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Oh, those silly governments. Internet censorship won't withstand the onslaught of web-savvy geeks! Nevertheless, the British and Dutch governments recently ordered ISPs to bar users from accessing The Pirate Bay whatsoever. Despite claims from anti-piracy groups that the blockade is being effective, new reports show that simply isn't true, and one website even explains how you can bypass the ban using only a web browser.
Yesterday, ExtremeTech studied data from XS4All, one of the largest ISPs in Europe. The graph below shows BitTorrent usage on the company's network, with the red line indicating the date that Dutch service providers were forced to blockade The Pirate Bay. As you can see, BitTorrent usage hasn't gone down, and if anything, it's gone up slightly. That coincides with data from the University of Amsterdam, whose research found the Pirate Bay blockade to be utterly useless, ExtremeTech reports.
That's not surprising; anything you can find on the Pirate Bay can be found on dozens of other torrent sites, and as surely as haters are gonna hate, pirates are going to pirate -- if there aren't other affordable, easily accessed digital options available, that is.
Accessing the Pirate Bay is incredibly simple even with the ban in place. TorrentFreak notes that would-be Pirates can simply boot up the Opera browser and activate Turbo mode. Turbo mode streams traffic through the Opera servers, compressing the data before dishing it up in-browser. It's made for users with low-speed connections, but since Opera's servers aren't behind the blockade, they pass on full TPB access quickly, easily and sans VPN trickery or DNS tweaks.
No matter what you think of file sharing -- and I'm more of Netflix/Hulu/Spotify guy, myself -- it's been proven time and time again that criminalizing users and censoring BitTorrent-type download services simply doesn't work. Napster originally popped up more than a dozen years ago, after all, and we're still having these discussions today.
Comments are closed on this article
kamikaji
July 08, 2012 at 9:41pm
The one thing that LEGAL digital services have yet to offer, is access to ANY movie or TV show that you want, whenever you want. With services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO, etc., the user is restricted to a pretty tight window of a very slim library of content that is available for viewing at any given time.
This is due to the cable companies, media giants, publishers, distributors, and studios all having EXTREMELY draconian and strict licensing and content consumption agreements with each other. Thus, it is impossible to have every movie and TV show (or close to it anyways) on a digital streaming service that is affordable. The end user only ends up being allowed to watch what the industry wants it to watch at the given moment.
The only way to do it, then, is to buy the WAAAAAAAAY overpriced Blu Ray discs (In addition to a compatible player), or pirate the content. Especially for most older or niche/indie films, too, pirating seems like the only option because of lack of funding for extensive distribution. So, pirating, although there is some guilt for not paying the makers, seems A LOT more sane money wise than spending $20-$60 on EACH blu ray disc.
Another factor in the favor of pirating media, is that your consumption of said media is MUCH more customizable and convenient. You don't have to deal with ridiculous DRM, lack of subtitles in some cases, and limited viewing options because of region lockout, device limitations (AHEM...Netflix on Ubuntu....COUGH), and other varying problems and inconveniences. When media is pirated, the user is FREE to consume their media however they want: on any device they want, with any subtitles (official or fan made), with various audio selections, different resolutions, viewing OFFLINE (because of bandwidth cap or lack of internet connection), with selections of different or obscure languages thanks to avid fans, in ANY region, at any time.
So, you see, people of the internet, if the big, fat, bloated, ignorant Big Media corporations were to be destroyed, and media made AFFORDABLE, CONVENIENT and similar to pirated content in accessibility, I am sure MANY MANY MANY more people would be willing to pay. But no, they have to deceive and lie to us, and inconvenience us at every turn, unfortunately.
END RANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
vrmlbasic
July 07, 2012 at 4:00pm
The Pirate Bay has been good to me, but lately they're almost self-censoring with their slavish devotion to magnet links. I wouldn't mind the ridiculously slow time to download the torrent file from peers, but my client (the last "good" version of uTorrent) has horrid magnet file support. Shoot, even the newest uTorrent is inadequate for magnet links.
My version of uTorrent doesn't ask me where to save magnet-linked files, it just tries to stick them wherever, and I have a directory hierarchy on a whole separate drive to adhere to. Having to stop the torrent and adjust its download location in the brief moment between the .torrent being downloaded from peers and the actual data of the torrent starting to download is grating, to say the least.
zaphodbeeblebrox 42
July 07, 2012 at 1:42pm
i am *this close* to 3.14rating im so sick of more than 90% of my games library not working (steam or otherwise) when my net goes down. correct me if im wrong but isnt it more or less legal to crack your own games? for example. i have dues ex on steam. net doesn't work. i cant play it. so cant i 3.14rate it and technically it is ok because i already own it? if so. i have alot of games i need to crack i already own >:)
vrmlbasic
July 07, 2012 at 4:03pm
Steam irks me, especially as it often includes the developers' hellish DRM on top of their own (cough Dark Athena cough), but it is possible to play games offline for a few days, just by clicking a button, which you can now do _after_ the internet has gone down.
zaphodbeeblebrox 42
July 07, 2012 at 4:17pm
im guessing that was sarcasm about playing it offline for a few days. the only way i know of to make offline mode work correctly is AFTER u have it in online mode u restart if in offline mode and make sure u don't hit "go online" when u start it up from there on out."
but ya i agree with u on the whole. drm on top of steam drm. f*cking annoying.
vrmlbasic
July 07, 2012 at 8:59pm
No, it wasn't sarcasm. When I run PeerBlock, Steam cannot connect as I haven't added exceptions for it, and don't plan to, and Offline mode lets me play the game.
Steam tries to connect, says it can't, and then gives me an "offline mode" button which, when clicked, allows me to play games without issue. I'm told it only lasts a few days, but I haven't tested that yet.
I don't have to go online and do something special as so I can play offline, at least not with the only games I'm playing via Steam.
This also works when I legitimately have no internet connection, though as far as Steam is concerned, running PeerBlock is the same thing.
TerribleToaster
July 10, 2012 at 2:26pm
I hear tell of a Skyrim modder (God bless them) over at TheNexus who created a Steam offline mode patch that will let you play any steam game that you own, offline, without the need to connect to the internet to confirm that you are offline.
livebriand
July 07, 2012 at 11:31am
That's EXACTLY what I was expecting to happen! Now if they did something logical like offering their content at a reasonable price, without DRM, people not pirate so much. All anti-piracy efforts ever do is piss off people who play by the rules, while not affecting the pirates.
Anyway, change your DNS server to something like 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (Google DNS), and you ought to be good to go.
winmaster
July 06, 2012 at 7:27pm
"TorrentFreak notes that would-be Pirates can simply boot up the Opera browser and activate Turbo mode."
Dammit! That was my preferred way of getting around school blocks. Now that attention has been brought to it, it will not last long.
vrmlbasic
July 07, 2012 at 4:04pm
Your school allows Opera to be installed on its machines? More progressive than mine ever were, and probably ever will be.
Havokr505
July 06, 2012 at 3:04pm
I actually prefer buying games on steam rather than torrenting, if there not on steam though, we have a problem. maybe if games didnt cost an outreageous amount of money and were so ANTI this and that, we would have an issue....well im off to play counter Strike.
NavarWynn
July 06, 2012 at 12:46pm
A principle of good leadership I've oft heard is "Never issue an order you know will not be obeyed." Apparently governments don't understand good leadership.
wolfing
July 06, 2012 at 12:04pm
as long as they keep equaling # of torrent downloads = # of lost sales they'll keep battling thinking they're losing billions of $ which is obviously not the case.
stradric
July 06, 2012 at 11:56am
Yes, Napster. Before that IRC, Usenet and FTP (which are still in use of course). Before that, recording music from the radio or copying cassettes (remember those radios with dual cassette decks designed for making copies?).
I saw a graph, though I can't remember at the moment where, that showed the introduction of iTunes (i.e. legal, easily accessible means of obtaining content) did more to stop piracy than any anti-piracy measure ever taken. And yet content distributors still prefer to force legitimate users to jump through hoops so they can gouge us for profit.
0ly1r3m@1ns
July 06, 2012 at 2:18pm
it makes me sad that iTunes is the only practical (legal) was to buy all your music, evan at that its piss poor since they either charge 1.30 per song (ridiculous!) or 1$ and it encrypted and only works on an iShit (well with some tinkering it will but lets assume you're a computer noob for now) not to mention the fact apple is a terrible company and shouldn't be supported for moral reasons, Nexus ban any one?
Belboz99
July 06, 2012 at 11:07am
It's worthy to note that Napster and other peer-to-peer file sharing services were hosted exclusively on Download.Com, a part of CNet.
CNet was founded in 1994 by a Fox Network co-founder Kevin Wendle and former Disney Creative assiciate David Baker. It was bought out by CBS in 2008.
But more to the point, AOL.com, MSN.com, CNet, and ZDNet all promoted MP3 sharing software years before these same companies decided to tear them down and sue every college kid for using them.
duncansil
July 06, 2012 at 10:51am
As the article says, the only effective deterrent to piracy (IMO) is offering legal alternatives at market appropriate prices in as little DRM encumbered format as possible.
Simple, but toxic to the malodorous middle-men.
tekknyne
July 07, 2012 at 10:11am
You mean the distribution people who provide nothing more than barriers to these services should be expected to accept less money!?!?
Well said!
