BT Blocking Pirate Bay; Claims It's Part Of A Voluntary Self-Regulation Code

from the say-what-now? dept

Tue, Apr 21st 2009 1:46pm — Mike Masnick

Slashdot points us to the news that BT is blocking its mobile broadband subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, claiming that it's a self-regulation effort in order to remain in "compliance with a new UK voluntary code." It appears to have something to do with the already controversial self-censorship program being managed by the Internet Watch Foundation, which has already blocked access to parts of Wikipedia and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. At what point do people realize that any such demand to "block" certain types of content will overblock and harm perfectly legitimate sites and technologies?

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Filed Under: broadband, filters, mobile broadband, self-regulation, uk
Companies: bt, the pirate bay

12 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 2:05pm

Don't complait to Techdirt - take action now
Write to your MP:

http://www.writetothem.com/
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2009 @ 2:30pm

More importantly, at what point will they realize attempts to block content is largely futile?
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- inc, 21 Apr 2009 @ 2:56pm
  
  Re:
  ahh yes.. an encrypted proxy or vpn should help get around this.
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- The infamous Joe, 21 Apr 2009 @ 2:57pm
  
  Re:
  It will do a good job stopping people who wouldn't have gone anyway.
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  - Zaven (profile), 21 Apr 2009 @ 4:12pm
    
    Re: Re:
    And like Mike likes to point out, bring the issue to people's attention who otherwise would not have known about piratebay at all.
    
    And to answer this question "At what point do people realize that any such demand to "block" certain types of content will overblock and harm perfectly legitimate sites and technologies?"
    - We all know that's a trick question. The day people in charge realize they need to give themselves less control is the day the sky falls and hell freezes over.
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Cheese McBeese, 21 Apr 2009 @ 3:38pm

That's ok, I sure a lot of customers will respond by blocking the flow of their money to BT.
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haroldr, 21 Apr 2009 @ 4:57pm

WTF? Are we in China?
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rage, 21 Apr 2009 @ 5:23pm

Wouldn't these companies be better off blocking child porn rather than worry about who is using bandwidth to do this and that.
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TFP, 21 Apr 2009 @ 5:25pm

It's their phorm
As in, it's ok for BT to break any laws like using Phorm to spy on its users without their consent but we're going to 'protect' our users from themselves.

Having said that, TPB is still accessible thru my BT broadband.
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Azrael, 22 Apr 2009 @ 12:14am

Actually i think that this is clearly just a way to reduce/cap bandwidth just for the mobile users. They aren't dumb, you know.
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Frosty840, 22 Apr 2009 @ 1:36am

Not the IWF
While the block page apparently directs you to the IWF site, according to The Register, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/21/iwf_pirate_bay/ the IWF themselves are claiming that it's nothing to do with them, and a BT spokesperson confirms that the IWF link only directs users to documentation on a code of practice they claim to be following.

I smell a lot of deliberate misdirection by the ISPs on this story.
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Discounts?, 27 Apr 2009 @ 2:26am

Bt blocking websites
If you came to my restaurant and paid say 50£ for dinner, but I decided I won't serve you the potatoes, because they would make you ill and this would break the law, would you still pay 50£ ?? would you be happy and come back again??
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