Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire Blocked In the UK

hypnosec writes "The movie industry in the UK is having a ball, as far as blocking of sites allegedly involved in piracy is concerned, as courts have asked UK ISPs to enforce a blockade on Project Free TV, YIFY, PrimeWire and others. Getting a torrent or steaming site blocked in the UK is a mere paperwork formality, since ISPs have completely stopped defending against these orders. As it stands, a total of 33 sites have been blocked in the UK, including The Pirate Bay, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz, 1337x, Fenopy, H33T, KickAssTorrents, among others."

Giving up the essential for the trivial

[mykos]

These companies exist because the public allows it. The public is getting nothing but censorship out of the bargain, giving these companies carte blanche to do whatever they please to the internet. The world is caving to the slightest whims of an industry that we would survive just fine without.

Re:Relatively pointless

[niks42]

I think you overestimate the capabilities and patience of a large percentage of the population of the UK. I think these actions will shut down 80% of the movie sharing. It is a right royal pain in the bum, and personally I think the MPAA just don't understand that any action they take will have unintended consequences, but on the whole, it will have the effect they desire - most of the traffic will be gone.

They should just be careful what they wish for.

Re: And how utterly pointless it is...

[Dagger2]

Andrews & Arnold [aaisp.net.uk] would be my guess. Though I'd prefer to describe things like rDNS delegation as something that any non-crap ISP will do, rather than geeky extras...

Re:Well then...

[Opportunist]

Guess they'll have to route around this damage in the network.

Re: And how utterly pointless it is...

[FireFury03]

Andrews & Arnold [aaisp.net.uk] would be my guess. Though I'd prefer to describe things like rDNS delegation as something that any non-crap ISP will do, rather than geeky extras...

In my experience of dealing with a lot of different ISPs for customers is that almost none of them know that rDNS can be delegated, and when you eventually manage to get through to a third line engineer and explain to them how it works and point them at the RFCs, you eventually get told that their internal systems aren't set up to allow it, so no.

Its a pretty sad state of affairs.

Re:Giving up the essential for the trivial

[thej1nx]

*This* Industry however is not necessarily the source of all entertainment. There was a time when the industry did not exist, but entertainment still existed. The reason you have these torrent sites is because the industry has been very very good at monopolizing, stifling and killing any independent entertainment. People might not necessarily want to rob a talented artist that they love. But they might still not give two hoots about short-shifting a faceless greedy faceless "corporation" or a bunch of greedy middlemen. The industry has its time and place when they actually provided value by handling distribution of content that would not have been possible without them back then. In the digital internet era, that is no longer the case. They are perceived merely as blood-sucking parasites that leech off both the artist and the public.

If Mariah carey had gone independent instead of being with Columbia or Virgin Records etc. she would have been able to retain all of the profits, instead of just 10-15% share of it. Consider the irony. The middle-men should be the one getting the 10-15% profits after deducting actual costs. But instead, it is the content creator.

What ends up happening is, that labels latch on to a "hit formula" and kill creativity by making snoop dogg and other artists sacrifice their styles in favor of the "formula", to maximize revenue. Worse, with their publicizing muscle and money, they don't exactly provide a level field for independents, since they ensure that the independents are all but drowned in the noise of all the ads, even if their own artists might be all but junk.

Re:Well then...

[Joce640k]

We gave them an inch, and ... the results were as expected.

Re:Well then...

[rally2xs]

Yep - I hate thieves in all their forms, and this screwball idea that downloading other people's work and just using it isn't stealing is insane. They shouldn't simply be blocking sites, they should be sending a few hundred thousand people to jail until the public gets the idea that this is a bad idea. Fer cryin' out loud, large groups of people spend months or even years of their lives producing wondrous entertainment, maybe something like Avatar, you can get it for a mere $20 at the store, and... you're so cheap that $20 is too much for you? Get a life, pony up, and be a citizen instead of a public enemy.

Re:trackers *are* blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always as black and white as that. My DVD collection numbers in the thousands (both movies and TV shows), as does my CD collection, everyone bought and paid for. When I look for a torrent, it's because what I want isn't available to buy. If they want my money, I'm stand here with it in my hand.

Re:Well then...

[dk20]

So taxpayers should pay to put people in jail to protect the entertainment industry's outdated business model?

The same group who often book their sales in tax favourable jurisdictions should also get to put people in jail at your and my expense? I thought jails were for real crimes? Isn't copyright violation a civil matter in most nations?

Speaking about putting people in jail, how many times have the various recording industry's been charged with abuse of monopoly, price fixing, etc?
Those examples on the other hand are not CIVIL matters and the penalty can include jail time (again in most nations) but no one has ever served it.

Here (canada) they were charged with selling compilation CD's without paying the royalties. Now if a person does this it is considered piracy and in the US they charge you $20,000 per song but what do you think happened to them?
So yeah, lets jail people because laws to prevent people from doing some things always work (cough)Prohibition (cough)... Even the government realized it needed to update its business models....

Re:Well then...

[Runaway1956]

I don't like thieves much better than you do. I can't stand the thieves who run the entertainment industries. Unreasonable copyright laws that last beyond the authors lifetime are insane money grabs, that should have been killed thirty years ago or more. Take down notices for works that never did belong to any corporation. Refusing to recognize fair use. Moving works of art from the public domain, into corporate control. Multi-million dollar settlements against common users (as opposed to industrial grade pirating and distribution operations).

I don't know if you've ever read this article:
!Alles in ordnung!

http://striderweb.com/blog/tag/books/ [striderweb.com]

Re:Well then...

[Opportunist]

Actually it's worse than that.

There are real threats to a country's economic, political or other stability. People who actually want to harm a country or companies in said country. Terrorists as well as people embezzling or laundering money, tax evaders and other criminals that actually cause a noticable, real harm to your country. Who in turn do have a pretty good reason to mask their traffic and route it through various means of VPN and other techniques to shield it from surveillance.

Now, these people are few and far between. A sensibly staffed police force with some background in online security can easily spot them, pinpoint them and ferret them out. Why? Because there is very little reason for Joe Randomuser to have a lot of VPN'ed traffic running. You can actually take a quick look at most "odd" connections and examine them.

This option goes out the window when everyone does it. Yes, they're all actually breaking a law. But a law that has close to zero impact on your economy. And yes, even if you're the US. Compared to embezzlement and tax evasion, the loss to the country due to torrents is negligible. But now you have a LOT more people who will act like criminals and you can't easily spot the real, dangerous criminals anymore.