[MilesTails]

For those of you that don't know, this week BT agreed with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to put a block on the Pirate bay. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/251609/b...irate-bay.html

Now hang on a minute, what? They are now blocking torrent sites which hosts perfectly legal material? So lets just do a quick background on the IWF.

Originally founded in 1996 but came into effect around about 2001. What are they there to do. "Protect" the public, they originally set out to filter:

Originally Posted by IWF site

To minimise the availability of potentially illegal internet content specifically;
images of child sexual abuse* hosted anywhere in the world
criminally obscene content hosted in the UK
incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK

Which is all fine but I'm no expert but does a torrent site come under those categories? There are perfectly legal torrents out there.

The fact has become clear, this mission to protect us from the internet is pathetic. They have way too much power. They will be blocking whatever they damn well please soon enough.

ISPs are being pressured to sign up to this filtering scheme. Last time I heard Zen Internet refused like hell.

The most heard of incident of this censorship is with wikipedia for having an album cover image by the band Scorpions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interne..._and_Wikipedia

And that is another problem, websites are not being told if they are being filtered. They just show up as 404 page not found errors.

I for one, do not want my internet to be "nazifyed" as it were. I'm indeed calling ******** of the highest order.

What the hell happened to net neutrality?

[Yuffie]

As Isohunt point out,

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero--the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

Basically a site which had perfectly legal reasons to exist has been shut down.

[Bagration]

I am going to torrent something tonight in revenge. I hope the music, game, and film industries realise that you can not stop torrenting. This will do nothing. The admins @ piratebay are heros in the struggle to topple intellectual property.

[3105]

All this has been, from The Pirate Bay trial to this new filter, is a futile attempt to stop something which, to be quite honest barely affects anyone anyway.

What are they going to do, attempt to block all torrent websites? Actually, that wouldn't surprise me. We all know BitTorrent is perfectly legal software but I'm sure it won't matter because it is UsEd FoR eViL.

[DrunkHamster]

I think the article is quite misleading - BT have only blocked TPB for mobile internet, i.e. people accessing it from their mobile phones. What's more, the block is easily overridden simply by phoning BT. I agree with the sentiment of the people who are worried by this, but I don't think the circumstance merit it in this case.

[Youknowit]

Originally Posted by DrunkHamster

I think the article is quite misleading - BT have only blocked TPB for mobile internet, i.e. people accessing it from their mobile phones. What's more, the block is easily overridden simply by phoning BT. I agree with the sentiment of the people who are worried by this, but I don't think the circumstance merit it in this case.

BT flexing their muscles? Readying for an overhaul?

We'll see...

[3105]

Originally Posted by DrunkHamster

I think the article is quite misleading - BT have only blocked TPB for mobile internet, i.e. people accessing it from their mobile phones. What's more, the block is easily overridden simply by phoning BT. I agree with the sentiment of the people who are worried by this, but I don't think the circumstance merit it in this case.

I'd rather it work the opposite way. No block, but if you want one phone up to get it. Either way it's unnecessary and annoying, because it is nearly impossible to 'protect' people from things on the internet anyway.

As Youknowit said, it seems like they're getting ready for some kind of overhaul.