BT ordered to block pirate links

[xxMATTGxx]

A High Court judge has ruled that BT must block access to a website which provides links to pirated movies.

Newzbin 2 is a members-only site which aggregates a large amount of the illegally copied material found on Usenet discussion forums.

The landmark case is the first time that an ISP has been ordered to block access to such a site.

It paves the way for other sites to be blocked as part of a major crackdown on piracy.

In his ruling, Justice Arnold stated: "In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes."

He continued: "It knows that the users of Newzbin 2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin 2."

BT and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which brought the case, will be back in court in October to work out how the blocking will work.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14322957

So really it's only time until all ISP's in the United Kingdom have to block this site and maybe other illegal downloading sites in the future... Welcome to China anyone?

[:Markster:]

Lol China? I really doubt that, i'd rather say Sweden. But yeah interesting story, though i really doubt illegal downloading will ever stop. There is always going to be people who'd rather get things for free and people willing to share their purchases with the community. Also some of the sites have got legit material on them so the court cases with those sites will take ages to resolve. What makes shutting down sites even harder is the international laws, that's why sites such as Wikileaks and PirateBay are hosted in Sweden, as they don't have as strict laws on copyrighted materials. As far as the ISPs go they can always be bypassed i would suppose. But yeah this is a very interesting topic, I'm definitely going to keep an eye on what's going to happen.
- Mark

[Ardemax]

glad i moved to Orange haha.

i want to see less pirated movies cos' you know its only fair, but tbh its not going to do a lot and there are PLENTY of ways around it.

[Shar]

glad i moved to Orange haha.

i want to see less pirated movies cos' you know its only fair, but tbh its not going to do a lot and there are PLENTY of ways around it.
I agree, I doubt it will make a big difference..

I just moved to BT too :(

[xxMATTGxx]

glad i moved to Orange haha.

i want to see less pirated movies cos' you know its only fair, but tbh its not going to do a lot and there are PLENTY of ways around it.

Orange would most likely use BT wholesale or whatever you call it so you would most likely be affected. But there would be always ways to get around the block so blah.

[Recursion]

I doubt we'll see it put into action, either way, if you're smart enough to use USENET, you're smart enough to bypass their block (which is as easy as not using BT's DNS... lol)

[Niall!]

Interesting to see they're going after usenet first and not torrents.

Hmm, this could be problematic for me.

[dbgtz]

Interesting to see they're going after usenet first and not torrents.

Hmm, this could be problematic for me.

I don't think they can block torrent sites as they're technically not doing anything illegal.

[beth]

does this mean yr activity whilst trying to access these sites will be logged etc? is it easier to be caught doing illegal stuff?

[-Danube-]

does this mean yr activity whilst trying to access these sites will be logged etc? is it easier to be caught doing illegal stuff?

Your ISP can see what sites you are accessing, they probably do keep some kinda of log of which IPs connected to which or something. But they have so many customers it would be hard to track. ISPs turn a blind eye to privating i think, put it this way, if you knew a certain internet company was shopping people to the cops for illegal downloading, would you buy broadband from them? No. There are cases where people get letters from their ISP but i think that in an extreme case when its getting out of hand?

There are also such think as 'fake' torrents. Government bodies and over agencies post fake torrents up on sites, you then download them and boom, they have your IP.

[Kasabian]

Your ISP can see what sites you are accessing, they probably do keep some kinda of log of which IPs connected to which or something.

They'd know that TPB is in my top 3 visited sites then (a) :D


There are also such think as 'fake' torrents. Government bodies and over agencies post fake torrents up on sites, you then download them and boom, they have your IP.


This is true. This is why I try to stick to TPB & Demonoid now, the moderation of torrents is more upkept.

I also steer clear of many video files contained in rar/zip files. 9 times out of 10, if someone has ripped a film, they upload the clean AVI. Other things to look out for are 'README' or 'UNRAR INSTRUCTIONS' and some other bollocks like that - rippers use NFO files, rather than text/html documents. Also, it might sound stupid but look for torrents that have screencaps - this can be used to identify whether it is a legit rip of the film, or a fake.

It's also been reported that the fake torrents set up by the government are usually the trailer of the film you are downloading, with 700mb of other junk to make it look legit - like you said, they then get your IP.

[Recursion]

Interesting to see they're going after usenet first and not torrents.

Hmm, this could be problematic for me.

If you're smart enough to use USENET, you're smart enough to circumvent it.

[GoldenMerc]

Welcome to China

[Mark]

Will they do this at the ISP end or through all the cables that BT own?

[Recursion]

Will they do this at the ISP end or through all the cables that BT own?

At the ISP's end, but most ISPs in the UK use BT Wholesale and so will be affected.

[peteyt]

The problem with the crackdown on illegal downloading is it gets no where.

How many times each year have I heard people scarred about announcements and yet nothing happens.

I'll admit when I was young I downloaded a little but as I grew up I realised I wanted to work in media production - film,tv,radio. The way I see it is if you worked in a small shop and someone stole from it, you wouldn't be pleased especially if it ended up out of your wages, but because its digital people don't see it the same way.

The big problem however is simple: Empty threats. If they actually did do something about it and showed they meant business, then it could work but it's a large job with a large amount of customers and there's always ways around.

Look at LimeWire and how many years it took for a court case, because the users host the stuff both legal and illegal. I mean LimeWire could be seen really like MSN Messenger - anyone could use it right now to send someone stuff illegally, but that doesn't mean the software itself is.

[Recursion]

The problem with the crackdown on illegal downloading is it gets no where.

How many times each year have I heard people scarred about announcements and yet nothing happens.

I'll admit when I was young I downloaded a little but as I grew up I realised I wanted to work in media production - film,tv,radio. The way I see it is if you worked in a small shop and someone stole from it, you wouldn't be pleased especially if it ended up out of your wages, but because its digital people don't see it the same way.

The big problem however is simple: Empty threats. If they actually did do something about it and showed they meant business, then it could work but it's a large job with a large amount of customers and there's always ways around.

Look at LimeWire and how many years it took for a court case, because the users host the stuff both legal and illegal. I mean LimeWire could be seen really like MSN Messenger - anyone could use it right now to send someone stuff illegally, but that doesn't mean the software itself is.

Piracy is not the same as walking into a shop and stealing. When you steal from a shop, something is taken and lost, with piracy, a sale has been made, but it has been duplicated.

The fact of the matter is, if the MPA, MPAA, RIAA and all the other media production companies didn't keep demanding more money and actually provided consumers with media in a format they wanted (ala Netflix or a cheaper iTunes) then maybe piracy would subside a little. I don't see why these corporate **** heads are entitled to earn anymore than a doctor or a paramedic, much like footballers. You know, some copyright infringement cases have had worse penalties than murder or child abuse over in the states?

[peteyt]

Piracy is not the same as walking into a shop and stealing. When you steal from a shop, something is taken and lost, with piracy, a sale has been made, but it has been duplicated.

The fact of the matter is, if the MPA, MPAA, RIAA and all the other media production companies didn't keep demanding more money and actually provided consumers with media in a format they wanted (ala Netflix or a cheaper iTunes) then maybe piracy would subside a little. I don't see why these corporate **** heads are entitled to earn anymore than a doctor or a paramedic, much like footballers. You know, some copyright infringement cases have had worse penalties than murder or child abuse over in the states?

I agree that a lot of them are greedy, but then so is Tesco. You may not technically agree it's stealing, but your getting something for free you should have paid for.

The problem is that making it cheaper won't work. No matter what services are brought up, cheaper itunes songs, videos etc. a lot of people will often always take the free option. I'd actually say most would take the free option - I mean tracks can be cheap like 50p but people still don't take them simply because free is better than 50p.

The other problem is most of these people don't care how much money they are making. It is very well to say that the people are making too much money but the same people would probably have no problem downloading from an independent film company that is making little money and trying to fight it out.

My worry is what happens if everyone starts downloading and no one buys digitally or physically. There would be no music or films because to actually make something like films you need a budget. I wouldn't be surprised if popular TV shows where cancelled in the past because it looked unpopular but everyone was just downloading. I still think its a bit annoying that tv ratings ignore stuff like iplayer views.

[xxMATTGxx]

This was mentioned in an article somewhere but a lot of US tv shows get downloaded by people on the other side of the world as we get them weeks or months after. So if they were aired on the same date or close then that would stop some people from downloading? Maybe, maybe not but If services were much better then it would stop some downloaders.

[Flisker]

I doubt we'll see it put into action, either way, if you're smart enough to use USENET, you're smart enough to bypass their block (which is as easy as not using BT's DNS... lol)

I doubt it will be as easy as that. I'm 100% sure BT would have thought of that since at the moment they are using the same technology (CleanFeed) to block the child pornography sites so if it was that simple to bypass then it won't be all that useful.


BT did say they won't be appealing the decision and have to go back to court (in August I think?) to announce how they are going to block it (if I remember correctly, can't find the source at the moment). I hope some petition from OpenRightsGroup, Avaaz or 38 Degrees that can stop this.

[Recursion]

I doubt it will be as easy as that. I'm 100% sure BT would have thought of that since at the moment they are using the same technology (CleanFeed) to block the child pornography sites so if it was that simple to bypass then it won't be all that useful.


BT did say they won't be appealing the decision and have to go back to court (in August I think?) to announce how they are going to block it (if I remember correctly, can't find the source at the moment). I hope some petition from OpenRightsGroup, Avaaz or 38 Degrees that can stop this.

BT were arguing the only partly effective way they could do it was to use CleanFeed, which they admitted wouldn't be able to handle the amount of traffic it would be blocking once Newzbin was added to the filter.