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View Full Version : Well this is pointless and will take all of 5 minutes - if even that - to bypass



RecQuery
30-Apr-12, 20:24
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17894176(The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs, court rules) - Actually does anyone still use TPB? What is this 2005. Just more security theatre like the SAM sites in London for the Olympics.

ducati
30-Apr-12, 20:36
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17894176(The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs, court rules) - Actually does anyone still use TPB? What is this 2005. Just more security theatre like the SAM sites in London for the Olympics.

Yes, rather than blocking these sites, pointless as you say, it is too easy to circumvent, there aught to be a cultural shift of, in the main, younger Web users that like to get everything for free, to value web content properly.

This could be achieved by arresting them, keeping them locked up for about 4 years, then extraditing them to the US where upon conviction, they will get 30 years to life.

RecQuery
30-Apr-12, 20:45
Yes, rather than blocking these sites, pointless as you say, it is too easy to circumvent, there aught to be a cultural shift of, in the main, younger Web users that like to get everything for free, to value web content properly.

This could be achieved by arresting them, keeping them locked up for about 4 years, then extraditing them to the US where upon conviction, they will get 30 years to life.

Cultural shift is the idea, your rather clumsy attempt at a point not withstanding. It's the content providers who need to change the way they do things. For the record I have bought a ton of digital products: games, videos, books, audiobook etcs.

ducati
30-Apr-12, 20:51
Cultural shift is the idea, your rather clumsy attempt at a point not withstanding. It's the content providers who need to change the way they do things. For the record I have bought a ton of digital products: games, videos, books, audiobook etcs.

No.. my way is better

Frith
01-May-12, 19:00
You can get 5 years for downloading Michael Jackson albums, yet only 4 years for killing him.


Are they gonna block every other torrent site?

Soon be mirrors up everywhere, they're only giving TPB all the publicity it wants....

EDIT Its really handy for watching TV shows you missed or cant get over here for months yet, or watch anywhere at all in the UK.

RecQuery
01-May-12, 19:31
You can get 5 years for downloading Michael Jackson albums, yet only 4 years for killing him.

Are they gonna block every other torrent site?

Soon be mirrors up everywhere, they're only giving TPB all the publicity it wants....

EDIT Its really handy for watching TV shows you missed or cant get over here for months yet, or watch anywhere at all in the UK.

They won't block everything, they'd need a court case for each one and technically all torrent sites do is link to content, they don't host any of it. Kind of like search engines but no one is trying to ban those. Actually TPB recently moved to Magnet links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_URI_scheme) which are just mathematical hashes of file names. It's not even every ISP in the UK that blocks them, I suspect they're going to use the same useless DNS block anyway even if they go for a full IP netblock that's only marginally more difficult to overcome. Truth be told most stuff gets ripped and released via IRC and Usenet and then put onto torrent sites, so they're actually attacking the wrong vector. There's a decent discussion about the decision here (http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/szrjw/bbc_news_the_pirate_bay_must_be_blocked_by_uk/).

I've actually noticed in some situations that it's as if content providers and companies don't want my money. They cling to the same old models with regional distributors and different pricing schemes and release dates for each region. So much for globalisation.

These companies used the same arguments against the VCR, Walkman, cassette tape recorder etc and they're using against the Internet now. Curiously companies that use the new content models are making money hand-over-fist.

redeyedtreefrog
01-May-12, 21:01
By far the simplest way to shut down most piracy would be to have an actual place where you can get it legally, easily and affordably. There's no service that can do that yet, all I ask is one website I can go to, pay a fiver, and download an HD film to keep.

Also I suspect that the High Court judges are so out of touch they think The Pirate Bay is an actual harbour where people in eyepatches and beards go to buy bootlegged VHS tapes.

RecQuery
02-May-12, 08:36
By far the simplest way to shut down most piracy would be to have an actual place where you can get it legally, easily and affordably. There's no service that can do that yet, all I ask is one website I can go to, pay a fiver, and download an HD film to keep.

Also I suspect that the High Court judges are so out of touch they think The Pirate Bay is an actual harbour where people in eyepatches and beards go to buy bootlegged VHS tapes.

In theory format translation is legal, so rather than you having to spend time and effort ripping a DVD or Bluray yourself. They should either provide you with, like you said, a download link - more than a one time link also - or you should be allowed to download the rip someone else has done. In many ways when buying a digital product you buy a license to that product so you should be able to enjoy it in any format you wish.

They try to portray piracy as theft but it's really not the same thing as theft deprives the company of a physical copy where as piracy creates a copy. The advantage of piracy is convenience. With the introduction of gaming services like GOG, Steam, Impulse/Stardock and Gamersgate the piracy of games dropped right down because it became easier and more convenient to buy from those services. A digital store encumbered by hard to break DRM is not an option either as it's just as annoying as format lock-in as I can only use what I purchase on the devices they say I can, I'll grudgingly accept easy to break DRM but there should be none.

Having a global release of something and a unified price would help also, not just one release date for Europe and another for the Americas and Asia etc.

I used to just think it was politicians who were out-of-touch with technology but now I realise that it's the media and legal professions too. It all stems from a bad IT education I suspect, standards haven't really improved actually.

The Inevitable IT car analogy (IT people love car analogies for explaining stuff to the general public):

Imagine that a group of people who don’t drive much, don’t understand how cars work under the bonnet/hood, and have never studied anything related to engineering, mechanics or traffic analysis suddenly decide that they’re going to stop speeding by requiring cars to automatically slam on the emergency brake and lock the controls the second they exceed the speed limit, or the second someone reports that the car has exceeded the speed limit.

Note that I didn’t say anything about turning the engine off, or putting it in neutral. Or only doing so in places where the speed limit is properly posted. Or worrying about whether there’s a car behind them that will have to slam on their own breaks to prevent a pile-up. Or actually checking that the car really is speeding before acting on the report.

Now imagine that criticisms and objections raised by actual drivers, the car industry, traffic engineers, motorway planners, and city planners are all dismissed as speeder propaganda.

That’s basically what a lot of this Internet censorship and anti-piracy stuff is like for IT/technology savvy people.

On a side note DRM is like buying a car and not being allowed to modify that car in anyway, not being able to look at the engine, install a different sound system, replace the tires etc.

Connor.
02-May-12, 13:51
The problem is torrent sites and the users are getting smarter in their attempts to bypass the "brick walls" that the government and media companies build. The reason the large majority of it isn't working is because they are not doing it fast enough.

I know torrent sites that have a large number of users that have been going for years which are never mentioned and therefore succeed.

As soon as TPB and BTjunkie were mentioned in online news etc, users scattered. No matter how many sites that they pull down, ten go up in its place.

The media companies are ignorant to the fact that half of the people that are uploading this material (the actual law breakers) work for them!

The introduction of magnet links have protected the websites but not the users that download the torrents from their website, and doing so has made the easy job of "they are offering torrents, shut them down" where it's just one site not so easy. Now they have to "eeny meeny miney mo" who they're going to charge from a list of thousands.

ISP's will be aware of users who torrent and the vast majority of them will take no heed.

No stopping it, m'fraid.

RecQuery
02-May-12, 15:50
The problem is torrent sites and the users are getting smarter in their attempts to bypass the "brick walls" that the government and media companies build. The reason the large majority of it isn't working is because they are not doing it fast enough.

I know torrent sites that have a large number of users that have been going for years which are never mentioned and therefore succeed.

As soon as TPB and BTjunkie were mentioned in online news etc, users scattered. No matter how many sites that they pull down, ten go up in its place.


Exactly, the Internet was designed to survive a nuclear war and has only become more robust since then. I'm a member of several private trackers you never hear about in the general media or even the midrange technical press. I haven't used TPB since about 2004/2005. I only ever use torrents now when I can't find something on Usenet or IRC which you very rarely hear about.

They completely ignore the fact that torrents are also a legitimate download system used by various Linux distributions and companies.



The media companies are ignorant to the fact that half of the people that are uploading this material (the actual law breakers) work for them!


I'm pretty sure every scene release group has a member that works in a CD/DVD/Bluray pressing plant or for a production, broadcasting or marketing company involved with the material. Several of the things I've grabbed over the years have been the sort of pre-release review material they give to critics, reviewers and journalists.



The introduction of magnet links have protected the websites but not the users that download the torrents from their website, and doing so has made the easy job of "they are offering torrents, shut them down" where it's just one site not so easy. Now they have to "eeny meeny miney mo" who they're going to charge from a list of thousands.

ISP's will be aware of users who torrent and the vast majority of them will take no heed.

No stopping it, m'fraid.

There are various projects out there to increase the anonymity and further decentralise stuff. I'd say it's pretty anonymous as it is. The people that get caught are usually the low hanging fruit that can't tell the difference between actual and fake material, use public trackers, don't take any precautions (blocklists, peer guardian, seedboxes etc). As for the hosts they usually use their actual name, don't rent a server in a safe country, don't pay with a prepaid card etc.

Connor.
03-May-12, 20:48
Just tried accessing TPB to see what happens. Experienced the Virgin Media ban page.

My 3 usual haunts are still fine though.

What a clever idea, put a ban on a site everyone jumped ship (pardon the pun) from.


They completely ignore the fact that torrents are also a legitimate download system used by various Linux distributions and companies.

I know! They may as well ban Google while they're at it. You can download copyrighted material from there and get onto torrent sites using the search engine.

Alrock
03-May-12, 22:44
TPB still working fine for me.

RecQuery
08-May-12, 09:09
There's another surprise

UK Pirate Bay traffic has increased by 12 million visitors since the block started yesterday (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/05/03/uk-order-blacklist-of-the-pirate-bay-torrent-site-sees-record-traffic/)

teddybear1873
08-May-12, 10:11
There's another surprise

UK Pirate Bay traffic has increased by 12 million visitors since the block started yesterday (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/05/03/uk-order-blacklist-of-the-pirate-bay-torrent-site-sees-record-traffic/)

Four million subscribers blocked, twelve million new subscribers to Pirate Bay.
Let the games begin...