UK ISPs block The Promo Bay | Hacker News Reader

UK ISPs block The Promo Bay

thenextweb.com

80 pointsLibertatea51 comments

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".

The beginning of a censored internet.

Fucking wonderful.

(Blocked on Be [bethere.co.uk] too, btw.)

The UK will be the next Denmark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Denmark

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation

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.

Edit: grammar.

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.

That's the thing about slippery slopes. You can generally point to any specific instance and say "but this isn't anything new".

Ooh. Hey guys, Will here - the guy who made the promobay.org app.

We started a change.org petition. Not entirely sure what it'll do to help, but hey: http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/stop-bt-virgin-media-a...

  > We started a change.org petition. Not entirely sure
  > what it'll do to help

"nothing"?

very possibly. :)

FWIW, I'm on BT and it's not blocked here.

FWIW, I'm on BT and http://promobay.org/ is blocked

Odd. I'm using google DNS, so maybe they're "blocking" it via dns.

If you are suffering from this, please switch to a proper ISP such as Andrews and Arnold or newnet plc.

Cheap ubiquitous internet connections in the UK are always broken in some way.

I'm chomping at the bit to change ISPs, but won't these also be affected?

For the moment, no. At least Andrews&Arnold have a policy though:

http://aaisp.com/news-censorship.html

IIRC these sites are blocked because of a court order, the ISP has no say and has to comply.

Looked at the prices for Andrews and Arnold £25 per month with a download cap of 25GB. I would use that up in under a week.

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.

If you pick the home::1 contract, it's not tied to any time of the day. "No units or time periods - usage is any time of day or night."

I work from home a lot too and have a wife and three children on the end of the line as well.

If everyone switched to much smaller ISPs and they were numerous, it would be hard to police.

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.

You top up during the month.

Yeah they'd cost me like £200 a month for what I use. Not going to happen. They do look neat though.

A&A are fantastic. I've recommended them to quite a few people now.

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.

It's not the government that expanded filtering use, it was the courts.

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.

> instead said they would only block sites related to child abuse

Thats how we started here in the UK. It may sound better, but it's simply putting you a bit higher up the slippery slope. We'll see you at the bottom!

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/).

Are you able to cite the court order?

I am curious whether a site (and it's many domains) was excluded, a specific list of domains, or "all domains owned by <entity>".

Funnily enough, this site isn't blocked from within JANET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET)

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.

It's not blocked on my UKFSN / Enta connection either. It's possible to get unblocked connections in the UK just fine.

From Virgin:

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Chatter/Blocking-of-the-...

Hi I've got our official statement on this:

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.

Blocked on virgin cable broadband.

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.

Yes, I'm just trying to work out who at Virgin to contact to find out the details of said Court Order

http://promobay.org/ is blocked here on Virgin Media, http://thepromobay.co.uk/ seems ok - looks legit?

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.

Sky blocks the first, not the second.

This is disgusting. It's time to switch ISPs and start helping whoever is fighting this.

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.

How is the blocking being carried out?

For example, if you switch to Google DNS, does that get around the issue?

I don't know how the blocking is actually being done, but it's not via DNS. I've been using 8.8.8.8 at home and piratebay.org remains blocked.

IP based, so using a different DNS resolver doesn't help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_sys...

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.

Well this just sucks. I wouldn't want to be living in the UK.

Blocked on TalkTalk too although the message they show is the same as they one they show for the pirate bay (and actually includes TPB's logo).

Actually the site works on BT.

It's blocked for me on BT, same message as The Pirate Bay

> Error - site blocked

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