back to article Brit telco flagship BT joins blockade of Pirate Bay

BT has glued shut conventional access to The Pirate Bay in the UK, which means all the major ISPs in Blighty have now complied with a High Court judge's order to block thepiratebay.se from their networks. Virgin Media was the first to comply with the order and O2-owner Telefonica, TalkTalk, Everything Everywhere and BSkyB all …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. MJI Silver badge

    Still up on Demon

    Perhaps I should ask BT for my Migration Access Codes

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still up on Demon

      Three members of the RIAA just disliked your post.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Haaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaaaahhah oh I have tears in my eyes!

      When it said Pirate Bay has been cut off.... Oh my!

      Then WTF am I looking at now!

      Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

      Cut off? Yeah right...

      1. MJI Silver badge

        Re AC

        Took me 30 seconds to get onto it at home, so all working.

        Still up on Demon as well at work

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Khaptain Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Thinking finance here ( or lack of)

    When the BMI, et al, realise that no extra income will be accrued will the courts issue a new order allowing for the the TPB to be accessible again ?

  3. David Hicks
    FAIL

    Thus ending piracy once and for all!

    For all I tell you!

  4. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Happy

    Thanks, El Reg

    "The Register asked the BPI if it planned to take further action regarding TPB being hosted elsewhere on other IP addresses"

    Your question was politely met with a "we have no comment to make on that at the moment" followed shortly by the sound of a surf getting a bollocking by a middle manager in the background as it was the first they had ever heard of it.

    1. IronSteve

      Re: Thanks, El Reg

      *serf ?

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: Thanks, El Reg

        Oh dear. I will write it out 100 times.

  5. Mystic Megabyte
    Pirate

    https://thepiratebay.se is still available north of englandshire.

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Sir

      I believe the bootnote asked us not to do that Mystic :)

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Sir

        That's not a really workaround, unless you consider moving house a workaround.

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon

          Re: Sir

          If you had read the comments on the previous article, you would know that it is, in fact, a work-around.

          The clue is in the header.

          1. Dan 55 Silver badge
            WTF?

            Re: Sir

            Moving house and getting ADSL set up in record time to be able to use the site that dare not say it's name until BT run some Perl script at, I don't know, 3 in the morning on Saturday is a workaround?

            Only criminals must want to live in the North of Englandshire.

            1. Sir Runcible Spoon

              Re: Sir

              Sigh..

              SsSsSsSsSsSsSsS

              Get it yet? No, I'm not talking about a reptile house in the North of Englandshire just to get to TPB.

              1. Dan 55 Silver badge
                Facepalm

                Re: Sir

                My apologies, as I am outside of Englandshire I'm not 100% up on the workarounds du jour. In fact I don't even consider that a workaround, has BT really complied with the judgement?

                1. Sir Runcible Spoon

                  Re: Sir

                  Ah, fair enough. BTW Englandshire isn't a real place :)

                  I know it isn't really particularly technical but it does get around the block with other ISP's so I would expect it to work with BT's

          2. robin48gx

            Re: Sir

            header---should that be hydra ???

        2. John Sanders
          Happy

          Re: Sir

          Made me spill my drink

      2. Mystic Megabyte

        Re: Sir

        I'm sorry but I just copy and pasted what I thought was the normal address. The article did not state the header. In fact I have never downloaded anything from TPB but the fact that it is apparently blocked has made me inquisitive. IMO Hollywood churns out shite so why would I bother to download it?

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon

          Re: Sir

          "In fact I have never downloaded anything from TPB but the fact that it is apparently blocked has made me inquisitive"

          The Streisand effect at work :) I only mentioned it because quite a lot of posts were removed last outing for detailing work-arounds.

    2. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      ...and the other 50 nearly identical torrent search sites are still available.

      Blocking TPB is merely pissing in the wind for the sake of political brownie points.

  6. Ol'Peculier
    Thumb Up

    BT-MBB

    I'm on a BT managed broadband connection with a static IP at work, supplied by a smallish third party and can still see TPB here ,

  7. sugerbear

    If only the internet was more reslilient.

    For people that dont understand the internet and just use google to find things this will be a killer blow. They will just have to turn on their radio, subscribe to sky/spotify or go back to Mr Wong and his DVD case of the latest blockbusters.

    For everyone else....

    1. Annihilator
      Thumb Up

      Re: If only the internet was more reslilient.

      For people who use Google to find things, I'm pretty sure they'd carry on as normal using Google to find things, given it's as effective a tool at finding this stuff as TPB ever was/is. So I don't think Mr Wong and his hold-all of DVDs should get his hopes up and turn up to the Fox & Hound expecting a large increase in sales.

  8. Dick Emery
    FAIL

    Waste of time

    Just put the alternate IP in your hosts file. Pretty pointless blocking it. There will always be a way around it.

    1. NogginTheNog
      FAIL

      Re: Waste of time

      I think you may all be missing the point? The ISPs don't WANT to get involved in blocking sites, hence they're doing the very minimum required to say they've complied with the court order. They don't give a flying fuck if it can be circumvented in 30 seconds.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Waste of time

        That's bullshit for a start.

        Virgin blocked the newer IPs.

        They weren't told to, they just decided to.

  9. Annihilator
    Happy

    Not meant as a workaround, honest

    I'm pointing this out due to how laughable the situation is, but I noticed last night from an O2 connection that a certain large search engine still caches the content of TPB and allows you to "preview" it without even a flicker of the blocking armada, which seems insane as to the triviality of evasion.

    Bin the post if necessary mods, just laughed when I noticed this and thought I'd share my amusement.

  10. dotdavid
    Stop

    "there are plenty of workarounds for customers with internet access from the big telco players in Blighty"

    Don't worry BPI, that's a vicious rumour with absolutely no basis in fact. The internets address of the crims has been permanently blocked forever so piracy is now finished and you can get back to promoting and producing top-quality audio entertainment.

  11. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    to paraphrase our current Stasi student-in chief..

    "It's trivially easy to work-around, but anyone doing so is obviously a criminal"

  12. jacobbe
    WTF?

    captain slow

    must be slow to roll this out..... as it still works in the home counties as of wednesday morning.

  13. ukgnome
    Trollface

    Is asking your mate to rip you a copy the same as posting a workaround?

    *troll for the very obvious reason, sorry El Mod

  14. Ben Tasker

    Huge effort in the blocking page

    Error - site blocked

    That's it! If it was me, I'd have included information on why it was blocked and who to contact to complain. But then I guess it's just a default page used to block a range of things. Still a HTML comment saying "Who's a naughty boy then?" wouldn't have gone amiss

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Huge effort in the blocking page

      That's better than Sky. It just times out on them, at least you know it's alive but blocked.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well that's it then, downloading that film, tv programme or some music is over for good. it's back to a 300 baud modem and a BBS for me. ;-)

  16. Zombie Womble

    "Sadly for record labels, cutting off thepiratebay.se won't prevent web surfers in the UK from accessing the music content elsewhere."

    I bet they're not too sad about blocking the promotion of independent artists on the Pirate Bay though.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's just a veneer

      You and I know what the Pirate Bay is for. The clue is in the name.

  17. wowfood

    well this is pointless

    oh no, what ever will I do, I can no longer access the music and dvds I downloaded with so much love...

    pfft.

    If anything I'm more annoyed because there's quite a few free applications (as in meant to be free, not ripped) linked on TPB. I used to use it because it was faster than a direct download from the sites. Ah well, back to kazaa for me.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: The free stuff

      Yes I have as well, also got me out of trouble when my XP SP3 CD got broken.

      Download it and use it with my own licence key.

  18. Elmer Phud
    Boffin

    Corporates only think like corporates

    It's a bit like thinking that you can only get burgers from McD's or Pizza from Pizza Hut or beer from Carlsberg.

    Not everyone is going to the Olympics

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I still miss SuprNova

    It had a large userbase and all the movies etc. were categorised so you could look at just the sci-fi or the comedy or the action etc. depending on what mood you were in.

  20. pewpie
    FAIL

    Err..

    "Sadly for record labels, cutting off thepiratebay.se won't prevent web surfers in the UK from accessing the music content elsewhere."

    BT have cut off jack shit. They have just stood in the way and said 'no - naughty!'. That would be great if the world was in 1 dimension.. but sadly for them, and any fools like them, there are at least another three.

  21. The FunkeyGibbon
    Trollface

    Oh noes!

    Now people are being told that they can't steal... how awful!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it's not just BT that is blocking pirate bay

    I noticed that the Ethiopian Governmint have just set their anti-democratic firewall to kill all VPN's and to drop the initial handshake of ToR negotiations; I bet the regime is blocking the hungry nation from downloading from PirateBay too! https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ethiopia-introduces-deep-packet-inspection (Ethiopian Telecoms seem to be owned/controlled by Orange/France_Telecom)

    According to other French rumours the Amesys spinoff of Bull have just installed weaponiseable DPI systems called Eagle in Morocco (codenamed PopCorn), in Qatar (codename Finger) and maybe in 4 locations in mainland France (codename EAGDLP1101) There might be a trial about the Eagle system sold to Libya which, according to Bull spokespersons was used to attack terrorists and pedophiles in Libya, who then later became the new Libyan Council, seriously! (trial) http://www.fidh.org/Opening-of-a-judicial-inquiry

    (DPI used against pedos) http://reflets.info/amesys-vendeur-darmes-numeriques-decomplexe/

    According to internal Nokia Siemens Networks documents they have installed 90 humungous DPI 'monitoring centres' in 60 countries, including Iran, Bahrain...and I guess most of the EU. I have to guess because NSN seem to have lost some paperwork from when they transferred their DPI internet monitoring/blocking technology systems to a Guernsey based shell company who then transferred it to a Munich based company - on the opposite side of the street to NSN, that employed the same NSN engineers who sold and continue to maintain their Iranian DPI with software upgrades (contractually) but who have forgotten nearly everything else, allegedly. Who'd like to bet that UK has between one to four 'Eagles' or NSN 'monitoring centers'???

    this is all open source stuff and I didn't post any work-arounds

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Ethiopians

      I am glad they have nothing else to worry about.

      So they need no more aid.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Streisand

    effect

    another

    perfect

    case

    of

    Message from the spnsors: Given that the people at the helm of the entertainment industry are not stupid (stop the sniggering, or else), and with no other obvious agenda in sight, the only explanations is, that the entertainment business remains, in fact, deep in the pockets of those those nasty piratebay terrorists, and tries every means possible to spread this pirate evil, as seen in this latest clever ploy to publicize this disgusting pirate business.

  24. Shane8
    FAIL

    if all torrents and p2p were stopped then why would we need to pay for fibre lines and faster broadband? Pretty sure all ISPs know this....

    1. Velv
      FAIL

      Given BT et al provides paid for services, I'm quite sure they'd be perfectly happy to be rid of the huge volumes of torrent traffic as it would give them the capacity to offer even more IPTV services which they could charge for.

      Don't for one minute assume they are happy to take your money just for the "fibre" - if they could make more money by charging for the programmes they would.

  25. doublehelix

    The situation in the UK is like that in The Netherlands. This is pure censorship showing the strength of industrial lobbyists and their effect on our democracy, freedom of information and legal system. Beware!

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    har har har

    Oh noes! The great unwashed have less access to downloadz illegalz0rs! zZzZzZ A determined child could probably get around the block if they were inclined towards anarchy and taking down the fascists harming their human rights to watch everything free!!!!

    1. pewpie
      Devil

      Re: har har har

      There is not one aspect to your post which isn't juvenile and just plain wrong.

      Ergo - you must work for the music industry!

  27. Richard Cartledge

    https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk

    Hasn't been banned

    1. Intractable Potsherd
      Thumb Up

      You are correct!

      That one works on a Virgin Media connection, whereas the https one above doesn't.

      Disclaimer: I have never downloaded anything from PirateBay or anywhere else (I don't have a bittorrent client and never have), but since this land-grab by the media industry, I'm determined to keep popping over to their homepage to show that I do not approve of censorship.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WHERE AM I GOING TO GET MY LINUX ISOS FROM NOW

  29. pewpie
    Thumb Down

    meh..

    When will people learn about one of the oldest and most corrupt commercial strongholds ever to surface.. (I refer to that of Publishing.) again - open up your history books.. they (the publishing houses) have owned it all since music was squashed onto a paper thing call a PAGE with stuff called INK. and you had to pay a musician to hear it. That's of course when musicians were real people - not computers.

    Metallica sue their fans.. People still buy their shitty little records.

    As a race we deserve all we get. If people exercised taste and decency there would be no money-grabbing empires that just wanna milk the cash-cow for all it's worth..

  30. Andy Livingstone

    Dear El Mod

    Brit. Telco. Blighty.

    Is it really necessary to workaround the English language?

    El Reader.

  31. Gonebirdin

    So if I find an alternate TPB site and start downloading could I, if ever I get a knock on the door use the excuse that my ISP has blocked access to TPB as a defence as I couldn't possibly get round that surely?

  32. AndGregor
    Joke

    legitimate usage

    And for the rest of us using p2p for things such as, erm and I aah... will get back to you on that.

  33. catphish

    Just tested this...

    and it seemed to work fine.

    Further investigation reveals that they have been unable to block its IPv6 address because they don't offer IPv6 connectivity and so the connection was automagically tunnelled to another ISP...

    Perhaps 2 wrongs do make a right?

  34. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Go

    On a serious note

    Does anyone know, or can someone shed some light on how this is being implemented?

    It is obviously not DNS level.

    Is it that DPI that sTalk sTalk already have in place (HI, I'm a sTalk sTalk customer, in case you didn't guess).

    Or some other method. I am a noob at these things and always hungry to learn more.

    Please elucidate and enlighten me.

    Ta.

    1. Chad H.

      Re: On a serious note

      My understanding is that many of the ISPs have attached the block method to things like CleanFeed which block things on the "Internet Watch Foundation" blacklist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_system)

      The IWF has been saying for ages that their list only blocks people who might accidentally stumble across kiddy porn, and those who are actively looking for it aren't even slowed down. As you can see from this comment thread alone, this is most definitely the case with this block.

  35. Homer 1
    Big Brother

    Not even allowed to talk about workarounds?

    Not a criticism of El Reg, but it's a bloody sad state of affairs when people are afraid to even have a public conversation.

    What next: thought crime?

    1. Dick Emery
      Big Brother

      Re: Not even allowed to talk about workarounds?

      Other sites such as torrentfreak will gladly divulge such things. As it stands the UK has become more and more a police state where censorship and oppression are becoming the norm, that soon you won't be able to talk about anything not approved by the state.

      Soon we will all have electronic tags implanted at birth to follow us everywhere and cameras in our domiciles to make sure we are not doing anything 'naughty'. You think I am joking? Just you wait.

      1. Homer 1
        Big Brother

        Re: Not even allowed to talk about workarounds?

        "soon you won't be able to talk about anything not approved by the state"

        Sadly you're right.

        Between super-injuctions, the GCHQ snooper's charter, RIPA (which criminalises keeping your own passwords secret), UK data retention policies (a documented violation of the European Convention of Human Rights), "Forward Intelligence Team" secret police spying on every granny and her dog who ever waved a banner at a protest rally, the criminalisation of public photography (whilst hypocritically mounting surveillance cameras on every street corner), the Special Relationship® between the UK and the Fourth Reich of America (which basically transforms every Brit into an American citizen, for all legal intents and purposes - hello Gitmo and/or execution), and now the overhanging threat of prosecution for the heinous "crime" of supposedly "facilitating infringement", by merely having a conversation or linking to information, the United States of Blighty is beginning to feel like occupied France during WWII, and I'm starting to feel like I should join The Underground (a.k.a. Anonymous).

        It's like the British public is engaged in a cold war with its own government (such as it is, since "the government" is now just "the corporations"). It's enough to make me wish the faux "terrorists", for whom many of these measures are supposedly implemented, would hurry up and win. Frankly an al-Qaeda government might be preferable, and I'm only half-kidding. It might be worth it just to get rid of the Lockheed Martins and MPAAs of the world.

        In reality, all this austerity and oppression is actually for the benefit of the same (mainly) American Big Corporations (i.e. the real terrorists) that bankrupted our society in the first place, in both the moral and financial sense, whilst pursuing their insatiable lust for money and power.

      2. Homer 1
        Terminator

        Re: Not even allowed to talk about workarounds?

        Tssk. You mentioned "torrentfreak".

        You must therefore be a circumvention device, an infringement facilitator, a Goddamn commie, hippie, freetard and quite possibly a terrorist, so you should be taken to Gitmo for a jolly good torturing immediately, along with every reader, contributor and employee of El Reg who has been tainted with your heresy, including... erm, me.

        Damn.

  36. P. Lee
    Pirate

    TBP blockaded?

    Since most of the world is outside BT, I think the correct phrase is "BT customers blockaded."

    "Continent cut off" was funny. This is funny like King Canute is funny.

  37. Mystic Megabyte
    Big Brother

    Cunning Workaround?

    Google "thepiratebay"

    Click on the first link which is http://thepiratebay.se

    Please ignore my first post as it is overly complex.

    On a serious note, is it now a crime to discuss such things? If so then I shall only vote for a politician who will stand up against American interference in our laws.

    Anyone listening? No not you George!

    1. Homer 1
      Alien

      Re: Cunning Workaround?

      Here's an even more cunning workaround... the entire population should emigrate to a more democratic country, like China, for example. We might as well, after all we buy nearly everything from there anyway. Think of the savings on shipping costs!

      Then the MAFIAA® politicians can revel in the "victory" of having the United States of Britain all to themselves.

  38. KHobbits

    For people who find themselves interested in pirate politics, you might find the pirate party website to have an interesting stance on the situation....

    http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/Pirate_Bay_Proxy

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    lots to choose from!

    http://kat.ph/blog/GreenPirate/post/2442/

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like