High Court orders British ISPs to block "The Pirate Bay"

[Keroberos]

Originally Posted by teh603

I wouldn't trust a Linux release from TPB. Too much room for someone to be putting up a malware-laden spoof. Its IMO safer and better to use the distribution's own release channels.

This is a non-issue, most (if not all) linux distros have hashes released for you to check against, like this one for Ubuntu. Microsoft also gives hashes for their MSDN isos, I usually get mine from non-official sources--it's much faster than Microsoft's severs (especially for new releases).

[Ninjalawyer]

So, is linking to infringing material illegal in the U.K.? Since The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host any illegal files, I'm not sure what it is they're doing that's wrong legally unless linking to pirated material is itself illegal. And if that's the case, this seems a bit unsettling.

It's even more unsettling though that an ISP in the UK can apparently be ordered to censor pages if the operator of the page has done something wrong, even where the authorities in the U.K. haven't taken action against the page operator. I'm not a fan of The Pirate Bay, but this seems a little draconian.

[spindlegirl]

I don't have an account at TPB, but I have heard interviews with musicians and artists and even some authors who have said or written on their blog that they have put their work out on the pirate bay to promote it, and encourage people to file share. There are many artists, both popular and not well known, who have done this.

I've occasionally seen some artists pimp their work on the front page of what is sometimes nicknamed "the promo bay".

I met people who have used torrent sites to replace stolen DVDs. They aren't the thieves, the people who stole their DVDs were.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

So, is linking to infringing material illegal in the U.K.? Since The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host any illegal files, I'm not sure what it is they're doing that's wrong legally unless linking to pirated material is itself illegal. And if that's the case, this seems a bit unsettling.

It's even more unsettling though that an ISP in the UK can apparently be ordered to censor pages if the operator of the page has done something wrong, even where the authorities in the U.K. haven't taken action against the page operator. I'm not a fan of The Pirate Bay, but this seems a little draconian.

The UK court shared the view of the Swedish courts who convicted the operators of the site of "aiding" copyright infringement, even though they don't host any infringing material themselves. The entire raison d'être of TPB is to assist others to infringe copyright, while earning the operators large amounts of money in the process.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

So, is linking to infringing material illegal in the U.K.? Since The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host any illegal files, I'm not sure what it is they're doing that's wrong legally unless linking to pirated material is itself illegal. And if that's the case, this seems a bit unsettling.

It's even more unsettling though that an ISP in the UK can apparently be ordered to censor pages if the operator of the page has done something wrong, even where the authorities in the U.K. haven't taken action against the page operator. I'm not a fan of The Pirate Bay, but this seems a little draconian.

Agreed.

[Xoanon]

It won't really be blocked though, will it? As long as you know the IP address you will still be able to access the site just fine.

[Ekaros]

Do they just change DNS to point somewhere different? And then someone just registers extra domains and they can't keep up and it realy doesn't work out. Or someone uses proxy or other such methods.

It won't stop piracy... Almost nothing will...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Waste of time, money and effort that would have been better spent setting up legal alternatives.

Or just hiring a squad of commandos to raid and torch the place. Pass the marshmallows.

[fjtorres]

Smores! Yum!

[Ralph Sir Edward]

No hot dogs?

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you really believe that there is a significant amount of legal content tracked via TPB?

Since a fair amount of the people on this board have seen services like that used as the official channel for keeping patches online for old computer games over the last decade and a half, we would have to be pretty damned stupid not to believe that.

Stupid on the order of "which one are you going to believe, game magazines and your own lying download history - or the prognostications of a hack journalist?".

A lot of us just can't find it in ourselves to be that damned stupid.

[l_macd]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

So, is linking to infringing material illegal in the U.K.? Since The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host any illegal files, I'm not sure what it is they're doing that's wrong legally unless linking to pirated material is itself illegal. And if that's the case, this seems a bit unsettling.

Well a British student is currently fighting extradition to the US over his TVShack website which 'only' linked to copyrighted material. He's still appealing the decision, but if extradited, he could face up to five years in a US jail for copywright infringement. He's not faced any criminal charges in the UK. (Source: BBC News)

[tubemonkey]

The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly-pirated free music and video.

Say, that sounds like YouTube

Whenever I want to listen to a specific song, I just pull it up on YouTube and listen away.

[Ninjalawyer]

On the plus-side, at least there was a fairly open judicial process in the UK to have this done; contrast that to the website seizures done in the U.S. by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where website operators have had their sites seized for up to a year without being able to access the sealed court documents that support the seizure.

I'm still not a fan of website censorship in either case.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

So, is linking to infringing material illegal in the U.K.?

No, but that doesn't stop us from shipping people over to America to be locked up for linking to websites that contain unauthorised TV shows.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneratio...-website/13370