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More site blocking may be on its way
Wednesday 24 October 2012 17:55:41 by Andrew Ferguson

The BBC has carried details on three more websites that the BPI acting on behalf of rights holders want the major broadband providers in the UK to block access to. The precedent for this has been set with the blocking of The Pirate Bay and Newzbin.

At this time it seems no blocking has taken place of Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents, and it is likely that another court order will be needed, though it may be faster to obtain this time if the situation can be shown to match the model set by The Pirate Bay action.

One presumes the BPI has seen positive results from the blocking of The Pirate Bay and Newzbin, and it would be interesting to see what difference the blocking of the previous sites has made to income. The BBC article shows some data from the Neilsen Net Ratings that suggest access to The Pirate Bay has dropped by three quarters, but it is not clear if this is simply because it is now harder to spot access to the site, or the blocking has really stopped three quarters of people using the site.

[ Topic: Regulation | 17 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by Joppy 7 months ago
Would be good if a correlation could be made with an increase in newsgroup traffic, VPN traffic or increase in subscribers to VPN and seedbox type services ;)

Dutch isp XS4ALL actually reported an increase in torrent traffic after the Pirate bay was blocked in Holland, which may have been due to the media exposure.

Posted by otester 7 months ago
All file-sharers should be using VPN's now anyways.

Posted by Drefsab 7 months ago
I agree, It will be the age old thing of people patting themselves on the back thinking they have defeated these sites, yet the sites that the block are reporting record traffic more than ever.

All they have done is start to drive the traffic into methods that they cant track/trace/block.

Posted by Firefalcon 7 months ago
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/02011120745/empirical-data-suggests-that-website-blocking-is-useless-weapon-against-infringement.shtml

The Dutch disagree. Drefsab is pretty much right, it just makes people dodge around it, "lets block something then watch the thing we blocked and oh look traffic dropped".

I hope the BPI do what the RIAA have done and piss away so much cash on pointless mouse chases they grind themselves into a financial hole. Meanwhile artists move onto to crowdfunding and things like what "Mega" are trying to achieve.

Posted by professor973 7 months ago
All a little pointless while the deep web is totally uncontrollable.

Posted by Kushan 7 months ago
I think we're all presuming that there isn't a bunch of executives at BPI using whatever statistics they can to prove that they're doing a good job fighting piracy. Hell, they already use fudged statistics to count the damages of piracy, so why not this?

Posted by Scubaholic 7 months ago
"Lies, damn lies & statistics" BPI & RIAA are hardly going to admit they have got it wrong.
The worry thing is how the are getting the Judicial System to acquiesce to their wishes on such flimsy evidence.

Posted by otester 7 months ago
The only issue is that we are still technically on the defensive, it wouldn't suprise me if they eventually start going after VPN's.

Posted by tommy45 7 months ago
@otester, they wouldn't succeed if they tried, most of the VPN's are overseas and in countries that don't roll over for the likes of the bpi, then because VPN's have lots of different uses, they would look very communist like if they tried that

Posted by otester 7 months ago
@tommy45

Well lets just hope you're right.

Posted by KarlAustin 7 months ago
Well given anyone who works for a reasonable sized company and works from home will be using a VPN to connect back in to their place of work then I can't see VPNs getting blocked - The kind of companies I can think of off the top of my head spend more per week on coffee/tea/biscuits than the BPI/RIAA has for an annual budget.

Posted by otester 7 months ago
@KarlAustin

Not blocking, just go the way of internet connections, data retention etc.

Posted by eviemai2011 7 months ago
Blocking VPN's would not be a viable option as even the smaller companies are using this method and the only way of getting into some regions is a locally employed person working from home with the need for company access.

Posted by c_j_ 7 months ago
Total blocking of VPNs wouldn't work, but making them a non-pleb option by requiring another £20/month to have them unblocked (affordable by corporates, sod the rest of us) may be just what the big ISPs are looking for.

Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
the pirate bay monitoring is flawed, and thanks to the bbc article I am now aware of 3 new sites I hadnt heard of before, the BPI are just raising awareness to these sites, its funny.

Posted by carverdoone43 7 months ago
Big brother rides again never ending restrictions, on the face of it the internet has now become a noisy parker for all and totally money orientated.

Posted by bogwart 7 months ago
"One presumes the BPI has seen positive results from the blocking of The Pirate Bay..."

One assumes wrongly. Traffic was reduced for a few days but rapidly recovered and is now just under 31 million users.

If that's a win I'd hate to see a lose.