Comments on: Panera Bread’s Evil Torrent Filter

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:02:54 +0000

If im reading this from panera, then I guess they didn’t block it here? How nice.

By: Newk's

Newk's — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:08:25 +0000

Panera bread suck’s anyway. Come to Newk’s!!

By: Lynx

Lynx — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:55:45 +0000

Who cares, it is their internet connection and they want to block it.. If you want to access torrents from Panera, get a 3G adapter.

By: don't like censorship

don't like censorship — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:24:55 +0000

http://www.gookla.com/browse.php?u=Oi8vZ29va2FsYS5jb20%3D&b=13

Welcome to gookla.com – BETA

Enjoy unrestricted and uncensored browsing with our service. You make a request via our site, we fetch the resource and send it back to you.

Browsing through us both keeps you anonymous from the sites you visit and allows you to bypass any network restrictions from your government, workplace or college.

By: still kicking

still kicking — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:27:40 +0000

My one and only visit to the local Panera was a mess. I knew there would be problems when I walked in and saw that both the cashiers were Miss Cuties in their early 20s. That is ALWAYS a bad sign as that group never has even the most minimal interest in customer service.

I ordered a chicken sandwich with a jalapeno mayo dressing as that sounded good. Next problem was when I went to pick it up. Two more cuties who were talking away and completely ignoring the customers. No hello, no thank you, no enjoy your sandwich.

The sandwich was ok but not much more. A little dry in fact. Opening it up I discovered that the lame brains had not put the spread on it. Just the turkey and the limp lettuce. No side pickle either although my companion got one with their sandwich.

So typical of places that hire this age group based solely on looks. Basically this was a fast food place with a higher price and slightly older employees. Oh yes, almost forgot. The basket of free bread chucks to try? The bread was stale.

Roseville, California if anyone is interested. I’ve never been back and after reading this article I know I won’t. $7 for a crappy sandwich made by people who couldn’t care less and a business that censors its customers. No thanks.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:20:32 +0000

I’ve viewed this site everytime i was at panera bread unless this is a new change over the last year. in the past i have few problems with their internet :(

By: meow meow

meow meow — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:09:49 +0000

Google proxified along with everything else you do online

http://www.gookla.com/browse.php?u=Oi8vZ29va2FsYS5jb20%3D&b=13

don’t be censored again, set it as your homepage :-)

By: Reality

Reality — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:23:01 +0000

Its there network, THEY PAY FOR THE IP access, they can do ANYTHING they want you cheap ass hippies.

FUCKING GET JOBS, pay for your ISP, and torrent away

fucking idiots

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:43:05 +0000

TOR was designed to bypass this type of censorship. There is no way to stop TOR unless you whitelist sites. If a fw lets port 80 access to the outside, you are gold.

http://www.torproject.org/

By: Tom Allen

Tom Allen — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:27:55 +0000

Lol I tried to go on this in school and it said “blocked: criminal skills” heheh.
Although I can get on waffles, what.cd. Epic fail.
Stupid ass school. I’m on this now with a proxy anyway.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:10:16 +0000

“Students should be taught how to think, not what to think.”

Yes

By: wassup

wassup — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:53:34 +0000

n a side not theres always proxy use as well if that helps haha

By: wassup

wassup — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:52:49 +0000

yeah i completely stopped goin ta panera bread like a year ago, i def vote fur cosi at the promenade shops in saucon valley, pa, its way better n free wifi =]

By: stef

stef — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:46:37 +0000

Net filters are one big censor machine..Their real purpose is to omit anything controversial..Sooner or later a free thinker will realize that civillisation is one big confidence trick.

By: JE

JE — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:22:54 +0000

Mo big loss there…Panera’s food sucks anyway. I often have wondered if the wave the meat over the bread whilest make mine sandwich cause with the amount of turkey they put on there I could swear they are trying to covertly turn me into a vegetarian. cheap bastards…fuck em.

By: Ionized

Ionized — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:13:04 +0000

Yeah, there’s nothing like trying to access a web article or email over a poky connection while the other wi-fi hogs are downloading Duke Nukem Forever playable demos, a pirate of the 300 movie and four different Linux distros. Generally none of them have even bothered to at least buy a cup of coffee.

Good for you Panera. You’ll keep my business. The cries of the Everything Should Be Free and Wide Open Weenie League is music to my ears.

By: Juan

Juan — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:20:01 +0000

I’m at Panera right now reading this article and I have been able to do everything that this article says you can’t do.

By: Panera Blows

Panera Blows — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:14:12 +0000

Considering the price of Panera’s food, you’d be better off going to Subway and using the money you saved to actually buy the movie or CD you would have downloaded.

By: OMG!

OMG! — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:21:54 +0000

How much money Panera Bread paid for this free advertisement on TF to all, erm, pirates?

By: Jonah Johansen

Jonah Johansen — Sun, 31 May 2009 16:09:35 +0000

An outrage, what’s next? the librarian asking you not to jerk off while accessing porn in the children’s section of the library.

By: Ikcor

Ikcor — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:47:04 +0000

Evil? Grow up, dumbass

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:38:02 +0000

Big fucking deal.

By: LVDave

LVDave — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:32:03 +0000

I use ‘em all the time, and its easy to get around.. I have a squid proxy running on one of my home systems, and since I connect to my home network via OpenVPN, I just redirect Firefox to proxy thru squid and voila! no more bs from Panera….

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:31:20 +0000

I don’t think the free part is the problem is the censor part that is an issue.

By: Ben Hurr

Ben Hurr — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:27:06 +0000

I could understand why they’d block torrents and P2P software on their free networks, they’d get blasted legally pretty fast if they didn’t.

But blocking every website that has the keyword ‘torrent’ is just implausibly silly.

By: Mahoney

Mahoney — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:12:53 +0000

As someone who works in the ISP industry providing both residential and commercial circuits, as well as someone who has a lot of bittorrent traffic, I must say: quit your whining. public wifi != a right, it’s a privilege. This article is a great reminder why there’s rarely an article worth reading at this clown-shoes blog.

By: David

David — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:06:56 +0000

Are we really complaining about free internet access? This is a complimentary service, it is nice that they provide any service at all. If you choose to not eat here because of the filter than you are missing out on some great food.

By: M3wThr33

M3wThr33 — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:03:39 +0000

It’s the word FREAK.

By: lol

lol — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:34:49 +0000

lol oh well who cares anyway, panera bread seriously sux..

By: o???

o??? — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:58:05 +0000

Another way: use google translator. Unfortunatly google have now blocked translation from english to english. Argg

By: o???

o??? — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:51:41 +0000

http://browsershots.org

By: cavale

cavale — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:47:36 +0000

not all panera breads use this filter, but the ones that do have chronically slow connections.

and they also block hipforums.com

By: Jonico

Jonico — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:31:41 +0000

Well, I know that their wifi works for some bt dling, I dled Steal This Film 2 from their wifi using Transmission a couple of weeks ago.

By: another pirate

another pirate — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:15:18 +0000

sadly, if you want to avoid the problem of your favorite anti piracy folks sending you those nice legal letters … and you want to do so cheaply, than “you employ Computer Science dropouts as admins” and if you are really cheap, you just do it yourself! while this might upset a few folks, it does stop the legal issue of being sued by your favorite best friends … the riaa/mpaa.

well back to starbucks for me!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:31:14 +0000

This is what happens when you employ Computer Science dropouts as admins.

That’s funny

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:00:39 +0000

maybe you should complain to BREIN

By: r3loaded

r3loaded — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:52:42 +0000

This is what happens when you employ Computer Science dropouts as admins.

By: mu57i11

mu57i11 — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:29:53 +0000

This is completely different to an isp doing it; your getting a internet connection for free in this situation where as your paying for your connection with your isp there for nothing should be blocked.
People that are suggesting all these things like vpn’s, ssl’s webproxies and tor obviously have really good intentions but don’t know that much about network administration.

By: nub nub

nub nub — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:04:27 +0000

It’s your own fault for using “torrent” in your domain name, that’s all it is, noones going out of their way to block this website, simply “torrent” in url’s.

hardly news worthy.

By: oooh

oooh — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:51:46 +0000

Ahh… America Land of the Free.

Slowly diminishing.

I’ve seen my fair share of net-web filters and I must say they have ballooned. It is rather funny cuz such sites are decided arbitrarily.

Anyhow,I must say I am rather disappointed becuz they have become much much more pervasive. It used to be something that only school-children would have to bother about (which made sense, we dont want them looking up porn or whatever), but now it has expanded to so many businesses and real world. The classic techniques are to getting around them are becoming obsolete.

Welcome to the New America.

By: Cujothemadog

Cujothemadog — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:17:33 +0000

i have friends who run transports in the US ,, they go from state to stata on a daily basis and run into the same problem at various truck stops ,, a vpn or proxy gets around it ,, i think it’s kinda neat ,, mobile file sharing ;)

By: webcrawler

webcrawler — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:14:46 +0000

This is not about torrent downloading, this about torrentfreak.com (some lame comments i had seen).

i dont like it but its their wifi and they can do whatever they want but need more education ;-)

By: Owen

Owen — Sun, 31 May 2009 02:13:34 +0000

>and since it’s their network they can impose as many restrictions as they like.
No! cause this would mean that ISP’s also are allowed to censorship whatever thay want!

By: hmm

hmm — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:46:56 +0000

i’m in oz posting via a proxy from another free wi-fi that has done the same.

By: Defiance

Defiance — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:43:29 +0000

i was reported to the principle while i was looking at the torrentfreak site they couldnt give me a reason for me being in trouble all they told me was i wasnt supposed to be on there. while other kids are hacking onto myspace and things in school torrentfreak which isnt even blocked i get into trouble for talk about major b.s..

By: @32 and others

@32 and others — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:16:45 +0000

The problem is a philosophical view of what school is about.

For normal people like you and me, school is where you learn to think, eventually want to start to research, and to be made short, it’s a place of increasing and sharing knowledge.

For the psychopaths who run big companies, it’s just a place to produced educated (in the “i educated my dog to obey my orders” way) idiots, in an accounting vision, and specialized.

Don’t forget that for those people, the world is just a RTS game. Producing units, of all kinds. Nothing else, sadly.

By: Pharaoh

Pharaoh — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:58:57 +0000

Not news. My old high school blocked any site with ‘torrent’ or ‘proxy’ in the URL… well until they switched to a whitelist anyway.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:31:25 +0000

Sonic Wall is the same filter my school uses

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:08:34 +0000

I have some clout with the IT dept at my work and got a bunch of sites unblocked, including this one. In the past, any site labeled as P2P got blocked. I tried to get Pirate Bay, Mininova and Isohunt unblocked but the head of IT said no, not because he was against file sharing, but because he said if the RIAA caught people downloading music at work they would sue the company.

By: Pat

Pat — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:03:44 +0000

This is a new thing… About 8 or so months ago (Probably longer) I was at a Panara and had Torrent freak blocked while using Google reader on my iTouch. I wrote a quick email and sonic wall actually re-classed torrent freak. Everything was great. I haven’t been to a store in a while but I am sad to see someone decided to add a shitty word filter as part of a custom block list..

Sending an email to Panara’s corporate office about it now.