Government Blocks Torrent Site, Citizens Protest
Written by enigmax on March 18, 2007May 2006 saw the admin of one of Bulgaria’s largest BitTorrent trackers arrested by the police, accused of putting links to over 20 million copyright works on the internet. Despite the fact he has been released, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry has now ordered all ISP’s to block access to the torrent site.
Eliyan Geshev was the administrator of Arenabg.com, Bulgaria’s largest BitTorrent site, which is among the 10 most visited websites in the country. He was originally arrested in late May 2006 and although it is unclear if he was released on bail in the meantime, it is now being reported that he has been released. By order of the Sophia Town Court, Geshev was freed due to “lack of grounds for his arrest”. As he tried to leave the courtroom, security guards struck journalists trying to interview him. The journalists say they intend to complain.
Despite Geshev’s apparent innocence, a Bulgarian Interior Ministry order has stopped clients of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) accessing the arenabg tracker. Organized crime fighting supremo Yavor Kolev said that all ISP’s have been ordered to block access to arenabg.com.
Bulgaria had promised to “show no mercy” to site administrators who illegally distribute copyright material but as BitTorrent trackers merely point to content and do not host it, it is unclear what they intend to do about them. Blocking access to the sites, regardless of their legality appears to be one option.
However, it seems that Bulgarian citizens are not pleased with this course of action and intend to make a public protest in support of torrent site administrators who they believe are being unfairly treated. On March 15th, the organisers applied to the Sophia Municipality to hold their demonstration which will protest against what they claim is illegal state-sponsored action against Bulgarian torrent site administrators.
The protest will take place on March 22nd in front of the Aleksandar Nevski Cathedral.
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17 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Bulgaria is now a member of the EU. I wonder if the EU allows entire websites to be blocked for copyright infringement.
Actualy only two isps in bulgari ablocked Arenabg.com- BTC and ITD Network. They blocked the ip address of arenabg.com but half an hour later all over the forums proxy servers appeared bypassing the ban. The most interesting thing is that in bulgaria only the court has the power to block an IP, not the chief of a section in GDBOP( General Office for fighting organized crime)
I think someone should contact RIPE and report this illegal action.
2 days GDBOP raided the offices of Linkos Ltd. an ISP in Bulgaria and treatened to confiscate all the servers in the premises if the second most popular tracker in bulgaria Zamunda.Net was not shut down. The tracker was until 10 days ago property of Linkos Ltd. but it was not at the time of the raid, nor was it hosted at any given time by Linkos Ltd.
Bulgaria a new member of the european union is all but a counntry where laws matter.
All theese “measures” that have been taken will not stop neither the piracy nor the sites … The ministry is trying to fight something that no one defeated …
All in this story is about the money. In Bulgaria is possible everything, if you have a money.
[quote comment="66379"]Actualy only two isps in bulgari ablocked Arenabg.com- BTC and ITD Network. [/quote]
Actually, evro.net and orbitel are also among the ISPs that filtered traffic.
AFAIK, BTK is still filtering it, God knows about smaller ISPs in the country…
As far as im aware of the laws in the other countries, members of the EU, no law can forbid the usage of the bittorrent system. it is somehow really the dumbest thing GDBOP are doing. This is an example of how the country is brakeing it’s own laws.
Anyway it seems that soon the trackers will be online again. If not there is already a group of more than 15000 ArenaBG users ready to start a tracker on a host whos owners will definately not be arrested by GDBOP.
Ok not we,all Bulgarian users are very interesting from this illegal action. But this is the live in Bulgaria…Our police don`t know that the torrent is not illegal…Yes they(police)say that the action is only for administrators,example Elian Geshev, but not only.The action isfor allusers because the torrent is not illegal and we go today to protest for our torrents site- Zamunda.net and ArrenaBg.com And you can help us if you publish many news for our protest and our protecting action.
Today there was a protest and I think it went good… there was attempt for sabotage (the electricity was cut for 2 hours from the beginning). There were about 2000-3000 people and it won’t be the last one we made. Next will be in front of the government!
http://v.foto.radikal.ru/0703/ab/ba3449392c3e.jpg
Anyway it seems that soon the trackers will be online again. If not there is already a group of more than 15000 ArenaBG users ready to start a tracker on a host whos owners will definately not be arrested by GDBOP.
If your isp blocks anything or shapes your downloads you can always use a VPN to make it so that they cant monitor where you go, here’s a site that will set you up with a VPN, there is a setup fee but after that it’s free monthly.
http://www.filesharesmart.com
I’m using http://strongvpn.com OpenVPN account to bypass blocked site access. With it encryption my surfing is anonymous and absolutely hidden. Better than always lagged proxies…
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