Now TalkTalk cuts Brits' access to The Pirate Bay TalkTalk became the final major telecoms company in the UK to comply with a High Court judge's order to block access to The Pirate Bay via its network. According to TalkTalk subscribers, the blockade began overnight, however the ISP hadn't responded to The Register's request for comment at time of publication. Usefully, Reg …
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BT is required to block TBP however has been given time to do some jiggery-pokery and doesnt have to comply until much later.
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So someone in the courts is making allowances for the UK's flagship communications company? With what reasoning? Are they a bit of a 'special needs' child?
Now seriously: Every company except VirginMedia and a few really minor networks only resells BT's service.
This is like the drug squad knowing where the meth lab is and who runs it, and then pulling a couple of little second tier dealers in.
Ha. Hahahaha. Splurt. Laughable.
Err, not they don't
LLU providers, like Sky, O2, and Talk Talk do not sell internet through the BT network to the majority of their customers. They simply take your phone line, and plug it into their "Internet Box" (Dslam) in the exchange, rather than BTs.
Other than the fact that BT own the copper (or Aluminum if you're unlucky) up to that point, BT arent involved.
In any case, why did BT get more, because they asked for it I suppose. I'm going to go on a limb and guess none of the others did.
Yep. No DRM and I can play a film anywhere, on anything and I'm not forced to look at adverts & trailers.
DRM on a DVD and you cannot bypass adverts or trailers or the big 'do not copy' sign. And you can only watch on your DVD player.
Its annoying when you dig out an old classic and forced to watch trailers for films that died and vanished.
I'm personally hoping the courts will get angry and fine BT for wasting time. I can't see them coming to any agreement over tpb other than maybe forwarding all the traffic to some other site (bpi sponsored overprice music.com?)
I guess I'm hoping they don't try and pull some stupid stunt where they then go "We are the only ISP in the uk to allow access to tpb!".
As an Ex-BT employee who worked in Broadband Repair (wholesale) I feel personally responsible for giving anyone access to the internet and thus to Pirate Bay.
I have been filmed in public flogging my back to bloody shreds with a scourge made of ethernet connecting cables - A Cat5 of nine tails.
And how did they get a copy of that logo if it's supposedly illegal to access that site from the UK? Will TPB sue them in return. So if they can't copy it maybe the image is just a direct link from the page to one of its many mirrors. Will El Reg let me use the word 'mirror' and mention the TPB in the same post?
Maybe it's a secret plan by Talk Talk to subversively show that the ruling is a load of nonsense by provoking questions like these.
I've a lot of respect for TalkTalk as they fought against this but I wish they'd use the word CENSORED rather than blocked. "Blocked" sounds a lot less innocuous than "Censored". Let's be honest about it - the internet is being censored to protect the commercial interests.
If the Pirate Bay is doing something wrong then deal with the site, deal with the users - censoring the internet makes us no better than China when it comes to the internets. In fact I'd say it makes us worse, at least China censor the internet under the guise of maintaining social cohesion, our internet connections are being censored because it's the easiest way to protect the bottom line.
First they came for the pirate bay, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a pirate bay user..... and so on.
Let's be honest about it? OK. TPB is mostly used for copyright infringement. Yes the technology is benign and has lots of uses (e.g. distributing GNU/Linux iso files and other FOSS/CreativeCommons stuff) but what level of use does it get for that, compared to grabbing copyrighted material for nowt?
Exactly. And that is why is was (in all futility) blocked.
We can argue about how stupid the current copyright terms are (and I personally think they are very stupid), how draconian the new laws will be and how how much of an asshole the RIAA, BPI etc are all being; but none of this changes the fact the main purpose of TPB is copyright infringement.
If your biggest problem is that in now takes you 30 seconds longer to download a copy of "Avengers Assemble" for nothing - then you are very, very lucking indeed.
To call it "censorship" is, quite frankly, disgusting moral relativism that diminishes the suffering of those under the heel of actual censorship. So get off your moral high-horse.
You don't think that now the technical and legal framework has been introduced it won't be extended to other purposes? Like RIPA was only necessary to catch international drug dealing terrorist peadophiles.
It doesn't even have to be the government. Here in Canada one of the major telcos blocked access to the communication workers union site for all it's customers during a dispute. It's argument was that this was perfectly legal - because the government ordered them to do the same thing for downloads.
@Yet Another - well Canada censors government funded scientists who don't toe the party line, so I'm hardly surprised.
The "slippery slope" is not a good argument, and neither is the petulant "I wanna download stuff for no charge. Waah!"
What is a good argument is "The current copyright terms are too one-sded and do not balance the cost to society against the cost of the original creator [or however you wish to phrase it] and my alternative is [insert brilliant idea here]".
Let me be clear, I do not like the extensions to copyright, the official rubber-stamping of cartels (RIAA et al), DRM, region-locking and other barriers to free-trade. But If ones doesn't base one's argument on a credible base, it will soon be undermined.
Let's be honest, VCR's were mainly used for copyright infrignement. So what's the difference? I wish I could remember what the timeshifting rules were for the UK... I know it used to be illegal in VCR times...
Ah, IPO delivers
"Time-shifting
A recording of a broadcast can be made in domestic premises for private and domestic use to enable it to be viewed or listened to at a more convenient time.
This time-shifting exception does not however cover the making of recordings for placing in a collection for repeated viewing or listening. The making of a recording for purposes other than to time-shift a programme for your or your family is likely to be illegal."
So the dozens of tapes we all bought were not to keep (which is why there is absolutely NOT still a tape of the Tyson-burbeck fight, the Italian Job and the last episode of the Crystal Maze's first season - 10 crystals, but they got the 2nd rate prizes - on one tape in my dads house, next tot he tape of carry on abroad+behind, and 140 other tapes.
And that's why VCR's were banned, because they had these illegal uses going on...
what I don't understand is why the armed forces don't just attack the ports and blow up the ships. If the pirates have no ships they can't pirate. End of story. There might be some issues with international law about attacking targets in a foreign country but it's not like that's bothered certain countries in the past (looking at you NATO). I am aware the pirates have a number of western hostages but surely they don't keep them on the actual pirate ships. If they are worried about risk the US could even send in some predator drones over the bay and take out a few ships that way . There is very little ISPs like talktalk can do. Merely shutting down the pirate websites is useless, they'll just find some other means of forwarding their hostage demands - have these geniuses never heard of a thing called a telephone?
So, another UK ISP blocks ThePirateBay, big kahuna!
This is nothing more than a failed show of force against the "best known" torrent site.
Right now the ISP lemmings are doing what they're told, but the problem of "illegal downloads" isn't going to disappear, it's just going to get more fragmented.
There are so many more well known torrent sites with quality content available.
I am subscribed to a private torrent site that has quality content, ample seeds and amazing download speeds. It costs me a whopping US$5/month via PayPal.
I mainly download the TV shows I cannot het here in France and the occasional classic movie too
Will it take 3 -5 years before we see another well known torrent site being shitlisted? If so, those of us who do download content really have nothing to be concerned about...
"... but, I was assured the "three strikes" system has stopped all piracy in France?"
It appears as if HADOPI goes after torrent, not DDL. If the guy above uses tor or such, it is probably too braindead to support that.
Besides, didn't Hollande say he was going to repeal HADOPI if voted in?
Who uses Pirate Bay anyway? Pirate Bay is ooooooooooooooooold baby, yea.
Here's a little anecdote for you: there are some series I love so much I can't wait for them to be released on blue-ray/DVD here in the UK. It's so often the case that they play their run on a cable channel and then are released on DVD a long time after the run has finished in the US. Two such examples I can give from my recent experience are Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.
Now being a conscientious fellow, I like to pay for my TV series and movies. No, really: Movies, TV and Games I always pay for. However I would have had to wait SIX MONTHS for a blue-ray release on Walking Dead, even though the run had long since finished in the US. Worse, it was available on a pay-per episode basis on iTunes in the US but not in the UK!
To cut a long story short (hell, it's still a long story), I downloaded the entire season 2 from newsgroups. I was willing to pay whatever per episode on iTunes for it, but it wasn't available. No, I don't want to subscribe to Sky + a whole channel just to see this one series...
Now, give me the stuff in good time when I want to watch it and I'll pay you. Otherwise, I'm highly motivated to steal it.
I for one will be happy that pop stars, actors and movie moguls will be able to eat three square meals a day and keep a roof over their heads now.
Or at any rate, it should give them one less excuse to hang around begging on the streets of LA.
Obviously not blocked at DNS level coz I'm using Norton and Level 3.
I'm on sTalk sTalk and TPB is indeed censored now.
I've always found it quite a poor resource compared to others that I shall not foist above the parapet.
But maybe that's just me.
Anyway, you have to look at the bigger picture - it is a conspiracy, because my first reaction was to go to Google.
I typed in some stuff and some other stuff came out. I used this stuff to navigate my jolly-rogered vessel all the way home to the bay. With a haughty har har and fnar fnar. Missus.
Thus ergo and Q.E.D. - Google is the real target here. In fact whenever I can't find a torrent, I go to good ol' Google and it tells me which tracker site holds the relevant data. Smashing. What a shame they now have Google in their sights. Expect to see it taken down by the end of the year. Farewell dearest Google, it was fun while it lasted....
First they came for my Pirate Bay, then they came for my Google.
To quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Ah, tis fun having a day off the meds. I should do it more often.
'No thank you nurse, not today'.
'Nurse, why are you holding me down with your knee in my chest?'....
thank you, this was a nice figure of speech.
I wish there was a way to check, what % of those who tried to access it conventionally,, continued, on to the default search engine to check how to access the above webpage by other means, unconventionally.
Now, I wonder, when we're going to get to the point when it's illegal to post tips on what search terms to put in that google window, to get this unconventional access. Or actually mentioning there are tips. Or actually mentioning. Or actually. Or.
"when we're going to get to the point when it's illegal to post tips" [etc]
Well, there could always be a Super (!) Injunction taken out, so not only will it be illegal to post tips, but it'll be illegal to say it is illegal to post tips. Err... Confused yet?
Reporter : What have you achived by blocking TPB on TalkTalk today?
RIAA : We have just managed to save the artists and their homes and got ourselves 4 million new customers .
Reporter: How much is that in money terms?
MafiaAA : thats 4 billion Dollars of sales we have salaveged today.
Reporter: How much of that will now end up in the artists pockets ?
RIAA : Wait a minute, we need to pay the crack dealers, Colombian shippers, farmers of coaine, Hookers, Car showrooms blah blah blah...
Reporter: Has any artist benefitted?
MafiAA : What are you talking about? We just protected 4 million customers from paedohpiles and perverts.
Reporter: But how much have you paid the poor artists in whose name you got this court order?
RIAA : We have just started to protect the artists from piracy and thieves.
Reporter: Couldnt you setup a payment system where the artists can be paid directly a part of your sales of music online, so customers can see & appreciate your charitable side? AND get to buy stuff they want reasonbaly and cheaply?
MafiAA : We must protect the children and vulnerable and the poor artists from Piracy.
Reporter: How will blocking TPB stop that?
RIAA : Think of the thousands of jobs that depend copyright protection.
Reporter: So how do you protect "those" jobs by blocking TPB?
MafiAa : our sales will increase mutlifold when all pircay stops.
Reporter: just answer the fucking question !
MafiAa + RIAA: Wait a minute, I need a quick snort .
Conference over.
They should be a bit more truthful and put in the logo of the organisation blocking access. The home office perhaps?
"This censorship is sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior and the RIAA."
Arrrgh! The problem be, we all love Cap'n Sparra, and when ye call people "pirate" they tend to live up to yarr expectations."
I can get to TPB on my phone no problems. It wouldn't be too hard to get all the torrent files you want on your 3G dongle and then download then on broadband.
Killing Napster was what created the whole torrent system. Killing TPB will just cause even more creative ways of sharing data.
Censorship is something many people fear and nothing is worse than corporates forcing censorship as you can't eject businesses at an election.
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