Facebook in Pirate Bay block Fail

Facebook is trying to keelhaul links to Pirate Bay torrents on its website, just one week after the popular file-sharing repository made it easier for users to share them on their Facebook profiles. The attempt, however, is laughably haphazard. A Facebook user almost needs to work to get their link blocked. In late March, The …

[NoCo37]

@ Austin Modine

"Not to mention other popular torrent sites like Mininova and isoHunt remain unaffected by the block."

"There's definitely a censorship issue here with Facebook's blockage as not all torrents link to copyrighted material."

Austin Modine,

When you contacted Facebook, were these issues pointed out?

[Mectron]

As per Usual

Totally ILLEGAL, i wonder how much Cash facebook got criminal organisation such as the MPAA and RIAA to illegally censor content?

Facebook now join the rank of common crook...

Time to close my account, as Facebook book is now a branch of know dangerous crminalsw organisations (MPAA/RIAA). who know what other illegal activities Facebook will engage in the future.

[Austin Modine]

Re: @ Austin Modine

Alas, my questions weren't answered by Facebook, as their only response was the cut-and-paste statement reported in the story. The obvious PB blockage work-around appeared to get their attention though. I'll be sure to update the piece with any additional details/developments.

[Paul]

@Mecron

Please tell me how what they are doing is illegal? I am sure their terms and conditions that people sign up to allow them to do this sort of thing. Its not a democracy, it bleedin facebook...

[frymaster]

re: as per usual

"Totally ILLEGAL, i wonder how much Cash facebook got criminal organisation such as the MPAA and RIAA to illegally censor content?

Facebook now join the rank of common crook..."

er, no, because it's not against the law for them to remove content from their own website.

[Robert Armstrong]

Exercise in futilty

They will never block this....

piratebay dot org

and people will know exactly what to do.

FB jumped the shark and is now moving towards a more mature state of bankruptcy -- both financially and intellectually.

[Tom Maddox]

@Mectron

Kim Jong-Il, is that you trolling the forums again?

[xrd]

A real effort?

It sounds to me more like they're wanting to be seen as not supporting TPB, rather than actually caring / making any real effort to block it.

Maybe a sort of a 'token effort', to help keep the RIAA / MPAA at bay...

[JohnA]

On purpose perhaps?

Maybe they are just going through the motions of blocking to ward off the IRAA while not actually doing anything that will upset their users..

[Antti Roppola]

Promotions

This news will no doubt encourage hoards of Facebook users to go look at Pirate Bay and see what they've been missing out on.

[Hugo]

"We've reached out..."

I've noticed a marked increase in "reaching out" lately, can't these people use normal, plain English?

[Anonymous Coward]

URL shortening anyone?

there's any number of URL shortening services that can obscure a URL

[Frank]

Some Confusion?

"Facebook is trying to keelhaul links ....."

If you keelhaul somebody, you deliberately bring them back onboard ship and return them to duty after a very unpleasant punishment experience. Keelhauling was used as a 'corrective' punishment. Facebook are trying to get rid of the links and so the appropriate analogy would be 'walking the plank', which was a form of capital punishment.

I realise that using 'walking the plank' in your opening line would seem clumsy and not read as well as 'keelhauling', but I do feel that the accurate maintenance of our rich pirate heritage is important. It may be that I've misunderstood Facebook's actions and what they are actually trying to do to the links is 'clap them in irons' or maybe even 'tie them to the mainmast'. Whatever they're doing they're making a mess of it and deserve a 'lick o' the cat'.

[Anonymous Coward]

ARG!

Face meet Book, now on with the plundering ARG!

[Anonymous Coward]

seems a bit ametuer.

if( stristr( $url, 'thepiratebay' ) == true )

would sort that out and would seem the logical choice for blocking a url, unless i'm missing something.

[Michael]

i'm just wondering .

Did Eircom make them do it? or Charlie McCreepy? or Bono?

.....sensing not a little lobbying / backhanders / brown paper envelopes here.

We need a Mahon tribunal for the telecoms industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahon_Tribunal

[Trencher]

controversial?

WTF is so controversial?! The Pirate Bay is nothing more than a search index, and nothing more. I keep hearing this word "controversial" about this topic. The only ones finding this controversial is the people that haven't had education of how the internet works, and the retards at the RIAA and the MPAA. This should have been thrown out of court inside the first week. What a waste of resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Antti Roppola - Promotions

encourage hoards of Facebook users

I'm not sure why, but the first time I read that I thought that is said "herds of facebook users"...

[Martin Lyne]

This'll be..

.. a 2 second code update to block the other subdomains

if(preg_match(*\.thepiratebay\.org, $strURL) > 0) // Block

Who risks downloading shoddy, malware ridden, typo'd versions of songs from torrent sites anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

@Trencher

Incorrect. TPB hosts user-submitted .torrent files.

[Remy Redert]

@Martin Lyne

As opposed to paying good money for shoddy, DRM ridden versions of songs from publishers?

I don't know, maybe the portability?

Or maybe the fact that music torrents tend to be surprisingly light on the malware, typos and reasonably high on the quality, though that doesn't help the quality of the music at all.

[Rob]

Shooting fish...

Surely it would be better to let them carry on linking to Pirate Pay, would it not be easier for pirates called the RIAA and the MPAA to search Facebook for their next victims to sue in court. Facebook could also earn a bit of cash for every person who gets caught.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ac-wrong

By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 10th April 2009 20:38 GMT

Incorrect. TPB hosts user-submitted .torrent files.

WRONG, TPB only has links to trackers, no files are stored per se on the servers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship?!

The same kind of 'censorship' that Ms. Bee commits, maybe. But since Facebook is a private entity and not *the freaking government*, it's not quite the same, is it?