The blocking and censorship of BitTorrent sites is becoming an anti-piracy favorite with both the movie and music industries. Many of the top sites, with The Pirate Bay at the forefront of course, are now blocked at the ISP level in several countries across Europe.

After a slow and considered start, two countries are now emerging as the easiest places in the world to have sites blocked at the ISP level.

The world’s leading torrent sites are regularly being added to existing blockades or pending actions initiated by local music and movie groups in the UK, and in Italy an already long list of torrent, file-storage and streaming domains is growing on a monthly basis.

The latest action in this south European country involves embattled torrent index isoHunt. Run by Canadian national Gary Fung, the site is currently locked in a seemingly never-ending legal action with the MPAA in the United States, but its problems in Italy are with the local branch of IFPI.

FIMI, the Federation of the Italian Music Industry, claims that isoHunt is costing the Italian music industry millions of euros and something must be done quickly in order to stem the tide.

Following a FIMI complaint and urgent request from a local prosecutor, this week a judge in the Court of Milan ordered ISPs to block the isoHunt.com domain and its current IP address. To deal with any countermeasures the site may have planned, all future IPs are also covered by the order.

Marco d’Itri, who runs a site detailing the spectrum of web censorship in Italy, told TorrentFreak that the ruling itself is not public and although ISPs have a copy, they are forbidden from sharing it. D’Itri adds that the blockade comes in advance of a full trial, but to his knowledge no case has ever progressed that far.

“It’s just a handy shortcut used by the content owners to censor a domain, because usually the victims do not appeal,” he explains.

However, there are exceptions. Earlier this year file-hosting site Rapidgator hit back against a similar blockade and later won its case. Then just last month an Italian court ordered a blockade against popular sports streaming site Rojadirecta. The site is now fighting back using the same legal team as Rapidgator.

Local ISPs were informed of the court order against isoHunt on Monday and were quick to respond. The site is now blocked across most of Italy (along with two other sites – dendi86download.com and lascena.net) leaving users to try and find a workaround using VPNs or proxy sites.

In addition to ongoing legal action in the United States which has the potential to cost isoHunt up to $750m, it seems likely that isoHunt will be blocked by ISPs in the UK before the end of the year.

Source: IsoHunt Blocked By Court Order Following Music Industry Demand

Last week six major UK Internet providers began blocking access to the popular TV torrent site EZTV.

The blockade follows a High Court order obtained by the major movie studios, and blacks out the RSS service ezRSS as well.

The actions EZTV faces are not the first taken against a torrent site in the UK. The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, Fenopy and H33T have been blocked by previous court orders and remain inaccessible by conventional means. The TV-torrent site won’t be the last either, as both the movie and music industries have promised that more sites will be targeted in future.

What makes EZTV unique though, is that unlike many of the other site owners they have taken steps to circumvent the blockades. The EZTV crew told TorrentFreak that they re using Geo DNS to point UK visitors to a new IP-address which loads just fine on the ISPs we checked.

“You are seeing this site as you have been recently blocked in your country,” declares the message on the special UK landing page.

Although EZTV have successfully bypassed the ISP blockade they are not presenting UK visitors with torrent files or similar content. The EZTV crew informs TorrentFreak that they would rather inform visitors on how to bypass the blockade in the future. This is the best long term solution, as new IP-addresses may simply be added to the blocklist.

On the special landing page the TV-torrent site lists several reverse proxy sites through which users can still access EZTV. In addition, they inform visitors about VPNs as an effective tool to bypass Internet censorship.

“You can use these to get around silly things like court mandated ISP blocks,” EZTV writes.

On a more political note EZTV has slammed Hollywood’s efforts, suggesting to visitors that they should consider voting for a political party that takes a stand against censorship.

“Hollywood has convinced the courts in the United Kingdom that they can control the internet and that censorship works. They are, of course, wrong. You might want to vote in some people who understand this – the Pirate Party UK (PPUK) would be a good choice. They believe in making culture sharing a legal activity.”

But even without political change, it’s doubtful that the blockade will be very effective. As we’ve seen in the past with The Pirate Bay, many visitors simply move to proxy sites, which can become quite large on their own. And with EZTV pointing visitors to these alternatives it’s all the more likely that many will circumvent the blockade.

It will be interesting to see how the movie studios will respond to the special landing page. EZTV is certainly putting the movie studios in a difficult position, as the new page doesn’t link to infringing content and is purely an informational resource.

The studios could probably argue that site revealing how a blockade can be circumvented are obstructing the court order, but that’s bound to stir up the censorship debate even further. Secretly blocking proxies is one thing, but blocking sites that discuss them is a few more feet down the slippery slope.

Source: EZTV Circumvents ISP Blockade And Slams Hollywood Censorship

The DMCA takedown notice and its European equivalent are tools designed to help copyright holders enforce their rights.

Should they see actual content or a link that infringes on their exclusive rights, a correctly formatted email to the site or service in control should see the offending item removed in a timely fashion.

Millions of these notices are sent without problems, but as we know there are some – such as Microsoft’s epic fail this past weekend – that tend to catch the eye. However, while mistakes like this can be entertaining, there are other kinds of takedowns that are nothing short of abusive.

Den Lennie is from filmmakers’ resource F-Stop Academy. He recently did a video review comparing lighting products including one from UK-based Rotolight Limited.

“As a film maker and educator I feel passionately about my role in testing and comparing products,” Den explains.

“Manufacturers make all sorts of claims and yet when we independently test and find those results contradict the marketing then we should be well within our rights to publish the results.”

Den did just that, with a video review he uploaded to Vimeo. However, access to the review didn’t last long. Rotolight wrote to Vimeo claiming that the video infringed on their exclusive copyrights and it was taken down.

According to Den, Rotolight didn’t appreciate the fact that the review wasn’t as glowing as they might have liked.

“Surely if you purchase a light and then do a comparison video in an environment where the light is designed to be used and publish the results as an information video to help people looking to invest in lighting – that is not unreasonable eh?” Den questions.

“Yet Rotolight have served a notice of copyright infringement on me simply because they did not like the results…? WTF. The company claim to make the ‘World’s most advanced LED light’ yet when we tested it our results were not good.”

After censoring Den’s opinion, Rotolight surprisingly went on to apologize via Facebook (post since removed).

“We would sincerely like to apologize for any upset caused, that was not our intention and we very much hope you can accept our apology,” the company wrote.

“We just feel that the test was not fair or representative of our product, and we would greatly appreciate the opportunity for you to re-test our light as you have offered. We would like to invite you to our offices in Pinewood Studios for the re-test, anytime convenient for you.”

So not only do Rotolight admit to shutting down Den’s review on the basis they didn’t agree with it, they now want him to carry out a new review with them looking over his shoulder.

However, it now seems that Rotolight might be changing their position, and not in a good way either. According to an update from Den, Rotolight are now claiming that since Den used their company name and product in the title and tags of the Vimeo video, that constitutes a breach of their copyright.

If Rotolight haven’t yet heard of the Streisand Effect their head of marketing should look it up immediately, although something tells us that by the end of today any effort will have been in vain. This one will probably go viral.

TorrentFreak contacted Rotolight for comment but we’ve yet to receive a response.

Source: DMCA Abuse Will Cause Censored Product Review to Go Viral