We are now on the slippery slope of which there is no return.
The minute UK ISPs got the infrastructure in place to block TBP, they got the infrastructure to block any webpage the government want at the touch of a few buttons. Now it's easy to "just block this website as well".
This isn't anything new. Most of the major ISPs in the UK work with the Internet Watch Foundation [1] who maintain a blacklist of sites with certain types of content (child pornography, criminally obscene images, etc.) and have been blocking these for years.
Understood, but the point here is that promobay.org doesn't actually link to copyright material or anything else of such a nature.
Promobay.org was just banned because it has a weak affiliation to a method of desceminating content, some of which could in certain circumstances be copyright material - but ultimately that is up to the USER and not the website to which promobay is related.
We haven't had official word from any of the ISPs involved.
Sounds to me like a mistake, or an excessively cautious response to the prior court order requiring ISPs to block access to TPB. This may be a different domain, and it may be hosted on a different server, but this is inextricably linked to TPB.
Actually not strictly true. Only the larger named ISPs (larger market share) have to comply. The smaller ISPs do not.
+£10 for 100Gb. +£20 for 200Gb. Not particularly expensive and considering it's a proper line, not some screwed up censored telescreen pipe, I'm not fussed.
They seem to price much higher for daytime use , which is when I would mainly use it (I work from home). 200GB of offpeak and daytime per month would be £332.00.
Besides, if everyone just switched to a "proper" ISP then they would be forced into compliance, the same as everyone else.
I can't seem to get more than 50GB per month with that (according to logs I shift 10x that).
Problem is that people will just go with whichever ISP is most popular and their friends are using or the cheapest. People won't generally sit and research all of their options.
They tried implementing a similar system here in Australia, but recently our Communications Minister Stephen Conroy backed down and instead said they would only block sites related to child abuse only after years of public backlash about the filter.
Seeing what has happened in the UK even if it was an accident with The Promo Bay has made me realise that even though a government says it has its peoples interests at heart with a filter, it's all too easy to add a site to a blocklist when it should be a much more complicated and drawn out process that ensures only bad sites get blocked not sites trying to help unsigned artists.
Who do you think was responsible for implementing the filter in the first place? The courts may have been responsible for extending it, but there should never have been a filter introduced in the first place to be extended. Filtering has been proven to be very ineffective, expensive and detrimental to an open society. The Internet might have it's grey areas, but filtering doesn't benefit anyone other than the lobbyists acting on behalf of the entertainment industry averse to change.
I'm saying that governments may be sincere in their motives with censorship, and not betray their motives, but other mechanisms may still pervert and corrupt the implementation.
Don't mistake me for someone in favour of filters.
The court has ordered that they block access. Different ISPs have chosen to block this in different ways. Some drop the DNS, some redirect to their own blocking site.
Presumably the Pirate Party will add another option to their TPB proxy to show those who are already convinced how stupid this is (https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/).
JANET is still one of those few bastions of sanity. Goodness knows how long that'll last though. Probably until someone notices it's being run sensibly and decides to do something about it.
Promobay.org is included on the list of URLs Virgin Media is required to block under UK law following the ruling of the High Court against the Pirate Bay. As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes compelling legal alternatives are needed to give consumers access to great content at the right price.
and followed by:
Also for the record this site isn't blocked by the IWF, it's a seperate matter caused by the court order against the Pirate Bay.
Sorry, the web page you have requested is not available through Virgin Media.
Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to this site in order to help protect against copyright infringement.
Both work on Sky (first one with www. prepended - seems to be a config issue), but the second link looks like just a TPB mirror/proxy - it has the search for torrents mainly. That's something completely different than the first link, which is actually a promotion site.
promobay.org resolves to 108.59.2.74 for me, and www.promobay.org resolves to 108.59.2.75.
The first is blocked for me on Virgin, but the second works fine. This does look like a DNS issue on the part of TPB, rather than Virgin blocking promobay.
it might be surprising to find that Talktalk and bt (i think) went to court fighting the original blocking orders, they were very unwilling to implement mandatory blocking
neither of these sites is blocked for me, in the UK.
I use IDNET - smaller broadband companies don't have to comply with these rulings. Also, well defined usage limits and no throttling! what's not to like? oh, slightly more expensive.
Sounds like a VPN will completely and invisibly bypass the block. So the filtering will only inconvenience the least sophisticated (and from the point of view of the "content industry," the least scary) violators.
It's a plan that might have been drafted by the highest levels of organized piracy, to keep the hoi polloi in their thrall.
The minute UK ISPs got the infrastructure in place to block TBP, they got the infrastructure to block any webpage the government want at the touch of a few buttons. Now it's easy to "just block this website as well".
The beginning of a censored internet.
Fucking wonderful.
(Blocked on Be [bethere.co.uk] too, btw.)