My position on censorship is well documented here on diablog.
In case you are new here, just go to the top of the page, enter the word censorship into the search field and hit enter. You will get a list of posts about it like this one here.
In short, I do not support any kind of censorship, period.
The reason to get back to the issue is this recent court ruling in the UK.
The U.K.'s High Court has ruled that five ISPs in the region must block file-sharing site The Pirate Bay for copyright violations.
Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2, and Virgin Media must block the website within the next few weeks, according to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Britain's music industry trade group.
The people at BPI will never get it.
They remind me of the union leaders, who insisted, that even electrical or diesel powered locomotives had to have a fireman on board. And we all do know how that fight ended, don't we?
But diablog isn't here to complain. Or at least not for complains only. We always aim to help.
So, how can Brits in the future access and use The Pirate Bay?
Since this isn't the first time, The Pirate Bay is blocked by some technically ignorant judge, there are plenty of articles discussing circumvention. Here is one:
One way of course is to use TOR.
TOR increases your anonymity online by re-routing your traffic through a network of servers. Diablog supports TOR, we are running a TOR bridge.
Even easier, just use one of the many other websites of The Pirate Bay. A search on any search engine will list alternative websites. Just make sure, you have a proper one.
Or, specifically for just The Pirate Bay and Firefox, there is a browser plugin you can use, MAFIAAFire: ThePirateBay Dancing.
Why am I pointing to all this?
The Pirate Bay has tons of perfectly legitimate reasons to be.
For example I use it to find free open source software and download it via torrent, which basically means sharing it.
And you do remember "sharing"? The concept you where taught in kindergarten?
Another reason is my dislike for censorship. If some dumb-ass UK judge thinks, he can censor the internet, let's see how well that works. Consider me flipping the bird to that judge, with a broad smile.
Enjoy your freedom of speech,
Engine Room
PS:
As a regular reader of diablog you might wonder, why the judge or the BPI did not receive our Idiot of the Day medal? The answer: Their stupidity isn't new or original enough. They are beating a dead horse.
4 comments:
You can't censor or shut down the Pirate Bay, its too big and people will easily find ways round this censor, like you said ER.
I am probably not the only one aware of the massive public outcry a few months ago when SOPA was the big thing in the US.
SOPA was all but cast into the fiery hell of unpassed government bills. Technically just shelved for the time being, but its not going to make a comeback, most likely because the writer of the bill, used copyrighted content on his OWN website, without crediting the artist.
I have so much more to say on this subject...
Thanks to ER for the `information re Pirate Bay.
It is site I have quite often used in the past.
I have now switched to access it as suggested through
MAFIAAFire: ThePirateBay Dancing.
My pleasure, gents!
And I am glad, you liked it, since Glynsky and Smiles probably didn't.
And, Alex, is you want to write more, just let us know. Guest posts are very welcome.
Unless you call me "Engie", of course.
ER
It would be more of a rant, I can contain myself for the moment :)
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