List of torrent sites ...

... courtesy of the UK Courts!

If you search on Google for anything like "torrents" and happen to click on one of the links that are blocked the above is what you'll get.  I presume this page will increase as more sites are blocked by UK Court Orders.

The ISP I am currently using is BT, I believe that they, and other major players in the market, e.g. Virgin, TalkTalk, Sky, are all following the blocking list above.

I guess there may be similar blocking in place in the US.

However, I'm pretty sure the blocking list isn't in place in *every* country - many are against censorship of any kind.  So, assuming you can find a proxy in a more 'liberal' country then you can happily use the above list as a nice starting point to find those torrents.

I think this raises two important points:

1) Did someone *really* think this through?  Irrespective of the arguments for/against this kind of blocking, was it wise to publicise the list?  Or is this actually a requirement for this kind of blocking?  I hope it's the latter since there absolutely SHOULD be transparency in such matters.  In fact, if this is the route we're going down then it should be impossible to block a site without such a block being made public - it would allow accidental blacklisting to be avoided/contested.

2) There was an article this morning on the BBC about GMail being blocked in China.  This is not entirely the same argument since pirated copies of films, music, and games are, at least in the UK, currently illegal, GMail, social media sites, and other communications are not.  However, it's also been argued that alot of the torrent sites are simply search engines, they themselves do not host any content.  Google will return torrent results, though these are starting to be removed from search results.  Do we really want tampering with search results?  Are alternatives available without such tampering, e.g. DuckDuckGo which supposedly doesn't filter.

Personally I'm not a fan of censorship and I don't like the idea of the blacklist/blocking approach because I think it has many technical and philosophical weaknesses.  I know there is definitely content out there that is illegal and unpleasant but I suspect the people accessing that are already using methods to circumvent the above blocking.  So censorship like the above list really comes down to big media companies throwing lots of money around.

So, as I've always said, why can't they throw that money at making decent online distribution services that are easy to use, fair, and provide greater benefit and features to the customers.  This happened with music on the whole - iTunes, Amazon, et al distribute music without DRM restrictions in place and seem to make plenty money doing so.  It's now more attractive to use those services for music (albeit for some hard-to-find or ridiculously over-priced items) rather than resort to torrents.

Do the same for video - stick that back catalog of old movies (80s, 90s, etc) and charge $1 a download rather than trying to sell old DVDs which cost money to ship, store, shift.

The Sky's the limit

Over the Easter weekend Sky was showing a two part adaptation of Terry Pratchett's "The Colour
of Magic" (for the picky among you I believe this also merged in the second book "The light fantastic"). I presume at some point in the not too distance future this will, as with the Hogfather, be available on DVD as well.

I don't really want to wait that long, I'd really like to see this now! As I'm sure will a great many Pratchett fans. However, I'm not willing to pay £16/month for a Sky subscription as my TV viewing is minimal at best so it would be rather a waste.

Of course the internet comes to the rescue, about 24hours after part 1 was shown the AVI files appears on The Pirate Bay and after the same delay part 2 was available for download as well!

So what should I do? Should I download these copies? Is this *really* illegal as I could, potentially, be watching the same content at a friends house if they had recorded it on Sky+ or similar device. It almost certainly *is* illegal I would guess since it's an unauthorised copy, Sky didn't approve it in any way and they hold the copyright.

You can argue about the moral and legal arguments all day but when it comes down to it, one important fact remains: I want to see this show NOW. The advertising/marketing/promotion of this has been successful, I want to see it. As do a great many other people and there can be no argument about this fact.

So I think there are two possibilities in this case:
1) People use illegal means to access a copy of the show - Sky (or whoever else) could track these people down and prosecute them or copyright infringement.

2) Sky could, instead, provide a way for me to access this content legally and in a way that was easy to use and comparable to the illegal process.

Why would Sky do this? Well, here's a few ideas:
1) Could be a source of revenue - charge a reasonable fee for the service, say something as low as £1 to stream and maybe £3 for an AVI file with no restrictions but at a low resolution.
2) Advertising - obvious really
3) Demographic information and more potential advertising opportunities
4) Brand loyalty - if they provide such a useful and fair service wouldn't you want to buy other things off them as well?

I'm sure there are many possibilities all of which would bring in revenue where currently people simply take the free alternative.