UK record industry demands expansion of the Great Firewall of Britain

The British Phonographic Institute -- UK equivalents to the RIAA -- are demanding an expansion to the existing Internet censorship regime in Britain, which already blocks access to The Pirate Bay on a national level. Now they want three more sites -- Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents -- added to the blacklist.

The Pirate Bay may be blocked, but the Pirate Party UK proxy for it is one of the top 250 sites in the UK, and its popularity is climbing. I'd never heard of the three torrent sites named by the BPI before, but they sound interesting. For as long as I can remember, anything the BPI doesn't want me to see has turned out to be awesome.

The BPI got a court order to block the Pirate Bay. But they're looking to get ISPs to voluntarily censor these other sites. So far, the ISPs have told them that they'll only participate in the national censorwall if a court tells them to.

From the BBC:

Jim Killock, a campaigner with the Open Rights Group, argued that consumers' interests were not being properly represented.

"Web blocking is an extreme response," he told the BBC.

"If courts are being asked to block websites they need to be taking into consideration the rights of users and any legitimate usage of those sites.

"It isn't clear whether a conversation between a judge, ISPs and rights holders is going to sufficiently represent the needs of users."

More piracy sites faced with blocking as BPI contacts UK ISPs (via /.)

• [rachel ten bruggencate]

  I prefer ‘Hadrian’s Firewall’, myself.

  • [Peppermint]

    Dammit

    What is it with everyone saying EXACTLY what I wanted to say before me? ;___;

    (And I was so proud to have come up with that on my own, too!)

    Also, yes, Hadrian’s firewall is an awesome expression :D

• [Ender Wiggin]

  every site they block creates more users who stop being low hanging fruit, and learn how to take action to safeguard their connection.  Every site they down creates new uploaders from legions of pissed off leechers who realize that someone has to act..why not them?    Every action they take creates more of us who aren’t interested in their next pissant attempt to take their buggy whip making digital…. we don’t want peace, we want to dance on the graves of the gatekeepers.

  • [Ender Wiggin]

    oh..and we’ll be dancing to pirated tracks.

• [politeruin]

  TPB isn’t quite blocked on a national level though (for now anyway), only by the big six. I can still access it myself, for now anyway! If the BPI are happy in their little box believing there is a significant impact on traffic then let them i say, meanwhile anyone who wants to can go through a proxy.

• [Diviney]

  Never heard of “the Pirate Party UK proxy for it”, but it seems the site is blocked here in Aussie land…

  • [King_Rocket]

    It’s not blocked… not sure why you can’t see it.

• [Boundegar]

  If they succeed, how long will it be before the government blocks negative reviews of CDs by RIAA members?

• [niktemadur]

  I’d never heard of the three torrent sites named by the BPI before, but they sound interesting.

  Fenopy and Kickass have been around for years, sounds like you don’t torrent much.
  But there’s still bigger ones, weird that they singled out those three only.

• [Graham Cox]

  I’ve just recently started reading Pirate Cinema, by Cory Doctorow. It is scary how close to reality this book is becoming now.

• [Tadas Jelinek]

  IMO it’s only question of time before someone will build a router firmware based on dd-wrt or similar which will use p2p and Tor to detect censorship and transparently route around it using Tor or VPN.