Newzbin2: BT Have Started To Censor Us
UK Internet service provider BT didn’t need the flexibility of a full 14 days to begin their censorship of Usenet indexing site Newzbin2. According to an administrator at the site the court-ordered blockade has already begun, with subscribers to the ISP getting an “Error – site blocked” message when they try to access.
On October 26, Justice Arnold at the High Court handed down a written judgment to BT, one of the UK’s largest Internet service providers, which ordered the company to block subscriber access to Newzbin2 within two weeks.
The decision came after BT failed in their opposition to the blockade of Newzbin2 which had been ordered after several Hollywood studios applied for an injunction against the site on copyright infringement grounds.
With several days to go before the deadline expires, according to Mr White at Newzbin2, BT appear to have implemented the blockade.
“We’ve heard that the British Telecom censorship of the free web has begun,” he told TorrentFreak in an email.
“It’s a sad day when a minor European nation decides to kow-tow to Hollywood and join China and Iran in blocking citizens from reading the views of others and accessing a search engine.”
The HTML code in the webpage displayed when BT users try to access Newzbin2
In typically defiant mood, Mr White added that the blockade would have very little impact.
“Downloads of our BT Cleanfeed busting client that will allow anyone to access our site despite the block have been stratospheric over the past couple of weeks,” he reports.
The apparent take up of the software has been impressive. Just over 93% of Newzbin2′s active BT users are reported to have downloaded the anti-censorship software, leading to what Mr White describes as “replete failure” for the MPA.
Reports from BT users during the past few hours have varied.
Some say they can still access the site, others report that they cannot and can see the “Error – site blocked” message detailed above instead. Others report that Newzbin2 can only be accessed via their anti-censorship client or by typing the site’s IP address (85.112.165.75) directly into their browser.
It’s unclear why there is a variation in results but it would be reasonable to presume that the full effects of the block might need to propagate across the ISP’s userbase.
“Newzbin2 shall go on, it’s users shall continue to access the site and its facilities and as the UK lackeys of the MPA roll over other NZB sites like nzbsrus and nzbmatrix they will realise that nothing has changed and they have no change after paying millions of dollars in legal fees,” notes Mr White.
“Well done dinosaurs, have a fern leaf; TeamRDogs will have Pina Coladas.”
