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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

It seems the switch to a new domain name has broken the ISP censorship in the UK. thepiratebay.se redirects to a site blocked page. thepiratebay.is works.

I'm sure it won't be long until they block it again but this domain change as well as the numerous proxy sites setup to bypass the block go to show that it's a waste of time to even try blocking stuff like this.

Does anyone know if the ISP's will be automatically required to block the new domain or if it would have to go through court again?

Edit: I'm using TalkTalk

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Wait... Pirate Bay is blocked (out of the box) in the UK? That's rather draconian for a first-world nation...

The modern UK is essentially a police state.

There's a lot of cultural disagreement within the first world. Check out UK libel law, the official secrets act, etc.

If I go to kat.ph I get an almost blank page with "Error – Site blocked".

Going to either (http://thepiratebay.is/) or (http://thepiratebay.se/) gives me an "Oops! Google Chrome could not find thepiratebay.se" (or .is) error.

I'm using BTWifi-with-Fon in England.

> this domain change as well as the numerous proxy sites setup to bypass the block go to show that it's a waste of time to even try blocking stuff like this.

Yes, it's trivially easy to still get to these sites. And all the other sites with this content.

I'm on Virgin Media (UK) and thepiratebay.is doesn't work here. This implies that they don't have to go through the court.

I suspect if the new domain is being run by the same organisation they are required to block instantly. I wonder what the legal issues are if The Pirate Bay splits into multipel organisations hosted on different domains.

There's now a (court approved) process that doesn't involve going to court for each domain, it's simply added to the block list.

Is the list publicly available ?

No I don't believe so, the original "source sites" are all done by court order, so people like ORG have reported on them, but clone sites, and new DNS names for existing sites, are simply blocked by request of the BPI.

"Once a site is blocked, its alleged clone sites can also be blocked, but in this case, BPI will be able to practice this without a court order. The decisions would be made between BPI and ISPs and will not be published."

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/bpi-fenopy-block

This is crazy. I understand that the hammer needs to go fast in that whackamole game but they should at least publish the list of blocked domains to allow external verification. This is a slippery slope to censorship.

I'd say less on a slippery slope, more we've already fallen down into that hole...

There's already been at least once instance of the bpi blocking a legitimate site

you sound like you believe censorship was not the whole idea behind it

There is no way that will be abused

I'm using BT Broadband in the UK and thepiratebay.is is not responding for me. Although I don't get the "Error – Site blocked" message that I get when trying to access priatebay.org, it just never loads.

Traceroute stops working somewhere in the BT network (just getting * * * after ukcore.bt.net) so I'm guessing it's being blocked.

American here using "The Cloud" wifi in Barbican Center in the City of London. Same deal: never loads. However, after connecting to my VPN back home in the U.S. it loads immediately.

Agreed, they seem to be blocking it.

The censorship in the UK is only there to discourage new or computer inexperienced users. Tools such as Tor has always worked, and will continue to work for a predicted long time into the future. Access to a indexing site of a few hundred MB is close to impossible to censure, and quite hard to even make inconvenient.

Same in Finland. .com and .se just show "Website not available", but .is works just fine, but we'll see if it gets blocked as well or not.

You should probably switch to an ISP that doesn't filter. Mine doesn't.

May I ask which one you're with?

I'm with o2 and they dont. although they have been bought by sky (not sure if sky currently filter/block)

They most definitely do. Sky here, and I can't access thepiratebay.se or thepiratebay.is.

I'm on Sky and can confirm they block thepiratebay.se, I'm not sure about .is, I'll check once I'm home but over SSH it seems to fail.

I'm with o2 broadband and they do, http://thepiratebay.se/ gives "The page you're looking for has been blocked."

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk don't for ADSL services

Currently enta.net, however I can't really recommend them (beyond the fact that they don't filter). I'm intending to switch to Andrews & Arnold as soon as FTTC is rolled out in my street, which is supposed to be real soon now.

Does thepiratebay.se. blocked too? With dot at the end.

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