ISP Gives Customers The Power To Ban BitTorrent
Written by enigmax on September 28, 2009An ISP in the UK is set to introduce a voluntary customer Internet censorship scheme. Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse/TalkTalk said the company would introduce parental controls for subscribers which would include a feature to ban BitTorrent sites.
As the music industry continues to pressurize anyone it believes can stop illicit file-sharing, its main focus remains ISPs. These service providers are often accused of doing nothing to stop the spread of pirated material on the Internet, despite being very well aware of it. The music industry wants to hold them accountable, the ISPs say it’s not their problem.
Previously the international music industry has taken legal action to order various ISPs in several countries to block The Pirate Bay, but to our knowledge none have offered to help block BitTorrent sites voluntarily – until now.
Charles Dunstone, chief executive of Carphone Warehouse which operates the ISP TalkTalk, said the company would introduce a cinema-style ratings system for web content.
Aside from the self-explanatory 18 rating, there will be two others. Parents setting their connection to U and 14 will trigger a pornography and gambling filter, but they will also have the power to ban file-sharing and BitTorrent sites too.
“This is something that we are going to do anyway, as a service to our customers,” Dunstone told FT. “But through doing it we can also help the content industry by blacklisting sites that have BitTorrent files on them,” he added.
It’s not difficult to see how a system like this might prove attractive to the music industry if used in conjunction with the proposed “3 strikes” mechanism. Customers receiving an industry warning after their account is flagged as sharing illicit files could then have the immediate option to switch on this ISP-level firewall to thwart their kids.
But like all ’solutions’, for the tech-savvy they’re just another problem to be solved.
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92 Responses
rock ur sock
Any sites with bit torrent files? Like source forge?
I’m not against this sort of thing, there’s been parental controls around for the longest time.
As long as it’s not forced upon people that get strikes against them, then it’s just a way for parents to make sure they don’t end up in court because a video game or some music they don’t even listen to.
I don’t like a lot of ads so I use ad block plus, this is the same thing, if parents don’t understand or like bit torrent they should have the right to keep there kids from it.
by the way if your an adult and you love bit torrent and adult content, enjoy:
http://www.bootytape.com
and if you enjoy promotional hip hop mix tapes, enjoy:
http://www.tapedown.com
LOL and like the ISP’s are going to educate the customers on the implications of banning bit torrent. haha What about newsgroups, rapidshare, kdx, ftp, trackers run over IRC…
Once again, they dont know a thing. Good luck to them. They are going to need it.
Yep, what about Source forge as mentioned above? all the sites offering game updates? Linux distros?
As for music… this is not going to affect people who record off spotify (free invites still open to UK people) as well as the X number of other easy ways to get music (DC++, Frostwire etc)…. movies might be another matter totally.
Really just another way of carpet bombing a house because of a mosquito problem.
Yea like thats going to work.
They tired that at my school a while back, 5 minutes later I was downloading the latest episode of Top Gear (just to prove a point)
script kiddies for the win :-D
if music industry can hold isp accountable, can i hold my state accountable for people use the roads to transport drugs, or the car manufacture for the use of their car’s to move drugs?
I believe “parents censoring kids” days are numbered just like copyright and other related bs.
Keep censorship of the internet!!
You old folks have your TV to mutilate all you want.
Where there’s a way, there’s a will.
Once controlling tech is in there its use will be exploited. It’ll start ‘benign’, drive the thin end in, then it’ll be rammed up your arse.
Proxies will have you around that within seconds. My time at uni in England, ResNet did not allow you to download .torrent files (or .msi for some strange reason). Open Tor, download the .file and close Tor, run the .torrent file and watch it connect :)
any site with bittorrent? like world of warcraft updates , bbc downloader app , google….
This is nothing new. Netsweeper has been around for years and my ISP uses them. End users have the ability to block P2P and P2P applications using their software. Its called parental control and every 13yr old boy knows P2P is a good source for pr0n.
http://2009.netsweeper.com/site/dload.php?id=21
This is like putting a cone in front of a car. It’ll stop it for a few seconds before the car just drives around (or through) the cone blocking the way.
Well done, this will work very well /sarcasm
In the new Family Guy episode they made commentary that religion restricted technology and caused us to be 1,000 years or so behind. I wonder if we can make a case that entertainment is the new religion and it’s trying to restrict our understanding. By the way it was this episode:
Family Guy S08E01 Road to the Multiverse
TalkTalk just opened the door to let the Music Industry control their ISP.
You know damn well they are already preparing suggestion letters on how to make their new service work…shit, they probably want to send them a weekly list to add.
This doesn’t seem too bad…It’s not like it will be hard to get around;)
Support an open internet! http://tinyurl.com/yapbs6f
so what about the 1000s of torrent files that are ‘legal’, listed on torrent sites that are legal? blanket banning of torrent sites is ridiculous. taring all torrent files and all torrent sites with the same brush is ridiculous! censorship of the Internet is ridiculous! all Charles Dunstone is doing is shafting his own customers then turning round and bending over to kiss the arses of the music/movie industry. he should have had the balls to stand against them, just as BT at least appears to be doing. the onus, yet again, is being passed on, just so the cost and blame goes in any direction as long as it is away from the complainig companies. hope as an isp, talk talk suffers greatly for this.
Do I start considering leaving TalkTalk?
This is pathetic. They have only two ways they can do this cost-effectively, they can either block by IP, which is so easy to circumvent it’s not even worth describing, or they can do “reject *.torrent”, which bittorrent sites can easily get around by offering alternative downloads as .txt.
And then we us a VPN tunnel and we’re back to square one.
@Soro, no, probably not.
@Soro; No, probably not. It’s probably just your average empty threat.
“cinema-style rating system”
isps censoring the internet! classifing content and filtering the web?! that is evil! the internetw is for to get rid of the studio enforced rating systems! although it’s very easy to tunnel ur way around this problem i have great concern about isps monitoring content it’s a privacy issue rather than anything else, i can set up filtering software on my end to filter content i don’t want the isp to do it for me, that’s evil!
Once again, they missing the bloody point! Filesharing is LEGAL! Sharing copyrighted material is not… Instead, there way of thinking is that they tell everyone that the entire protocol is illegal. Now ignorant parents will be telling their kids that the protocol is illegal by blocking it… It’s like porn, there are tons of people out there that think PORN is illegal. Why? Because their parents thought it was, told them it was and then blocked it! Ignorant idiots tearing our world apart, monsters and heretics, monsters and heretics! ARRRRGH!
Being voluntary I don’t see the problem. Force it and we do have a problem.
Talk about jumping the gun. Half of these comments are probably from kiddies afraid of not getting their torrents.
This is simply Talk Talk trying to look as if they’re taking steps, when they clearly know and have said that such measures are futile.
ISPs have had these for ages. They’re for people who don’t want they’re account slowed down by people torrenting on their network all the time. Not a form of capitulation, as the tin foil wearing masses commenting tonight would say.
Heh, this is actually a good thing, as long as they don’t force it onto consumers, and they make it strictly opt-in.
When I say strict, I mean absolutely zero chance of it automatically being enabled when a customer signs up.
I wonder what the perfect internet would look like for the fools trying to make the Internet “kiddyproof”. Here is a scary little look into their minds:
1) Move your mouse over this link but don’t click: http://www.sanrio.com/
2) Close your eyes
3) Click
4) Open your eyes
5) Scream (optional)
I would like the power to ban there entire ISP from me.. i dont want my pc talking with ISP’s who wish to cave. lol
Like that would work at all lmao the real people that want to pirate stuff will ALWAYS find a way around all these dumb things. Wake up you morons trying to forbid people from using the internet freely.
lol @ 29
have you ever considered using “h3″ headings in your articles ?
That would be a good idea.
Each section could have its own heading and that would make reading easier. sometimes i dont have time to search for the “interesting” part of an article in traditional way (top down, left to right, each line …), headings would help me a lot. and its semantic, whatever that means :)
we all know about vpn’s so i won’t include any url’s except for one ,, haven’t tryed it yet ,, looks cool ;P
http://www.teamviewer.com/index.aspx
@3 http://www.bootytape.com
“by the way if your an adult and you love bit torrent and adult content, enjoy:
http://www.bootytape.com”
DO NOT ADVERTISE PORN SITES HERE GOD DAMNIT!
Too bad there isn’t a “flag this comment for spam” button. :P
Anywho… I do agree that parents should be able to block torrent sites from their kids. It prevents them from lawsuits because the “my child must have downloaded it” excuse never holds up in court. Voluntary internet censorship of yourself I have no problem with. It’s when the courts, ISP’s, and governments force it upon us I have a problem with it. Bottom line: Children are smart enough to get around parental controls, and if people can “voluntarily” censor themselves on the internet, it would be proof that ISP’s can forcibly censor the internet as I feel that is what their ultimate goal is. And yet again, this tactic will prove to fail.
@29
I clicked on the link, screamed, then soiled myself. Thanks alot. Now I have to take a shower.
Am I the only one that can see this being used against other ISPs? “If talktalk can do it why can’t you?”.
This kinda defeats the whole point of why should the ISPs spend more money of their own than the movie industry would loose in sales to save their revenue.
It’s all going to be downhill if this takes off.
That said, it’s probably a very simple port block rather deep packet inspection (DPI) which will probably only block legitimate torrent traffic, and possibly blocking traffic to/from known trackers.
@29 Encore666
I clicked on the link. I’m man enough to admit I LOVE HELLO KITTY!
Thanks for posting the link. :D
wtf are they idiots o!0
even linux legal downloads WTF !
Seems like the British are taking the place of the French now!
This is actually a useful and good idea. I wonder whether it would be a defence to state that you really didn’t know about torrents being downloaded on your wireless network, because you had even opted into your ISPs filtering scheme. hmmm :)
haha – there is talk in the uk that the government are suggesting the music industry need to change its business model.
i mean cds old technology – still £10 for an album….
dvd film £2/3… new technology…
dvd cost millions – music costs a fraction of that.
you do the maths. seems the government is starting to.
http://www.epictorrents.com
Just shut the hell up you screaming retarded backwords moving anti-p2p basturds. Oh no they’re getting stuff for free stop them! Yeah a small group of businesscrats are giong to stop humanity from advancing toward a more sharing and giving society…right. Ok, now I’m going to fling poopballs at their corporate headquarters and smear those pretty reflective windows.
@43
lmao
Why not? It won’t stop anyone who knows what they are doing, but it should appease some of the cnuts in the music industry.
opendns already do something similar, stops the kids accessing adult content and can be very effective
tend to use it when my isp’s dns is flaky
The only way that everyone will be happy is to slap a montly fee on your internet bill that pays Music and Movie companies plain and simple. Otherwise it’ll just be a never ending battle.
this is totally bullshit. there are a LOT of other ways to block sites.
- router
- opendns
- hosts file
- firewall
ISPs’ task is (would be) to connect people to the internet, unrestricted and unfiltered. period.
I was going to say the same thing, Open DNS already does this.
Bottom line: If people can censor themselves from downloading copyrighted content, wouldn’t it be just as easy NOT to download in the first place? The whole concept is not a bad idea, but it makes no sense and will only lead to ISP’s forcibly censoring the internet, either by their own decision, or pressure from the entertainment industries.
I would immidiately put it on… then use a proxy… this way I can say to a judge that I thougth I would be protected, and that I had no idea my workaround would succeed… :P
@michael8124: it’s about parents restricting their kids’ access. but a parent who bans torrent from his/her kid must be a real jerk.
will be pre-configured to ban P2P or bit torrent traffic!
Meaning you will have to opt out in order to use P2P or bit torrent!
Congratulations TalkTalk, you just lost your Common Carrier status.
The lawsuits will start flying from the content industry since you told the world you have the full ability to block P2P sites.
This will be forced upon all your subscribers sooner or later since you made it look so easy. (Remember BT saying it would cost a fortune to stop illegal downloading)
I have no problem with it-
Parental controls are perfectly fine,
But if it gets forced upon people, then it becomes a problem
…As long as its used “responsibly” then its all good.
Meh, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When kids grow up being censored by their parents but not by the law, they tend to regard it as a kind of game. If they can get round it, yay, they beat their parents, and there’re no other repucussions.
Infact, surely it moves filesharing closer to being normal… anyone kid who sees it as something their parents can do but they can’t will view it as right…
Might’ve shot themselves in the foot here…
Awesome, like this will do anything to BT. Then again, it’s the thought that counts….
About the whole ‘optional’ thing…
Just because something is optional does not mean its an option you turn ON.
I would bet that its going to be an option you can turn OFF.
Something on by default (and thus causing more people to use it) would be the only way I can think ‘the industry’ would find it even close to acceptable.
Wow, Power to the People!
RT
http://www.total-privacy.net.tc
Ok I have to comment…I don’t download music, games or any other none TV show episodes but if my ISP said I had to pay X$ as a fee for access to music…I would be switching providers very soon…I watch Hulu (through proxy) and free episodes on youtube and download TV shows (since I pay for premium channels) I am morally covered to say I don’t need to pay 300$ for a PVR when I have a computer that can download the TV shows for me through RSS.
Good shows I buy the box set…the rest get deleted…
I think the music industry and the movie industry now wants to capitalise on the people that download a song to hear and charge everyone for that song…
Canada is now paying a levy for all blank media and I do not want it associated with the internet. As is, for work I pay x$ per CD to backup my work stuff (non-music) and the music industry gets a cut of that.
Copyright is not a monopoly and fair use should be allowed. Please pass some new laws in Canada that allow for that.
I think this is going to work just as well as IT departments trying to block all torrent sites works now. Namely, it doesn’t. It’s just about impossible to keep up with all of the torrent sites going up and down all the time.
In addition to that, users who have basic computer sense will still be able to use a VPN or any other private network or tunnel, and all the site blacklists and “cinema style ratings” in the world won’t do a thing to those users.
This ISP is obviously suffering the problem of not being able to provide the bandwidth it claims to be able to provide. I hope for a slow death.
Things are way out of control, yes lets ban torrent sites because you can download illegal content. Ok lets ban roads and highways because they can be used to traffic drugs. Lets ban cricket because you can brain someone with the bat. Lets ban petrol because you can use it to burn down peoples houses. Lets ban karaoke because we sing songs that we don’t own. Lets ban everything because it’s the only way we can be sure to live in a world where everything is under the control of one.
We are borg………Or at least that’s how they want us.
just another offer nobody will use, just like the 10mb webspace without php/cgi/sql my isp offers ;p
The idea isn’t bad. Parent controlled filters are fine. There is nothing wrong with not wanting your child to accidentally end up on bangbros.
I just don’t think torrents should be grouped as something that might need to be filtered. It implies torrents are bad in some way, which is what the industries have been trying to do for… a long time?
I disagree with any form of censorship, it just drives children to be subversive and disconnected from they’re parents. It’s called self-indoctrination, it’s the reason we have such a number of idiots in this world, we indoctrinate our children with our ideology and the pattern continues. The solution is letting them be free to experience everything without boundaries.
“Ohh they’ll download porn” – who gives a hell? You christian god loving freaks who believe P2P is sharing but still see stuff like pornography as sodomy need to go educate themselves.
@66
What about sites that portray people having sex with animals? You really think it’s OK for kids to come across sites like that? lol
prohibition doesn’t work, look @ p2p lol.
Never before so many commenters who didn’t read and/or understand the article…
Personally, I like the idea of blocking content from kiddies. Especially content that prides itself on having no restrictions.
The problem is, the moment little johnny is old enough for his own computer, he will be over that filter like protesters at a peace conference.
As a network manager, I can say the ONLY way a web filter can work is if there is a restriction put on the software installed.
fuck the parents, fuck the kids… internet is for freedom loving intelligent people, all others must be banned
We can turn it on and access our sites via VPN services.
“I can assure officer I do not use any bittorrent sites, I even opted into to a voluntary blocking scheme”
….
To be fair, the throttling on TalkTalk for torrents is so utterly wank that they pretty much deny access to bittorrent already…
The main reason ISPs want to give the option to block bittorrent is that it’s responsible for a large chunk of their bandwidth costs!
Many ISPs already do filter content in a way. Using newsgroups over many UK ISPs works at a few hundred bytes per second. http, of course, goes at full speed.
I don’t think those who say “there is always a way round the block” are thinking straight. This is going to be used by parents to stop their kids using bittorrent. Kids don’t have credit cards, so they can’t sign up to rapidshare or buy a usenet account. If the kids find a technical solution to the problem, good for them, but I don’t think most kids are capable of this.
I would suggest that the IFPI/BPI pay, for example, £3 per month to the end user if they opt to have bittorrent permanently blocked by their ISP.
No more Google?
In all fairness, it’s a good idea, it would actually work and keep music industries happy while not meaning that you can’t still torrent if you want to. Except for little kids who are still using their parents internet.
so as example of stupid we change the file name and the clients support to it and the run game begins, oh wait lets make em text files HAHA
be as well as admitting theres a file sharer in the household, why else would you need to block BT, then guess who they come looking for 1st when it dont work, yup the suckers that asked for the tech to block the sites associated with BT
@ 66 Sep 29, 2009 at 08:57 by Hmmm
you Sir are an Idiot, i really hope you dont have offspring, god help them if you do
i can see the kids excuses at school when the teacher ask why they did not turn in that mid term paper. they will say my parents got all the search engines blocked because of torrents and i could not do any research lmfao. on another note if they allow to let search enginges go unblocked then a lot of torrent sites will probably adapt to it.
Blocking the pirate bay, lol
Right, I usually support this site but this takes the piss with the comments, it is a fucking optional parental controls solution, talktalk have already stated that they have no interest on restricting the web. Kids should not be downloading anyway if there parents dont want them to, if there parents get a lawsuit, it’s their parents fault.
Plus, things like AOL, BT and OpenDNS have had this for years
Yes, the hormonal kids now will rage at my comments but no child should cause there parents legal hardship and any child smart enough to get around a block should be smart enough to get a fucking vpn
For all of the people crying about this: LEARN TO READ, FOR GOD’S SAKE.
This is completely voluntary, the ISP is not forcing this onto you and many ISPs have offered this kind of service for years. If they were forcing this, then there would be cause for complaint, but they aren’t so shut your mouths and think before opening them. People like you make me ashamed to be a file sharer.
Damn you Jeeeeebus……
wow people here are tards. the ISPs are NOT forcing this. Hell its self explanatory in the title.
didn’t they teach reading comprehension in the 3rd grade?
To me this would be a legal defense.
Example:
You sign up for this ISP, turn on the bit torrent filter, circumvent the filter easily and then if you’re caught use the defense that you were using the filter so how could you have possibly been using it.
This helps to undermine confidence in the filter and will probably lead to it being discontinued.
@85 (SectorX4):
…thus re-invalidating the defense that you would like to use.
This is one of the more stupid things I’ve come across.
Gee – grown adults can’t handle either controlling themselves or reprimanding their own kids – so lets get some other entity be it the governement or the ISP to do it for us.
Parents – get off your lazy freakin’ asses and pay attention to what the hell your kids are doing on the internet. It’s not that difficult.
And – I know it’s voluntary before someone jumps on me about it – but it’s still ridiculous that the ISP has to provide a filter in the first place – and that parents can’t simply teach their own damned kids what’s right and wrong and what’s legal or illegal. Basically the parents (and adults) should be filtering themselves.
Yes, it’s voluntary – for now… but it sounds like the slippery slope to censorship for all.
As Talk Talk own the UK arm of Tiscali they are now the UK’s largest ISP so this is quite a worrying president.
The real reason is that P2P accounts for a large percentage of ISPs’ traffic so if the ISP can cut this out it means increased profits and more cash for Dunstone.
a very good idea, naturally all depends how will be executed
Ownners of the internet connection, people who are paying for it should have full control on it. These people are mostly not advanced in IT, so they will not block stuff on a router i.e.
It could be useful if we are i.e. renting room to someone, or do not want to be liable for someone other activity
Yes Talk Talk is in danger of losing their common carrier status, but unfortunately that is going to happen here in the UK anyway. Lord Mandy is already looking at pushing through a three strikes law. To me this looks like Talk Talk pre-empting these new laws.
do not want.
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