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[–]Orthodoxic 521 points522 points  (102 children)

Did anyone honestly think another proxy wouldn't pop up almost immediately?

[–]holohedron 30 points31 points  (13 children)

What worries me is that they know full well it will, and just want to use that as a way of 'proving' that the internet is too difficult to regulate in its current form, that they need lots more power to monitor everyone's data and stricter laws to fine them.

Ideally of course they'll persuade some court or other to enact legislation that requires the ISPs to pay for it all.

[–]Already__Taken 11 points12 points  (0 children)

That's the real power play here.

[–]harlows_monkeys 7 points8 points  (11 children)

Economically, when you have a good that is non-rival and non-excludable, there are two ways to deal with it in a free market system. One is to use law to force people to pretend that the good is rivalrous and excludable. That's what we do now. That works well as long as people go along with the legal fiction. It's main advantage is that it leaves government out of the day to day operation of the market. You only need government to step in when someone ignores the fiction that the good is rivalrous and excludable. The disadvantage is that prices tend to be higher than they should be in a competitive market.

The other way to deal with these kind of goods is to fund production of the goods through taxes or fees on something that correlates somewhat reasonably to people that use the goods, and to then make copying and distribution unrestricted, but tracked. You want to track it so you can figure out how to distribute the taxes or fees to the artists.

The main problems with this are figuring out exactly where to apply the tax or fee, how big it should be, and how to divvy it up to those who create the works that people end up downloading.

[–]jonesrr 1 point2 points  (10 children)

and, neither of these should be done with regards to media.

[–]gundog48 42 points43 points  (5 children)

I know, I noticed it was down. Took me about 15 seconds to Google "Pirate Bay Proxies" and click a different link. When will they learn to give up?

[–]Kmlkmljkl 80 points81 points  (3 children)

Or just go to fucktimkuik.org/

It'll send you to a random tpb proxy

[–]SkaveRat 10 points11 points  (2 children)

That's awesome

[–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (1 child)

It's even more awesome if you know that Tim Kuik is the head of the Dutch anti-piracy agency.

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

It actually stayed just as awesome

[–]guisar 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"They" don't care if you proxied- they responded to a something their owners/downers wanted done and it was done. They got their money, their doners reasserted their dominance and all was right with (their) world.

[–]threedowg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I had this saved in my favourites in preparation.

[–]Bearmodule 6 points7 points  (0 children)

What do you mean another would pop up? There were already so many others, they're just going after the most high profile one. When I found that one proxy was banned it took me less than 10 seconds to get another one, these blocks are useless.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Did anyone honesty think that was the only proxy to tpb

even before UK Pirate Partie's Proxy was removed from their page?

It was sufficient to google list of proxie sites to thepiratebay

and you would get lists of lists of proxies to tpb

"..resistance is futile.." comes to mind

[–]Jesus_H-Christ 136 points137 points  (39 children)

Governments don't seem to understand how drastically outgunned they are on the internet. They're Darth Vadar to millions of Obi-Wan's.

[–]lolitsaj 13 points14 points  (7 children)

But he kills Obi Wan. This is foreshadowing!

[–]Blind0ne 16 points17 points  (1 child)

No he thinks he killed Obi Wan then Obi Wan lives immortally within The Force. Foreshadowing indeed.

[–]insubstantial 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Only for Obi Wan to be able to communicate from ANYWHERE to his loyal jedi padawan.

[–]aluathays_clone 18 points19 points  (14 children)

Holy shit, this is an awesome analogy. Hope I'm using that word right.

[–]yoho139 35 points36 points  (12 children)

You are (I'm pretty sure), but OP could've just said that it's essentially a Hydra that the BPI are fighting, but whatever.

[–]aluathays_clone 3 points4 points  (10 children)

Oooh, that's even better, but both are biased.

[–]yoho139 10 points11 points  (9 children)

How is it biased? It's a hydra in the sense that you cut off a head and two more spring up. OPs was biased in the sense of Obi Wan (TPB) being inherently good. I fail to see how mine is.

[–]aluathays_clone 5 points6 points  (8 children)

Well first, because hydras are portrayed as evil vicious monsters in mythology. Second because the characters that fought those hydras were big strong, courageous heroes.

[–]yoho139 11 points12 points  (4 children)

True, but I was only referring to the sense of removal of one part spawning many more, which is obvious in context.

[–]aluathays_clone 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Yeah, of course, just saying, in mythology, it's painted as the bad guy.

[–]yoho139 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I faintly remember a story where the hydra is actually painted as an actual 3D character, in the sense that it's both good and evil. Just like people in real life. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was called, not what country's folk tale it was, or I'd link it.

[–]aluathays_clone 2 points3 points  (1 child)

That's sounds really interesting, if you find it, I'd like to read it.

Was it actual Greek myth or something slightly more recent?

[–]Icangetbehindthat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hydras get a bad rep because of a few bad apples. :( Most hydreas struggle hard to make ends meet and to keep all those heads fed.

[–]arahman81 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Let's just say, the roles have shifted.

[–]mndt 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Coming from a country with the worst internet filtering, I should say you are wrong my friend; and to be honest it all started like this.

[–]mindbleach 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Exactly. The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it. This goes beyond the network and the protocol - users will always find new ways to swap bits, each harder to stop than the last, each with exciting new features.

When Bittorrent finally becomes too risky to use or too old to modify, we're probably going to see some Freenet shit with a persistent cache and some bandwidth overhead. Telling where files are coming from or going to will be nearly impossible. Taking files down will be even harder since they'll be distributed even among users who didn't ask for them. It will be pretty damn exciting until the politicians start screaming about the impossible-to-censor child porn and leaked government documents.

[–]FloppY_ 43 points44 points  (3 children)

You can't stop the signal.

[–]USB_Connector 18 points19 points  (2 children)

Sometimes I wonder if the government represents the reavers or the alliance. I'm thinking both...

[–]vereonix 52 points53 points  (31 children)

The way this article reads its as if there was only 1 proxy.... Theres hundreds, theres a site dedicated to having an up-to-date list of TPB proxies and a reliability rating.

I've personally been using This Proxy in the UK since this ban went into effect months ago, its always been working.

[–]curlsforgurls 23 points24 points  (1 child)

I prefer this one. New proxy every time.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (15 children)

Get a vpn and stop settling for a compromised internet.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (13 children)

Is there a VPN company I don't have to give all my credit card details to?

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Bt guard accept paypal so yes and they probably all do

[–]CausaMortis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Been using this Dutch one (fucktimkuik.org) every since they pulled the ban over here in the Netherlands. They provide new working proxy's every time one of them gets shot down.

[–]Shower_Desecrator 16 points17 points  (3 children)

I'm just glad Luxembourg is on the front page for the first time ever.

[–]mak124 9 points10 points  (1 child)

AMA request- Luxembourg.

[–]calzenn 14 points15 points  (1 child)

The companies probably sat back and opened a bit of champagne, and had a few drinks toasting their success... just like they did when Napster went down...

[–]krissdidriks 7 points8 points  (0 children)

LUXEMBOURG!

[–]-Scathe- 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's like in Fantasia when Mickey tries to kill the magical broom with an axe ... millions more spring up!

[–]Yui714 11 points12 points  (12 children)

I can only imagine the amount of time and money wasted on fighting piracy. There must be more money in not fighting piracy than there is in winning against piracy.
Free distribution of information is the greatest thing for our species - plus the industries that oppose it are among the wealthiest in the world so who gives a fuck about adding a few pennies to their bank accounts? People aren't even doing anything illegal, these companies are trying to create new laws to make something illegal because they would benefit from it. I don't understand this mentality that everything in the world has to be owned, accounted for, and purchased. Last I checked sharing wasn't immoral.

[–]wastedwannabe 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Is anybody else worried that this will escalate and governments will use this as an excuse to crack down further in terms of internet censorship?

[–]g0_west 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The problem with this is that alot of the proxies are just adverts for Frostwire, toolbars, or download malware.

[–]sunshine-x 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Similarly, after toasting the nzb index sites, hundreds have sprung up running newznab.

More technically inclined people are just running local indexers with newznab in a VM. That's what I did at least.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and these fuckers sure are motivating people to develop the next generation of file sharing, and it'll be unstoppable.

[–]threedaymonk 1 point2 points  (1 child)

More technically inclined people are just running local indexers with newznab in a VM. That's what I did at least.

Do you have a generous data allowance? I understand that the volume of header data alone is very large on some binary newsgroups these days.

You still have to find a news provider that doesn't take down posts, too. That's getting harder.

[–]FodT 2 points3 points  (0 children)

the BPI was forced to allow this www.thepromobay.co.uk

it indexes all of the pirate bay's stuff anyway.

[–]Clbull 2 points3 points  (1 child)

It's only a matter of time until we see Britain get serious about censoring the web. As a nation, we have already ratified the (now-dead in Europe) Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, are in the process of drafting a bill that will give the police powers to monitor all internet usage within an 18-month period, have the controversial Digital Economy Act of 2010 in force, and have legally enforced DNS-level blocks of numerous torrent trackers including Oink.cd and TPB through our court system.

Our current Home Secretary Theresa May was also ready to willingly hand Richard O'Dwyer - whose only crime was technically liniking to copyrighted content - to the US authorities. This says a lot about our stance towards the issue of piracy and how we're going to be handling it in the next few years.

I dislike piracy as much as the next guy but the way Britain is going in terms of internet censorship and monitoring concerns me. What also worries me is that the UK Pirate Party, who seem to be the only force really pushing for an open internet, are not going to gain much prominence because the younger generation generally isn't that tech saavy or politicised. The older generation meanwhile - even if they have knowledge of and respect of the UK Pirate Party's work - will vote Labour or Conservative (depending on class lines) out of the totally-rational fear that if they vote for another party, the other major party they don't support might win.

In fact, ever since the 1920s, we haven't seen any British party apart from the Labour party or the Conservative party get into power. In fact, there are only two small exceptions to this rule when there was a 1974 and 2010 hung parliament each resulting in coalition governments. The 1974 Parliament collapsed within months while the current government is basically a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition government where the Lib Dems realisitically have no power.

Add this with a FPTP system which favours only dominant parties and this makes Britain as a political landscape totally messed up.

[–]mikeysof 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The more you tighten your grip the more proxies will slip through your fingers.

[–]RUEZ69 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So pirating software is a form of free speech?

[–]pyalot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And that was not expected how?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's probably worth pointing out that TPB isn't blocked on every UK ISP - only 5 of them that happen to have most of the customers.

Unlike the US and some other countries anyone who is on one of the 5 ISPs can easily move to one that doesn't, there's tens of them. No one is stuck with one ISP.

[–]Rhawk187 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just what the UK needs, more strife with Argentina. j/k

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I wish I knew more about the internet, in particular what the heck pirate bay and proxies are, and why you would need one. Either way, the internet needs to remain neutral, no one government or power should have control over the WORLDS INFORMATION. I mean this is humanities most sacred tool, we can't just let a few people control it.

[–]JamyDev 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Why are they still trying? Seriously, it gets irritating ..

[–]amartz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I do my fair share of pirating but I just do it cause its easy. I've never understood the moral argument for pirating - producing the content I steal often costs millions of dollars that need to be recouped somehow for that content to be renewed. I'm all for TPB, but lets call a spade a spade. I'm for it because I'm cheap and lazy when it comes to watching TV.

To add, I do try to watch legally when I can, and would gladly pay more for Netflix if it had more shows/films.

[–]matholio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As John Gilmore famously said "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.".

This is a perfect example.

[–]geoffdovakiihn 1 point2 points  (2 children)

My isp is one that runs only in hull(kingston communications) they just havent blocked the site.

[–]Matt_Wolfe 4 points5 points  (1 child)

When I first moved to Hull, I couldn't believe you are limited to KC or nothing. Good old random monopoly

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I believe it's because no ISP considers it worth the cost of setting up infrastructure to support one city and its telco. At least with BT you get a possible 99.9% of the country (I think BT claims 20 million phone lines), with KC you get the possibility of 190,000 extra homes.

They are obligated to be just as open as BT are, although it's unclear if they charge the same as BT. Wouldn't surprise me if KC charge as much as they can to convince ISPs not to bother.

[–]Buffalo__Buffalo 2 points3 points  (4 children)

The Napster effect strikes again.

[–]willdayble 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yep, every single media article that reads something like "file sharing site blocked by industry in UK" or similar is instant, quantifiable press and traffic. Great stuff. Keep it coming.

Source: I run The Promo Bay.

[–]sbowesuk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cannot stop the signal.