Of course, it is not difficult to circumvent by using alternate DNS providers other than your ISP's, but the vast majority of people wouldn't know where to start on this.
What I find worrisome is not the blocking of torrent sites, but that a precedent has been set in the UK, and we'll inevitably start our headlong slide down the slippery slope towards censorship of anything corporations or the government find objectionable.
They haven't imposed DNS filtering - or at least, as implemented by almost all UK ISPs, the DNS lookup performs as normal.
The user looks up the IP address of the site they want to visit via a DNS lookup and is provided with the correct IP addres. However, if it's for kickass.so (on the blocklist), the ISP detects traffic to the IP of that site as it attempts to pass out of the ISP's network and blocks it.
Also, most of the work to get sites blocked via court order in the UK (not by some secret lobbying deal, but through the courts) has been done by the music industry, not the MPAA.
>They haven't imposed DNS filtering - or at least, as implemented by almost all UK ISPs, the DNS lookup performs as normal.
>The user looks up the IP address of the site they want to visit via a DNS lookup and is provided with the correct IP addres. However, if it's for kickass.so (on the blocklist), the ISP detects traffic to the IP of that site as it attempts to pass out of the ISP's network and blocks it.
Different ISPs use different systems to implement the blocks. Some use DNS, some use IP addresses, some do a combination of both. This was all discussed by a judge in one of the court cases.
>Also, most of the work to get sites blocked via court order in the UK (not by some secret lobbying deal, but through the courts) has been done by the music industry, not the MPAA.
Through the courts, yes, but this is a mere formality. The ISPs put up a token defence and then promptly capitulated.
Even then, they already had the systems in place for this censorship precisely due to secret lobbying deals and strong-arming by the government (who knew that any legislation they brought forward would quickly run up against lots of opposition both politically and legally) - see the situation with the IWF and the porn-blocking stuff.
There's a reason an IFPI spokesperson said "child porn is great!" at an industry conference. Censoring it on the wire (as opposed to taking it down at source and hauling offenders off to jail where they belong) is the thin end of the wedge and the copyright industry has a huge hammer they want to use to censor other things.
> Even then, they already had the systems in place for this censorship precisely due to secret lobbying deals and strong-arming by the government (who knew that any legislation they brought forward would quickly run up against lots of opposition both politically and legally) - see the situation with the IWF and the porn-blocking stuff.
This isn't right. The Digital Economy Act said 'Ofcom can go think about whether site blocking would work'. Ofcom took forever and ever and still hasn't reported back. In the meantime, the music industry took action under the existing copyright act (from 1997) to try and block some sites. The ISPs opposed the action. The court granted it. After a few of these, the government said 'great! you don't need the DEA to block sites then so we'll abandon that'. There was no secret lobbying to get sites blocked - the legislation was already there and in place.
>I was so annoyed by the MPAA's ability to impose DNS filtering in the UK.
The only entity with the ability to impose DNS filtering in the UK is the government of the UK. Letting them off the hook guarantees they can run rough shod over you.
You're technically right of course (well, orders are made by the High Court) but you only need to look at the list of blocks to see whose using the power - almost exclusively BPI and MPAA.
This was why I was so annoyed by the MPAA's ability to impose DNS filtering in the UK. See here - http://www.ukispcourtorders.co.uk
Of course, it is not difficult to circumvent by using alternate DNS providers other than your ISP's, but the vast majority of people wouldn't know where to start on this.
What I find worrisome is not the blocking of torrent sites, but that a precedent has been set in the UK, and we'll inevitably start our headlong slide down the slippery slope towards censorship of anything corporations or the government find objectionable.