle 14y agoI don't believe so. Most people I know use Google for their torrent searches. Googling "britney spears torrent" is just going to bring up a different torrent site than tpb. The clear solution is for UK ISPs to ban Google.
- VMG 14y agoMost top results for "britney spears torrent" are pretty cryptic for a normal user, the actual torrent download button is often obscured by other garbage, if there is one at all. TPB would know how big the effect will be, I'm curious if they publish data on that.
- rapind 14y agoI don't. When I google for torrents I usually get a bunch of garbage / ad spam sites which don't actually have the content... so I don't google for torrents. Besides, if they block pirate bay, it's only a matter of time before most other popular torrent sites are also blocked. Sure mirrors will pop up, but they won't show up on the first page of a google search's results, at least for a while. VPN is the way to go.
- maz29 14y agoI see a google trend coming in the form of 'How to access piratebay in the UK?'
- TomGullen 14y agoIt doesn't particularly concern me that this particular website is being blocked, as it's purpose is pretty obvious. Blocking it is laughably futile but it does send a clear message out. What does concern me though is that this is a foot in the door for the government to block other websites they object to in the future.
- k-mcgrady 14y ago"it's purpose is pretty obvious". I don't think that's true. Clearly a lot of copyrighted material is downloaded from the site but there is a also a lot of material linked to legally. For example they now promote independent artists on their homepage who have content available on the pirate bay. Nine Inch Nails have a huge collection of unedited concert footage available. Open source software and Linux distros are available. I think the 'linking to content is illegal' thing really needs to be seriously examined. Are they going to block Google next? Where is the line? (And I'm saying this as someone who pays for content and really only does download legal content from TPB).
- TomGullen 14y agoThere is legal content on TPB yes, but it's a pretty indisputable fact that TPB's primary motive is piracy. I think no matter what metric you use to gauge legitimate use vs piracy on TPB, legitimate use will fade into obscurity. I think it's a pretty weak defence in all honesty. To me it sounds like a cruise liner calling itself a rowing boat because it has a couple off the back in case of emergencies.
- anigbrowl 14y agoThat's a bit like saying your historical pirate ship (the kind with sails, cannons and so on) has a cook on board to feed the crew, so it should really be considered as a floating restaurant and the plundering and sinking of other vessels is incidental to that.
- Monotoko 14y agoI love that analogy and want to vote you up... but I don't agree with what you're saying XD
- Tim-Boss 14y agoWithin minutes of any major ISP implementing a "block" a few thousand people will post on facebook/twitter/blogs and websites links to the plethora of proxies/TOR tunnels/Open DNS settings and VPN's that will instantly negate any ISP level "block" (sarcastic quotes intentional). This will cost british ISP's hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds to implement and manage, and will at best only delay any would-be knock-off-nigel 30 seconds or so while he learns about proxies et. al. and configures a browser. Security theatre at its worst...THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
- btian 14y agoTor is getting more and more useful. It doesn't take much to mirror TPB with magnetic links tbh
- fromhet 14y agoAlso: any of the hundreds of other torrent sites. Or secure file sharing protocols as oneswarm and such.
- PotatoEngineer 14y agoYes, there are plenty of ways to circumvent the block, but some of them take more technical know-how (or social links to people with that knowledge) than others. A block will definitely cut down the traffic to TPB.
- sagarun 14y agoOne can argue that The Pirate Bay just facilitates copyright violation, It never violates any one's copyright. In fact lot of artist's are publishing content through The Pirate Bay.
- Jebus 14y agoWhich is also a crime, apparently. See these cases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O%27Dwyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taringa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taringa!
- alan_cx 14y agoWhere does that argument stop? Computers facilitate copyright violation, there for PCWorld and Dell do too. Roads facilitate burglary, etc, etc. They have legitimate uses, I here the idiots cry. Yeah, so do torrents and TPB. This whole thing reminds me of the prohibition of things like cannabis. Banned on a false economic and scaremongering premiss, yet the laws remain for emotional nonsensical reasons. Logic and reason get left far behind. I really dont know what to make of governance any more. Politics is insane. Business seems equally insane. I dont know how I fit in to this any more.
- RobAtticus 14y agoThePirateBay doesn't pretend to NOT be a tracker for piracy. It makes no effort to ensure that the content it tracks is legitimate and has far more illegitimate content than legitimate content. It's not terribly difficult to see why TPB is different than say a computer or a road.
- MattBearman 14y agoThe ruling is mostly full of shit: Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists I'd like to see evidence to back this up, innocent until proven guilty and all. The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale No, it doesn't. TPB doesn't provide any content at all. Not only that, but it also provides links to non-copyright infringing material. Eg: Some of Nine Inch Nails recent releases have been legally made available over bittorrent in 24/96 high quality. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works According to wikipedia, TPB earnings in 2006 were $102,035.05 US, and expenses in 2009 were $112,590.40 US (couldn't find data for the same year) but they can't be making a huge amount of profit on those margins. But the thing that really gets me is our government giving itself power to censor the internet.
- scott_w 14y agoThat was the BPI spokesman (the UK equivalent of the RIAA). Those quotes were not part of the judgement. The judge merely applied the Digital Britain Act, an act rushed through at the end of the last Parliament (in 2010) in the run-up to the general election. It got a lot less scrutiny than bills of this nature usually get.
- rwmj 14y agoI've actually met the head of the BPI, and he's as mad in person as he appears in print. For once I completely believe these quotes were not made up by the journalist interviewing him.
- alexchamberlain 14y agoThe government and the judiciary are independent.
- drucken 14y agoOnly in the sense of execution/implementation. In the UK system, without a written/arms-length constitution, the judiciary is manipulated or beholden to any newly created laws of the land, especially in civil matters. If there are no protections in law, especially rushed laws, there is little the judiciary can do to defend or even argue one interest versus another. This is surprisingly common, particularly in matters of sovereignty, security or trade (new trade of course being in "intellectual property"). Recent examples include the slew of UK-US extraditions on non-actionable behaviour in the UK.
- arethuza 14y agoPresumably this is the English & Welsh High Court - not sure if this would apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland?
- ajross 14y agoNot a brit nor a lawyer. But I thought it was simply called the "High Court of England and Wales" and that the judgments were binding throughout the UK.
- Andrew_Quentin 14y agoIt is called the High court of England and Wales because Scotland has a different judicial system. I doubt any Scottish judge would not consider it as highly persuasive however.
- rmc 14y agoNope. The UK is funny. Unlike several 'federated' countries in which each 'bit' has equal power over it's area as each other, the UK has a mismatch. England and Wales are treated together as one country lots of things (law, health system, same notes), but Scotland has a separate legal system, Northern Ireland would have separate laws aswell, but that's a special case cause it has a ahem unique parliamently system. Wait till you look at other oddities, like the Isle of Mann, which isn't in the UK, or one of the channel islands, which only abolished their feudal voting system a few years ago.
- drucken 14y agoNext up: ban Google (including its torrentable Custom Search Engine), Bing and all other search engines listing torrents? Or just ban all search engines except those sanctioned by BPI/MPAA etc.? The irony is that at this point The Pirate Bay is just a collection of merely 90MB of magnet links which can be downloaded anywhere on the Internet in the blink of an eye.
- rmc 14y agoThe Pirate Bay is just a collection of merely 90MB of magnet links which can be downloaded anywhere on the Internet in the blink of an eye. Someone made a torrent of the torrents on the Pirate Bay (at one point). Here's the magnet link: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:938802790a385c49307f34cca4c30f80b03df59c&dn=The+whole+Pirate+Bay+magnet+archive&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80
- jsnell 14y agoCould you edit your comment to break that long line into smaller chunks? It's breaking the page layout.
- rmc 14y agoOops, forgot about that. Made it have a horizontal scroll.
- glogla 14y agoThat's interesting. Is there way to get actual version of this?
- burgerbrain 14y agoPaste that link into your favourite (up to date) torrent client.
- glogla 14y ago
- dafunnie 14y agoDidn't they try to block porn sites last year? David Cameron ostensibly proclaimed that 'porn sites corrupt the British nation' or something in that vein. The UK is beginning to get a tad too draconian for the 21st century.
- drucken 14y agoI think they are still trying. There is an on-going tabloid newspaper campaign where they are trying to force the ISPs and politicians (especially the opposition) to adopt or commit to an "opt-in" for porn on Internet connections. That is, the default would be required that ISPs take on the cost and legal culpability to block porn.
- fredley 14y agoIronically, most of these tabloid newspapers publish pornography themselves, and staunchly defend their right to do so.
- viraptor 14y agoIf it's the same as what Vodafone does with their content control, then let me assure you it's completely broken. With the filter turned on, I can access any porn site I tried, but some articles - I couldn't.
- Monotoko 14y agoIt's the same as what my mobile network (O2) do as well, I tried to read a news article to do with poker, and I got a "This content is rated as over-18. Please call us to have it unblocked" (paraphrased - as I can't remember precisely what it said)
- smiler 14y agoHe of course didn't mind the support of Murdoch's media empire, including the UKs most popular newspaper (The Sun) which carries naked women on page 3 everyday
- alan_cx 14y agoDoes any body really still use TPB as a first stop site? It is usually my site of last resort. To me this is a bit like some weirdo government still freaking out about Rock 'n Roll and Punk Rockers.
- sim0n 14y agoIt's probably more about preventing new users. If a non-technical friend asks me where to find torrents/download tv shows/etc I'll tell them TPB over a private tracker.
- bricestacey 14y agoTPB is my first stop. I've always used private music trackers, but never found much need for it with video (quality is less important and I don't want to deal with seed requirements).
- PiracyApologist 14y agoFrom the guidelines: "What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Clearly the community has spoken in submitting and then voting this up to be the #1 story on HN. However, I'm having a hard time finding what is intellectually gratifying about these kinds of articles other than in a Slashdot YRO-style basis where different people chime in on censorship, arguments over linking vs hosting, morality of piracy, etc. Maybe having been a long-time Slashdot reader I've seen these arguments played out ad nauseum. When I started regularly participating in HN over a year ago I found HN to be refreshing in that these kinds of stories didn't make it to the front page. If anything, I'd expect a good hacker would find a blog post detailing lesser-known aspects of the bittorrent protocol interesting. Or a blog post discussing technical workarounds were such a block to be implemented. As I've been around long enough, I'm officially qualified to say that I'm saddened to see HN turning into Slashdot/Reddit.
- fromhet 14y agoWhat can be done about it? It's so easy to upvote and comment "this won't stop piracy". The only way I can think is to have an enormous human capcha that is having to repeat the guidelines before being allowed to vote, but that would of course be ridiculous.
- known 14y agoSharing is not illegal. Selling is illegal.
- josscrowcroft 14y agoThis has to be a classic example of closing the stable doors after the horse has bolted. They're scrabbling around, trying desperately and litigiously to cling on to whatever semblance of the pre-internet golden years they can, but it's too late. We've got a taste for free shit. For better or worse - it's not going anywhere. They'd have to cut off our hands to stop us from getting what we want. The worst part? The harder they make it, the less likely I am to feel good about paying for content.
- DanI-S 14y agoAt the risk of hyperbole: Lobbying is a catalyst for the destruction of democracy, and should be cut and cauterised from our civilization like the cancer that it is. Anybody running on the platform of diminishing the corporate voice to its legitimate, proportional volume would certainly have my vote. Whether or not piracy is morally excusable, I am certain this form of legislation is not what the British public wants.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago>Lobbying is a catalyst for the destruction of democracy // As anyone is allowed to lobby I don't think this is true. In our representative "democracy" though it doesn't seem that MPs are required to act in a representative way. That, IMO, is what destroys the idea of democracy. If a company lobbies an MP it shouldn't make any difference. It should be the people of the MP's constituency that the company needs to lobby so that they can alter the opinions of the people that the MP is supposed to be representing.
- cnbeuiwx 14y agoThe dark forces behind these organisations couldnt care less about music being pirated. What they really want is a censored, controlled internet where free speach is not anonymous. You have to understand that the Internet is the only medium not built as a pyramid, where you can control the entire pyramid by controlling the leader. Nobody controls the entire Internet today, so its quite scary for the dark ones. Despite all their power and money, they cant stop the free flow of information on the Internet.
- gouranga 14y agoIt's getting like a nightmare vision of capitalism in the 1980s. You know like Robocop or Gremlins 2 where the city sold out to corporations. Corporate interest over common sense. We'll just have to mail DivXs to each other like we did in the late 90s when bandwith was low...
- luriel 14y agoCopyright is a government granted and government enforced monopoly. Its got little to do with capitalism.
- gouranga 14y agoRubbish. When the successful capitalists lobby politicians and pay them off regularly, it's a closed loop between government and corporations. Us peons don't get a look in.
- luriel 14y agoIt is well known (but sadly still surprising for many) that capitalists are some of the biggest enemies of capitalism. What you are describing is regulatory capture, and is caused by government power, if government didn't have so much power there wouldn't be such a great incentive to corrupt it.
- RobertKohr 14y agoYippy, the more the goverment tries to control the internet, the more it will go underground, and the more tor will gain in strength.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- andr3w321 14y agoI hate the whole ethical argument when it comes to copyright infringement. The fact is an unenforceable law is pointless and should not be law. I don't know what the solution is -- and I wish people would spend more time debating and talking about a workable solution rather than complaining, but blocking sites that link or illegally host copyrighted content will not solve a thing. Remember when illegal music downloads stopped after napster got shutdown? Oh wait, a hundred more files sharing clients just took it's place.
- dkersten 14y agoThe workable solution is for content producers to take a long hard look at their business models to see if maybe they can profit without criminalizing a large percentage of the population.
- NLips 14y agoDo you remember when Napster came back as a legally-operating site, creating better competition in the music-download market and increasing the number of people who download music legally?
- horsehead 14y agoWhat the hell? Aren't there more important things out there to tackle than copyright infringement? Sure it's illegal. But there is a massive campaign against pirates, but seriously -- surely there are bigger problems than this to tackle .... edit: also, i love this quote "We should keep blocking them - they are stealing music illegally." it's clearly ok to steal music legally. Just as long as you're not stealing it in ways the authorities deem appropriate. </tongue-in-cheek>
- tomp 14y ago> "The biggest culprits of this, really, are the younger demographic who just haven't been convinced that doing this is somehow morally uncomfortable. This. Good luck with that. More probably, when the "younger demographics" grow older and get more voting power, they will likely vote /against/ such corporate tyranny. This means that the music industry has some 20 or so more years of prosperity, at most.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI can't stand it. How can the BBC claim to be impartially reporting copyright infringement when they call it "piracy"? It's illegal, it's often immoral, it's not shooting people and stealing their stuff though and sufficiently different, in a moral sense, to make such a claim preposterously immoral in itself.
- NLips 14y ago'Piracy' is as valid a term as 'copyright infringement': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#.22Piracy.22 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#.22Pirac...
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoYour link shows historic use of piracy as a term referring to unauthorised manufacture and sale (ie for profit). It gives no support for using the term for giving away content, nor for simple consumption, against the rights holders wishes - both of these are properly, legally and dispassionately described as IPR infringement. Even if booksellers in the past had tried to make an emotional attachment between book copiers and pirates I would still find its use in a supposedly unbiased report to be objectionable.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoThat's It. I finally broke. I have been reading for going on two years about SOPA, PIPA, GCHQ snaffling everything in sight. And this is the straw that broke the camel's back. I have just ... written to my MP. Dammit. It will achieve nothing, but I am going to keep pushing. I know why they are doing this, but ... please please please, stop choking off industries that might just help us compete against the global behemoths down the road.
- Joakal 14y agoTry them: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/ http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/ They also believe in other saner intellectual property laws.
- andrewfelix 14y agoI don't agree with shutting down TPB, but I kinda sympathise with the porn industry. They have solid streaming credentials and go out of their way to make content accessible as opposed to companies like HBO. Is their a legitimate excuse to pirating porn?