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The High Court has ordered our ISPs to start auto-blocking three more sites linked with piracy, as a new batch of torrent providers are made to sit with The Pirate Bay on the inaccessible step.
The latest order sees the court agreeing with the BPI that the services of Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy are helping as indulge in copyright infringement on a “significant scale,” with the BPI’s victorious boss Geoff Taylor saying: “The growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission. Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent.”
With blocks easily circumvented by such advanced hacker techniques as spending five seconds looking for one of the numerous alternatives on Google, we can say with some certainty that it’s not really going to have much of an effect. [BBC]
European Court of Justice Says No to Forced ISP Blockade Of Pirate Sites and Services
BPI Wants More Torrent Sites Added to ISP's Pirate Bay Block List
The British Torrent Blockade Continues as the BPI Strikes Again
I use Kickass Torrentz to download the Clone Wars as no UK boradcaster picked it up. So, that’s a pain…
There are other means in which to watch it
Also nice to see someone else enjoying the same cartoons I do.
Change your DNS settings on your router to servers that are not your ISP’s.
Eg use Google or OpenDNS…
does that slow your connection down at all?
Nope, if anything it’ll be more reliable than the ISP’s. Use 8.8.8.8 for Google.
this type of blocking is done at a higher level than your dns server, so that won’t do anything
I’m on Virgin cable at home. I’ve been meaning to look at other DNS options anyway, so I’ll give this a go tonight to check both our assumptions.
let me know if it works, as i am on virgin too
is this all i had to do, if so, it does not work, i cannot get on TBP
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6y6j72l46i066ic/router.jpg
It doesn’t work, been using the Google DNS for some time now – the traffic itself is blocked, not just the DNS lookup.
You’re right. Done nothing… oh well, worth a shot!
Makes me glad I have a 76Mbps VPN
Company name please
HideMyAss Pro VPN
Brilliantly named company. Thank you for sharing.
I’ve never used torrents, ever, and I’ve managed to get everything via external site downloading. It just seems like a waste of time and effort.
Torrents are 50000x faster than what you’re doing so it’s highly worth my time tbh..
Actually I download in HD blu-ray film of say 1.8 GB in about 10 mins or less on my broadband.
Where/who from?
BT Infinity and Icefilms & 1Channel.
Nice, thanks
Icefilms was only good when MegaUpload was around.
Still works for me, BillionUploads and 180Uploads are great replacements.
I just don’t want to buy music any more, I haven’t bought music since 2001. If they somehow made it impossible to download music, I’d just listen to it on Youtube…
then rip it from you tube
Why would you rip low quality compressed music? .flac from torrent sites are way better!
I agree, i’m continuing scaramoosh’s comment that’s based in a world where downloading music is impossible. flac all the way!
Actually while we’re here, could you suggest a particularly good, hi quality music torrent site to me?
I just want to ask them if they have seen an increase in sales yet.
They will probably claim this is what has made the years of effort, and millions of pounds worth it: http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/02/recording-industry-manages-a-sliver-of-growth-for-the-first-time-since-1999/
Gotta wonder where the industry would be if they invested the money actually into the artists…
How comes ISPs can be forced to block torrent sites but not those of indecent images etc
They probably could (and have – paedophilic websites for example) – but they’re not illegal, and thus will go nowhere if taken to court.
Oh I see. I’m thinking of becoming a dad soon so have started having all these types of thoughts recently which is why I was all for compulsory opt-in blocking or porn. (Boring I know)
It’s not really boring. I can fully understand your concerns – but there’s a huge market out there offering all manner of blocking software and techniques you can use to restrict access. It’s worth reading up on it.
I personally think it’s the responsibility of the parent to ensure their child doesn’t get exposed to inappropriate stuff, but I appreciate that’s possibly a rather contentious viewpoint!
My favourite part of this story is that in the image from KickassTorrents, the trending tag cloud doesn’t show a single obvious music download.
So, yeah, obviously everyone is still downloading music illegally rather than paying for things like spotify or using youtube.
Well done BPI…
Oh no! Now I’ll just have to use Tor to access any site I want…
Seriously, when will the BPI/MPAA/RIAA learn that working against consumers is a terrible and ultimately useless idea?
Sharing is caring, people!
Dammit! I (legally) distribute my own music on KAT – I wonder if I can take legal action by arguing that they are limiting my reach?
You are not the only one. There are so many open source software developers who will be greatly inconvenienced by this.
The only thing that I have ever used torrents for is downloading Linux .iso files and other open source software which, as you all know, is perfectly legal. This type of action is offensive to me as it makes my LEGITIMATE activity more difficult.
Nobody else seeing this as The start of Internet censorship?!
you are not the only one, and governments moan about other countries such as chine censoring the internet then do it themselves, well they slyly let the courts do it
Start? Internet censorship has been happening for years.