Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-ordered-to-shut-down-pirate-bay-proxy-120414/

by Garbage • 14 years ago

92 27 14 years ago

rickmb• 14 years ago

There is something extremely fishy going on in the Court of The Hague.

BREIN (which is just a local front for the MPAA and RIAA, since NL barely has a movie/recording industry of it's own, and what there is is barely affected by piracy) has for years shopped around in various courts, but has now focused completely on The Hague where it has had a series of favorable results. Some of which, especially the censorship order, are considered extremely debatable within the legal community.

This one really takes the biscuit: the utter refusal of the court to even allow a legal democratic political party to defend itself is completely unprecedented.

In other news: BREIN is now also suing other ISP's (again, in The Hague), and the court has appointed the same judge that was responsible for the previous controversial censorship order. Attempts to have the judge removed from the case have failed.

cnbeuiwx4• 14 years ago

Things like these are only strange if you expect the legal system to be fair. Clearly its not. I think its a parody. :)

The young guys behind Pirate Bay are the kind of heroes that hardly exists today because they dont give in to the threats from a broken industry.

And the corporations chasing them around consists of greedy, cowardly, corrupted, morally bankrupt old men. Not really the kind of guys we should even listen to. In fact, I think my mother told me to stay away from that kind of, errm, gentlemen...

mahmud• 14 years ago

Isn't the Hague just for trying Africans?

http://www.france24.com/en/20120315-lubanga-kony-icc-african...

Joakal8• 14 years ago

If you looked up Hague, you'll find there are many different types of courts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague Not just 'Africans'.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

There are several courts in the Hague, the international criminal court is one (and they don't just try Africans, they try war criminals from all over the globe). Then there is the 'regular' court in the Hague. Most major dutch cities have their own local courts.

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

In other news? Research by University of Amsterdam has shown that the ban has had no effect on number of downloads. (PDF: http://tweakimg.net/files/upload/dutchpirate.pdf [Dutch])

drcube• 14 years ago

194.71.107.15

I don't know if they're blocking it at the DNS level, or if there is some way of blocking the actual site. But that's the IP address. Why couldn't someone use any generic proxy to visit Pirate Bay?

I just don't see how governments can actually block websites, without confiscating their servers and/or forcing ISPs to monitor and block any attempt to get back online. As long as they've got a server and internet access, it seems to me like the government has failed.

cnbeuiwx4• 14 years ago

Which is exactly why the Internet is free. As long as nobody controls it, freedom will survive here.

Joakal8• 14 years ago

Tor relies on some country with Internet Freedom as an exit node. Having many countries with weak or no Internet will make Internet less than free.

You need to take action!

strictfp• 14 years ago

It is not entirely unplausible that the way forward for the courts will be to change tactics and make it illegal to visit the website instead of blocking it. At least it won't take long before they figure out that IP blocking is more efficient than DNS blocking. In any case it will only keep getting worse unless we make this a political struggle.

Joakal8• 14 years ago

It IS a political struggle. The court basically ordered a political party to obey and refused to hear their defence.

rmc2• 14 years ago

I don't know if they're blocking it at the DNS level, or if there is some way of blocking the actual site. But that's the IP address. Why couldn't someone use any generic proxy to visit Pirate Bay?

Some pirate bay censoring schemes do block it at the IP level (e.g. the scheme used by Eircom the largest ISP in Ireland). Just using the IP address doesn't work. Even pings are blocked.

I just don't see how governments can actually block websites

Courts can force companies (ISPs) to do something, and the details are up to to the companies. Since the Pirate Bay is hosted externally, all the ISPs have to do is block their IP addresses.

cnbeuiwx4• 14 years ago

Thankfully, the internet is a distributed network full of computers. You can block the road between the user and his destination, but all he needs is another computer to forward the traffic for him and the block is useless. The ISP's knows this but they simply comply with the law because they have to.

Some ways to get around their silly blocks are:

Proxy servers (tons of these...too many to list)

VPN providers (https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-ano...)

Unix shell accounts with port forwarding (you need one simple command to set up port forwarding: ssh -L 8080:thepiratebay.org:80 your_shell_server.com)

Seed boxes for downloading, sftp to grab the loot from them.

aerique• 14 years ago

TPB is also blocked by IP address in NL.

The dutch pirate party had a specific proxy running which they were ordered to shut down so they're now running a generic proxy.

If you're dutch and haven't donated to the "Piratenpartij" yet, please do so now if you think these issues are important: http://depiratenpartij.wordpress.com/lidworden/doneren/

I'm saddened that wrt to the internet and censorship my supposedly progressive[1] country can now be added to the list of China, Iran and many other oppressive regimes.

[1] it hasn't actually been that for quite a while now

Joakal8• 14 years ago

I'm told that Pirate Parties have no policy on IP censorship because any competent IT person can get a new IP address.

Welcome to joining UK and Australia as censorship countries.

I'm fighting in Australia.

Joakal8• 14 years ago

Exactly, that's why domain names by itself can not be illegal whatsoever and should be afforded immunity beyond seller-buyer relationship, including against court seizures. Even trademarks that are meant to be narrow are now being used as a broad weapon to kill domain names. eg Nissan

Seizing domain names only serve to create digital economic uncertainty, false sense of justice, let criminals still access content, etc. It is downright criminal for judges ordering ISPs to block access because it shows that judges are either aware that crime will still continue or too incompetent to see this.

awakeasleep2• 14 years ago

This morning our pirate censorship battles were the first thing that popped into my mind when I woke up.

I thought how much more effective public outcry would be if we phrased things in terms of the creation of censorship infrastructure.

I object most to that. Here we see the criminalization of a note on where to find information. For now, it is only applied to illegal information like the Pirate Bay, but it's establishing a precedent that can be used against anything.

dhimes• 14 years ago

I really like this idea. How an issue is framed is crucial to the battle because this may eventually make it to the public.

I am also bothered by the lack of proper due process afforded to these bastards. Don't tell anybody, but I am secretly a little sympathetic to the cause of protecting copyright. But that can be abused and without a strong set of guidelines for making a case it most certainly will be abused.

Create• 14 years ago

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/#Object

Joakal8• 14 years ago

Do you know how to frame things? You reminded me of Bruce Scheiner who advocated framing things. eg instead of Safety vs Privacy, state it's a matter of Control vs Liberty.

aw3c2• 14 years ago

problem a: it is called the pirate bay.

problem b: it is called the pirate party.

pirates are criminals. naming things like that and not expecting this to be huge problem is short-sighted and I would even say dumb.

if your goal is to reform copyright law and citizen rights/protection then why not call your party freedom party or reform party or more rights for ordinary people party.

"hi, my name is childharasser and I am your boy's new teacher."

Joakal8• 14 years ago

There's a reason for saying 'Pirate' in Pirate Party name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_party#History

Essentially, it has become a rallying symbol, created by the proprietors themselves.

awakeasleep2• 14 years ago

I agree with you completely. Choosing the name "thepiratebay" was an immature move imo, and it doesn't pay proper creedence to the whole idea of stated rules and enforced rules.

By that I mean that society expects one thing in name, and will often accept something else in practice. Like we know politicians often have affairs, but in public they profess to have the goal of a traditional marriage. If we saw a politician who had public affairs, we'd all wonder what dirty behavior they were hiding, assuming it's much worse than usual.

If the site had a neutral name like "torrent search" we'd know they professed to be a neutral data sharing site, but the underbelly was piracy. If it starts out piracy, which is plainly illegal, we're left with much worse assumptions about what goes on behind the scenes.

Joakal8• 14 years ago

The Pirate Party is the most digitally-advanced political party in the world. If any entrepreneurs want to fight anti-Internet laws (SOPA, Internet filter, etc) or injustice like this article (surveillance, etc), they're the best party to do it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_party

I'm sorry if it's a bit off-topic.

Pirate Party Ordered to Shut Down Pirate Bay Proxy

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