It is sad, but I cannot read this blog post. The Dutch equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA, named Brein, sued two of the major Dutch ISPs for not blocking access to The Pirate Bay. Brein won the court case, and the judge required these ISPs to block The Pirate Bay starting yesterday.
Now I am met with this when visiting thepiratebay.se:
The Pirate Bay will reach an age of 9 years. Experiencing raids, espionage and death threats, we're still here. We've been through hell and back and it has made us tougher than ever.
The people running the site has changed during the years. No sane human being would put up with this kind of pressure for 8 years in a row. An insane hobby that takes time from our families, our work (sorry boss) and our studies.
What binds us all together is a strong belief that what we do is good. That it is something we one day can tell our grandchildren about with pride. People from all over the world confirm this. We read testimonials from people in Syria longing for freedom, thanking us for what we provide. We receive more than 100 visits daily from North Korea and we sure know that they need it. If there's something that will bring peace to this world it is the understanding and appreciation of your fellow man. What better way to do that than with this vast library of culture?
With this said, we hear news from our old admins that they have received a verdict in Sweden. Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday.
But what enrages us to our inner core is that the system, the empire, the governments, are still allowed to try to boss you and us around with one law crazier than the other. Do you think they will stop with SOPA/ACTA/PIPA? They will not. Because you won't stop sharing those files. Because we will not stay down. Because no one can turn back time. Together, we are the iron that hardens with each strike.
In this year of the storm, the winners will build windmills and the losers will raise shelters. So flex your muscles, fellow pirates, and give power to us all! Build more sites! More nets! More protocols! Scream louder than ever and take it to the next level!
Often the filtering happens through your ISP's domain server rather than at a IP level.
The server might have e.g. *.thepiratebay.se forced to return an IP address then showing the blocking page.
The workaround is to use a DNS server outside of your ISP -- e.g. Google's 8.8.8.8 nameserver, or alternatively adding the known IPs to /etc/hosts (which might take precedence over a nameserver response depending on your configuration).
Unfortunately, they are filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay's IP adresses as well. This was part of the verdict, they have to filter the list of IP addresses (hosting TPB) that Brein provides.
Edit: I, as most other people here, are perfectly capable of setting up a tunnel. Most people outside these small confines aren't.
Not yet. That will change as soon as they deem it necessary. A lot of technical people are willing to explain to less technical people, and there are suddenly a lot of easy tutorials on how to circumvent the blocks.
Just like previous tries by Brein, the effectiveness of this won't last a day.
I'm at work at the TU Delft right now, which lets me access thepiratebay.se, but I might test this with my Internet connection at home to see whether it is blocked.
If it's censored at the DNS level, you can get around it by using an open DNS server rather than your internet server. If it is censored at an HTTP level, then you can get around it by using HTTPS. (Although I just tried this and thepiratebay.se uses thepiratebay.org's security certificate.)
But if it's censored by IP address, then the problem is much more pressing and you'll have to use a proxy. One project that I will shamelessly plug makes your traffic indistinguishable from HTTPS connections, but it gets to be a bit slow (read: use it for twitter and text websites and metadata files, but not for downloading gigabytes of stuff), it is at https://www.torproject.org/ .
Open question for other Nederlanders: Is there any political activity focused on dismantling Brein's censorship that I can join? Is there a Dutch-centric EFF?
They also filter traffic to TPB IP adresses. I am aware of the methods that can be used to circumvent such censorship. In fact, I could easily do it with my VPS.
But that is all besides the point, because the average citizen does not have the technical knowledge to circumvent blockades. They were shut off from a part of the web yesterday. And this is probably just the beginning.
BoF barely communicates externally besides preaching to the choir. Lobbying seems to be limited to relatively powerless left-wing opposition politicians. Getting broader support is exactly what they very much don't do.
And so far the result has been exactly what you would expect: we've been railroaded with measures violating privacy and limiting online freedom, with very little protest.
I don't claim to know the details, and I'm certainly not trying to defend them or something. But even if they're not as effective as they could be, every "bit" helps.
HN cannot be taken as a whole. You're attempting to say that because a lot of people on HN say "Google is evil" that when someone else suggests their free DNS server, this is some sort of hypocrisy.
I guess it's understandable to be frustrated at the anti-Google sentiment if you are a Google employee and don't see anything bad happening internally, but don't turn this into some "HN vs. Google" men-in-costumes-wrestling-around-in-a-scale-model-of-Tokyo battle.
Yeah, I know. I just wanted to make people aware of that contrast in a snarky manner. I think I succeeded :) :)
I'm not really frustrated with the anti-Google sentiment. Everyone hates everything, and I can accept that. It does bother me when people start hating things without really knowing why. (Evil, by the way, has very little to do with changing a privacy policy to be more readable or adding experimental features to products you like. Those are more unusual than anything else, and people react poorly to things that are unusual. Remember how the iPhone wasn't going to have any apps? It was the end of the world. Then Apple's experiment yielded results that said, "holy fuck, we need apps" and then everyone was happy again. The world evolves incrementally, and to move forward, sometimes you have to move backwards.)
Ah, they do IP-level block. Belgian ISPs were only mandated to perform DNS blocks (on ~20 domains) so a new domain name is sufficient to route around them.
It's probably worth noting that the third one you listed, HMA, was recently cooperative with a US investigation into Anonymous. You should check the log retention and other policies of whatever VPN you choose to make sure they are suitable for your activities. For example, if you are traveling in a country with restricted Internet access and accessing confidential information from your employer's network, you probably don't want to be using a VPN service that cooperates with requests that may be harmful to your employer.
99% of The Pirate Bay is people downloading entertainment. Sometimes it's entertainment not available yet in their region. Sometimes it's a show on cable that aired last night. Reducing the friction for consumers to get content is a business problem. The Pirate Bay thrives because big media fails to solve that problem.
But 1% of the time - maybe less, The Pirate Bay links to content that will have no other home. Where powerful people can't squash it. If we have no place outside the reach of national governments where things that make them uncomfortable have a chance to spread, then we have no freedom.
So, while The Pirate Bay is the seedy underbelly of copyright infringement on the internet, it also gives you freedom. We need to protect that.
We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the /. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
The fact that I now have to rely on others to republish this information because as of today it is being censored for me makes me very, very sad.
I'm 45 years old, I was born and raised in the "free world", and this is the first time in my life I am confronted with the painful reality of censorship.
Regardless of what one might think of the Pirate Bay, this feels so very, very wrong.
Still, it just reinforces the insanity of the whole experience: I now have to rely on others for this information. My ability to evaluate that information has been compromised.
So the Pirate Bay is now a bastion of freedom that lets users in Syria and North Korea download the latest episode of Glee? (The current most popular torrent there). I'm a little confused about what their greater noble political purpose is.
To me it sounds like a place where you can get your TV shows in a more convenient way than waiting until they appear on channels you have, or download that movie you can't be bothered to pay $10-$20 to see.
How about real civil disobedience? Have TBP require to put in your full name and picture and the reason why are you downloading the full Microsoft Office package. Put that full list on the front page on TBP, let the government see the tens thousands of people who refuse to follow the unjust copyright laws and are ready to go to prison for breaking them. Now you're making a statement.
Or alternatively, produce your own independent content. Supposedly with today's technology it's easy and cheap. Wouldn't it be an amazing blow against this evil "MAFIAA" to one year from now go to TBP home page and see how the most downloaded file is not the latest Hollywood $250 million movie, but an independently produced short? If every user who tweeted against SOPA/ACTA would now tweet about that cool CC-licensed book/game/movie they just saw?
> So the Pirate Bay is now a bastion of freedom that lets users in Syria and North Korea download the latest episode of Glee?
- difference leads to unknown
- unknown leads to fear
- fear leads to hate
This is the most basic, irrational reflex process from which emerges racism, and wars, and lots of purposeless suffering.
Previously we were segregated by geography, long distances, creating islands of culture bound by the propagation times of information. We shattered that barrier. The Internet is the first place in the world since the birth of humanity where there can be a generation of people sharing the same culture all around the world. The fact that Iranians want to watch Glee may sound trivial, but I see it as a sign that people around the world want to unite.
We should be able to watch shows, listen to music or access whatever medium by which culture transits from the other side of the world. I'm not condoning piracy but from artificial limitations like DVD zoning, digital distribution restrictions creating segregated stores (like iTunes Store) or Internet borderizing laws like SOPA really do not help at bringing people together.
I don't get what your point is - do they need a greater and nobler political purpose other than giving access to whatever people want?
Also, Microsoft Office is extremely expensive for people in third-world countries. Pointing people to free alternatives that aren't fully compatible and that have a different interface is not the answer. Microsoft's Office is required for most corporate documents and it is assumed when working computer knowledge is requested from employees.
You're also suggesting that TBP should violate the privacy of its users.
What do you think this would accomplish? And I'm sure the government would love having that list straight from the horse's mouth.
I don't get what your point is - do they need a greater and nobler political purpose other than giving access to whatever people want?
They are misrepresenting themselves.
Further, if they really had free speech and helping suppressed peoples in mind, they would remove most of their infringing content and provide a platform that can't be attacked on grounds of copyright infringement.
Did you wonder why people from Syria and North Korea might actually want to visit that website?
I found the figure mentioned of 100 visitors from North Korea daily pretty amazing to be honest. I checked my own site stats and though there are visitors from 183 countries not one is from North Korea.
Pirate bay is not just movies. You can download plenty of books from it for free, university textbooks, philosophy, whatever.
The point you make is really important but I think its relevance here may be doubtful. Civil disobedience at a massive scale is surely a compelling way of protest though you have to keep in mind that civil disobedience is about voluntary display of indignance by EVERYONE participating (read here as the users.)
The Pirate Bay cannot take that decision on behalf of their users. It has to be an active and voluntary enagagement.
Further, this TPB post stands for something more than mere access to paid content. It is essentially a protocol infused with freedom. No bar on content; no censorship; no policing. How one uses it is immaterial but as long as it exists, it offers people that freedom. Dissidents, political prisoners, protesters can always look to it as a last resort to share things.
I think that coming out the way you describe is just not feasible for the TPB, the same way surrendering never made sense to Robin Hood.
Demanding that those who want change seek it by throwing themselves upon a pyre is a particularly annoying way of "covertly" wishing the status quo the best.
Civil Disobedience is Not the following: The only way to seek change. The only legitimate way to seek change. Always the best way to seek change. Always effective at all.
"""What binds us all together is a strong belief that what we do is good."""
What is 'good' about the pirate bay? A site which is 95% dedicated to sharing copyrighted content?
The Pirate Bay exists to make money for its founders. This is why it has so many intrusive ad's constantly popping up. They aren't on any mission. They are just raking in money at other people's expense.
"""Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won't go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday."""
Does this mean they are on the run? As they have been sentenced to 4-10 month's I would just serve the time and be done with it. Surely this is better than constantly watching your back and avoiding being extradited back to Sweden.
"""But what enrages us to our inner core is that the system, the empire, the governments, are still allowed to try to boss you and us around with one law crazier than the other"""
Yes.. the system.. the empire.. surprised they didn't mention the people in black suits? The pirate bay is such a target because the people who run it humiliate and insult people with very deep pockets. They aren't victims, they enjoy the attention.
A site which is 95% dedicated to sharing copyrighted content
[citation needed]
The Pirate Bay exists to make money for its founders. This is why it has so many intrusive ad's constantly popping up.
The Pirate Bay exists to make it possible for people to share content, but bandwidth and infrastructure is not free.
The pirate bay is such a target because the people who run it humiliate and insult people with very deep pockets.
And? Is it written anywhere that people with deep pockets should not be insulted? If anything, their position of privilege should make them less prone to knee-jerk reactions.
They aren't victims, they enjoy the attention.
I think you should talk to your analyst about that complex, hating extrovert people is quite the negative attitude.
Can you honestly say that the pirate bay isn't dedicated, and almost exclusively used for the distribution of material protected by copyright? Drawing attention to the fact that he hasn't cited any specific research on what is plainly evident for everyone does nothing to promote an adult discussion about the topic. Furthermore, claiming that the author hates extroverts due to some underlaying psychological issues is really unnecessary.
Why is it so hard to have an open, honest, mature discussion about piracy and the pirate bay? All the attempts to make P2P out to be some political statement, is highly disingenuous in my opinion. I pirate quite regularly. But it is never about some lofty ideals regarding personal freedoms, or commentary on corporate influence, in truth, I just want something, which happens to be easily and readily accessed, free of charge. Is this stealing? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to think its a close cousin. Is it a plus for society, and something that ought to be fostered? Quite possibly.
Why not talk about this stuff and stop acting like piracy is some noble pursuit?
I find it hard to believe that anyone seriously believes that the pirate bay is an agent promoting peace within the world, and liberating oppressed peoples. Why do we kid ourselves?
Can you honestly say that the pirate bay isn't dedicated, and almost exclusively used for the distribution of material protected by copyright?
Well, we don't know. There might be zillions of long-tail torrents with one seeder and three peers, distributing legal stuff, but I personally don't go around spouting numbers like the parent poster.
Furthermore, claiming that the author hates extroverts due to some underlaying psychological issues is really unnecessary.
Yup, it was an ad-hominem as much as parent's statement was an ad-hominem ("they enjoy the attention", etc etc).
Why is it so hard to have an open, honest, mature discussion about piracy and the pirate bay?
Because of the Overton window.
Agents on one side (the copyright mafia) lie through their teeth and have access to every propaganda channel and every established power. Internet people always end up on the defensive, and the window is pushed further and further into insanity.
For twenty years, us geeks have had open, honest, mature discussions about piracy, both among ourselves and with the copyright mafia, and it has done exactly ZERO amount of good, they are still pushing as hard as in the Napster days; now it's our time to be unreasonable. It's not our responsibility to be reasonable or amenable, we simply build and use the technology and make our requests very clear; the political system will have to work out a "just" balance or compromise of some sort, or criminalize us all and live with the consequences.
Would you be distressed if I made a website dedicated to encouraging and facilitating jaywalking? That is quite illegal in some jurisdictions you know.
The focus of my comment was never about the morality of pirating, but rather my perceived difficulty in having an intelligent and honest conversation about it. While I did briefly touch on my thoughts about its morality, I made sure to state that matter was up for debate.
When we are talking about piracy I am amazed that people entertain the notion that the Pirate Bay is somehow liberating oppressed peoples all over the world ( as was implied in the release... ). We aren't talking about leaked government documents here, we are talking about last night's episode of Glee. All of this nonsense merely detracts and distracts for the real issue at hand.
Furthermore, I have found time and time again that people become exceedingly argumentative and obtuse when these issues are discussed, denying and arguing every claim no matter how well accepted or understood it is. I mean, can we really not agree that the Pirate Bay is primarily dedicated to distributing copyrighted material illegally? Is it really necessary for me to dig up a source and provide a citation for that claim?
In direct response to your question, I would not be distressed by such a site, nor does the existence of the pirate bay cause me distress. What might irritate me about such a site however is if it were to claim that jaywalking laws were not in place to control traffic and provide safe crossing to pedestrians, but instead to oppress the people of a city or some other nonsense along the same lines. It would irritate me if its supporters some deep conviction for it and when questioned about their beliefs, immediately assume those unlike them derive their morality from law.
I pirate content a lot. I am a member of a private tracker, and for awhile I rented out a seedbox to maintain my ratio. Never once though, have I ever felt entitled to the things I downloaded. Never once did I try to justify my downloading with anything other than the fact that it is super convenient and free. Why you think I'm so dull as to never question the word of law is beyond me. I never once said anything to suggest legality is equivalent to morality. I may even go so far as to say this conclusion you've made is indicative to the very thing I'm speaking of. I mean, it takes some rather large assumptions to reach that conclusion based upon my comments.
Most people use freedom of speech to talk about trivial, illegal, or irrelevant things. But so what? That is their right.
"We aren't talking about leaked government documents here"
In numerous cases, we are actually...
Listen. If information freedom isn't a particularly important issue to you, then so be it. For many people it is however, no matter how 'trivial' the bulk of the information may be. It is apparent that the Pirate Bay operators are among the group of people who think this way.
Sure, however I doubt I am far off. The site is called The PIRATE Bay. Shall we play a game of spot the legitimate content? http://thepiratebay.se/top/300
"""The Pirate Bay exists to make it possible for people to share content, but bandwidth and infrastructure is not free."""
Of course it isn't however the owners are making no attempt to remove infringing content. They know their business is helping to distribute copyrighted digital content and they profit from it. Sure, they need to cover their costs but they don't run it to be a beacon of freedom. They run it for the $$$.
Take WikiLeaks, before it started publishing unredacted content they served a purpose. They broke some laws but they set information free. There was a positive reason for it's existence.
What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?
"""And? Is it written anywhere that people with deep pockets should not be insulted? If anything, their position of privilege should make them less prone to knee-jerk reactions."""
Knee Jerk reactions? Really? Content owners file DCMA take down requests and take other actions. The pirate bay respond by goading them.
There is little doubt that TPB is costing content owners real money by helping people access torrents. The amount is obviously up for debate however when you insult, goad and cause losses to Billion dollar companies you are asking to be engaged by an army of lawyers and politicians.
The Pirate Bay could just quieten down. "You do your thing, we do ours." They don't though do they. Instead they adopt the. "Ha ha ha ha ha ha you can't get us."
Well sorry but you know, if millions of dollars of copyrighted content is being accessed via your company. Large content owners will work to lobby and pressure politicians to take action.. this isn't knee-jerk. This just natural escalation.
"""I think you should talk to your analyst about that complex, hating extrovert people is quite the negative attitude."""
ROFL.. sure because that was exactly what I was saying...
What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?
I don't know, maybe stuff like founding the only political party that really cares about policies for the internet age? Promoting the free exchange of art, content and ideas on the internet? Sponsoring cultural events across Europe?
Oh, but they must be in it for the money, of course. Because risking jail and having very powerful people come after you, while you're developing a free search engine built on a highly redundant architecture designed to bypass censorship attempts, is such an easy way to rake in the millions. I wonder why Zuckerberg didn't think about that.
They might not have started a revolution in Tunisia, but they've still done more to change the world of ideas than 95% of the tech companies out there (yeah, my 95% is as bad as your 95%, lol).
I won't waste time challenging your half-assed assertions that "there is little doubt that TPB is costing content owners real money by helping people access torrents". That's what the copyright mafia says, whereas an increasingly large amount of research says this is quite a dubious claim at best, and at worst exactly the opposite of what's really happening. If companies like Adobe and Microsoft really hated piracy as much as they say, they'd have stopped long ago to distribute "demo" and "trial" versions which could be easily cracked.
Quiet people sit at the back of the bus, while progress is made by unreasonable people; but considering your attitude towards people who "enjoy the attention", I don't doubt that you'll struggle to understand where I'm coming from.
The attitude is antagonistic rather than extroverted. Anyway, it all boils down to a business strategy. The Pirate Bay enrages copyright holders, who then go after all "piracy sites". The weaker ones die because of the increased legal scrutiny, while TPB continues to live. I'm guessing that TPB served more pages after MegaUpload died than they did before. And that is money in the founders' pockets.
Copyright holders were going after "piracy sites" well before TPB -- see Napster, Grokster, Kazaa, etc etc etc. Considering the founders are now facing jail, and they've always been politically active, I'd say they are in it for more than just "money in their pockets". I know, in this day and age, this is hard to believe, but sometimes it's actually true.
Thats neat, a lot of the top torrents on TPB are just redistributions of open source stuff. I also figure a lot of the windows 7 torrents are used to restore broken installations after losing the cds, because 99% of people don't build their own PCs and thus come with windows pre installed.
The photoshop / vegas being so high isn't coincidence either. Those products are prohibitively expensive for everyone that would use them except businesses.
>What has the Pirate Bay done of value over the last decade?
All sorts of things get submitted to tpb. When Wikileaks looked like it could be raided and shutdown at any moment, they put their encrypted archives up for anyone to download, for one.
Also, as an aside, I hate python's comment syntax enough when coding. It's even more annoying when on a forum.
TPB have made themselves a kind of bastion against the copyright rentseekers by being a visible and hard to quash target. The kind of money and effort wasted against them is impressive.
Of course, what this verdict establishes is a precedent for hashes having the same status as the original copyrighted content.
in Sweden.
AFAIK, the EU court still hasn't spoken on this. They'll have to get similar verdicts in all member states, which they may or may not get, and then from the EU, before it's actually effective. As it is, for example, I could see a challenge brought to the EU court on the basis of restriction of trade between Sweden and other member states, as soon as one server is based in, say, Germany or any other member state.
It's a long, log way to Tipperary, and this battle is far from over. "Normal" people are getting more and more pissed off; it will take a generation to undo the disasters the Boomers are doing to our world, but it will happen.
To burnt timber with the corporations and their enablers who press so hard to suck each of us all of our life's potential while wielding the profits as a weapon against those they dislike. This includes the justice system and their precedents.
For those not able to access the site due to ISP-blocking try setting your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and/or 4.4.4.4 (which is Google's DNS server) as they often just block the site in the DNS.
If you don't care about the free exchange of information, then so be it. In the mean time, I'll be glad that your opinion on the matter ultimately doesn't make a difference. You cannot stop sharing.
Now I am met with this when visiting thepiratebay.se:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/838/blokkade.png/
Internet censorship is now real in The Netherlands