Kuwait Government Blocks 20 BitTorrent Sites
Written by Ernesto on February 12, 2008As of today, the Kuwait government ordered ISPs to block access to 20 BitTorrent sites. The ultimate goal of the state of Kuwait is to ban all BitTorrent sites in an attempt to reduce piracy, but this is not likely to happen anytime soon.
As in most countries, BitTorrent sites have gained a lot of popularity over recent years in Kuwait. BitTorrent sites are frequently visited, not only with the nationals, but also with the many foreign employees who are stationed there. Most foreigners use BitTorrent as a replacement for the Tivo they have at home, so they can catch up with the latest TV-shows.
However, this is about to change - or is it?
United Networks, a large ISP active in the Kuwait area, has recently notified its customers about the new torrent site filter. They write: “The Ministry of information has today sent us a letter announcing they will be blocking all Torrent sites. This is due to piracy laws of the State of Kuwait and to protect the intellectual property of the pirated content on these sites.”
BitTorrent site filters are not new, last year Turkey blocked The Pirate Bay, a week ago the Danish ISP Tele2 had to do the same. Protesting does help sometimes, a few months ago, Mininova (not included in the Kuwait list) was blocked by an ISP in Dubai, a country in the same region as Kuwait. Only a few days later, the ISP in question decided to unblock Mininova as many customers complained, and threatened to move to another service provider.
It is unlikely that the Kuwait government will respond in the same way, but perhaps this is not needed anyway. If you take a look at the list of 20 torrent sites that was released today, you’ll probably understand that the state of Kuwait is not really up to date on what’s going on in the BitTorrent community. They missed most of the bigger BitTorrent sites, and several sites they listed ceased to exist months ago.
The Kuwait 20….
www.demonoid.com (has been offline for a while)
www.extratorrent.com
www.fulldls.com
www.meganova.org (is no more, redirects to SeedPeer)
www.seedpeer.com
www.nfo.com.il (not loading)
www.piratic.org
www.worldnova.org
www.power-portal.to
www.smartorrent.com
www.thepiratebay.org
www.torrentazos.com
www.torrent-base.dl.am (redirects to Usenext)
www.torrentlounge.com
www.torrentplaza.be
www.tvtorrents.com
www.xphilez.com
www.zakatron.com
www.zonamule.com (parked domain)
www.zoozle.de
Previously: ShareReactor Admin Found Guilty of ‘Commercial’ Copyright Infringement
Next: 5 Reasons Why Illegal Downloaders Will Not Face a UK Ban
75 Responses
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they didn’t even block mininova :D
viva la eztv :)
they didn’t even block btjunkie!
@1
IMO Dont give them ideas of more sites to block. Play the dumb game.
This sucks :/
did they blocke the site, or just the domain name. If its just the domain you could always do a reverse DNS, get the ip, type http://ip.address and you’re sailing the high seas yet again. A permant fix would be to edit your “hosts” file.
Also how dare they assume that everything on a public bitorrent site, and much less the whole protocol is copyrighted work.
The UK is next. Welcome to fascism!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm
They didn’t even block Google.
Don’t panick…
Does anyome remember what had happend after fall of Napster? Who remember about it today[quote comment="287852"]The UK is next. Welcome to fascism!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7240234.stm/quote
I know that reading id a rare skill nowdays, but it’s not impossible.
[quote comment="287853"]They didn’t even block Google.[/quote]
QFT :D
lol @ blocking demonoid. Why haven’t they blocked OiNK? :f
This is hilarius, who cares about Kuwait? Is that even a country?
@ 12 / andyness
You obviously don’t, but then again who expects something from a person that doesn’t even know if Kuwait is a country. Ignorant fuck. You sound like a fucking American…
[quote comment="287889"]@ 12 / andyness
You obviously don’t, but then again who expects something from a person that doesn’t even know if Kuwait is a country. Ignorant fuck. You sound like a fucking American…[/quote]
Disregard that, I suck cocks.
For Koweit users, visit http://www.sumotorrent.com, it’s not blocked by your country :)
Oh what a big surpise,.
Kuwait is the country which was invaded by USA in the 90s and where they then installed their own corporate puppet government.
@16
This was what came to my mind when I read the headline
Next step is Ban Internet
[quote comment="287851"]did they blocke the site, or just the domain name. If its just the domain you could always do a reverse DNS, get the ip, type http://ip.address and you’re sailing the high seas yet again. A permant fix would be to edit your “hosts” file.[/quote]
lol, it’s not that easy. They are blocking the actual ip of the sites, also filtering the p2p traffic. But with a good proxy and encryption, it can still be done.
IMHO the best solution for winning the war against piracy is to unplug the internet. It’s that simple. xDDD
Why would the Kuwait Government have any interest in blocking pirated american media? Wow they are going to help with U.S Policy….thats about all they’ll do…bastards
you stupid fucks. Kuwait blowz.
“The Ministry of information has today sent us a letter announcing they will be blocking all Torrent sites.”
Ministry of Information?!?!
1984 anyone?
Orwell is here and he is living large.
well, other countries in the middle east have also blocked these sites and more..for one United Arab Emirates has done it..
who cares what’s happening in kuwait
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