More and more over the last year, we have witnessed anti-piracy lobby groups targeting ISPs to force them to either hand over the details of users they allege breach their copyrights, or, more clumsily, pressure them to block access to entire sites. The most famous recent case concerned The Pirate Bay, which was blocked by ISPs in Italy at the behest of the IFPI, who were then forced by a court to unblock the site again.
Now it’s the turn of one of Romania’s largest ISPs, UPC Romania, which is blocking its customers from accessing one of Romania’s most popular trackers, Torrentbits.ro. UPC has around 1 million customers overall, and according to reports received by TorrentFreak, it’s Internet customers no longer have access to the BitTorrent tracker, receiving a message in their browser usually reserved for sites that simply don’t exist.
Those accessing the site via a proxy or from another ISP receive this message:
Founded in 2006, Torrentbits.ro quickly became one of Romania’s most popular sites but in May 2007 it became the subject of a police raid, resulting in the arrest of the admins. They were later released.
TorrentFreak’s requests for UPC to comment on the site block have so far gone unanswered.
Thanks to Voor
