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
73 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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america never blocks the internets…never.
lol pathetic..
is it me or is everybody really dumb compared to pirates?
20:20 by Mike Rob
america never blocks the internets…never.
Exactly - Comcast anyone? If Kuwait’s lead is folowed by other ISP’s who knows who will be next? Get the wool off your eyes and stopBig Brother from screwing us all!
they didnt even block torrentz.com :p
Thank you Kuwait, for providing me with some new torrentsites to browse…
I’ve never even heard of most of these sites…
“Ministry of information” -
sounds like ‘Brazil’ to me.
ROFL!
That fascist country America will spread it’s draconian laws everywhere.
Democracies of the world are being destroyed by Americans.
Now there are four country’s that have blocked access to some kind of BitTorrent-site. China, Turkey, Denmark and Kuwait. Great company, Denmark.. Synes synd på dere, dere får snylte linje av Sverige ^^.
you are only a slave of big companies
if you don’t pay nothing to companies
you are the evil
keep buying ;)
i think they didn’t block a lot of the major bit torrent site because they knew it would cause a big protest
instead i think they plan to add more torrent sites to the list slowly so there are not big protests happening all at once
how come a stupid country like kuwait blocked the torrents? you stupid government bastards. burn in hell!
So what….More free bandwith for us.
Thank you Kuwait government…..
I wonder if it’s because of the push toward legal content (”Featured torrents”) that they didn’t block Mininova.
Man, poor Kuwait. That stupid USA army fucks up everything they set foot on (literally or figuratively). This certainly isn’t Kuwait decision, it’s American. There is no more Kuwait, it’s just an American colony.
Kuwait is American Ally. American help Kuwait when Saddam invaded Kuwait… The Emir(King) is American puppet.
1. I’m surprised that the Kuwaitis would make a move like this considering the amount of bootleg dvds and ps2 games i bought while I was there.
2. I don’t think it really matters to the citizens though, if you notice, they aren’t exactly blocking any Arab-centric torrent sites. This is probably just a move to get more credibility with US and UK.
3. This is also a country where if you are of Kuwaiti blood, you don’t work (with the exception of military service) because of the government owning the oil company and reverse taxation.
Torpark is your friend unblock everything.
another trimph for a great democracy
http://www.freethescene.net
isn’t blocked either…
Arab Royals are all crazy. Like the Saudis banning Valentines Day just yesterday.
I live out here in the Kuwait region and I am willing to bet that they blocked these sites because of Pornography and not copyright. If they cared about copyright they might do something about the illegal DVD’s sold on every corner.
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