Virgin media, Pirates Bay and US TV shows

[ARWadsworth]

Well I have Virgin Media so what do I need to get the other two?

Something to alter the ip address should be ok for the US shows, but for the Pirates Bay?

[Andy Burns]

[Andy Bartlett]

Usenet account.

other usenet providers are available.

[Lobster]

to access piratebay via a 'generic' anonymous proxy server like:

's so trivially easy to bypass the ban that it makes a laughing stock of those who make up these laws. I imagine that the extra publicity generated by it - with the words "pirate bay" getting into the news headlines - could well have increased their UK user base (eg sounds like Adam's never used it before - "Pirates Bay" ;) )

David

[Brian Gaff]

Well I saw the site through the proxy on startpage, but of course you need to work out how to route any links. the fact is though that stuff that is on Piratebay is also on many sites not affected by the block that isps here have been forced to put in, against their will I understand. Brian

[Robin]

While I agree Usenet binaries are a good way to go I see no need for Adam to spend that money if he only or mainly wants current TV shows. VM provide free and unlimited access to Usenet - including binary groups with a retention of 1 to 2 weeks. And if he wants just the occasional older episode he could always use "premium" service just as a back-up on a PAYG basis.

And while torrents are probably the easiest way to get such things, I don't doubt that Adam could cope with eg Binsearch and an NZB grabber (eg

[Lobster]

[Andy Bartlett]

1) - speed - you download at your full line rate. 2) - you are not sharing files - only downloading - so are not (legally) infringing copyright - the usenet provider is the infringer. 3) - most usenet providers have provision for a secure connection - what you download is between you and the provider. Your isp and any other snoopers remain none the wiser. 4) - pretty much anything is available on bittorrent is available via usenet - probably more.

apart from that, no.

[fred]

1. High speed, multi-threaded d/l
2. Longer term availability (with a premium provider)
3. Absence of casual IP based tracking by cowboy lawyers

[chris French]

eg.

[geoff]

In message , Andy Bartlett writes

Virgin has its own usenet

[Jethro_uk]

Not only that, it has exposed a massive number of people to the concepts of VPNs, proxies, and anonymising networks.

When

[Paul D Smith]

Firefox as an address spoofing facility - look up "The Daily Show" and how to get it in the UK and you'll find the way to set it up.

Paul DS

[John Rumm]

IIUC, most of the "blocking" is going on at the DNS level[1] - i.e. they have altered the content of their name servers such that when you try and resolve one of the censored domain names, it returns the address of a local server which the ISP has setup to return a page saying (in effect) "bog off".

The simple way to fix this type of misdirection is to change your name servers. Two reliable options would be OpenDNS on 208.67.222.222, and

208.67.220.220 or Google's on 8.8.8.8, and 8.8.4.4

You can either do this in your router, in which case all the machines on your network will automatically use the new servers, or you can do it on a machine by machine basis.

To change servers on XP: Control Panel->Network Connections Right click on the Local Area Connection that is in use and select "Properties" In the list find and select "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" and click properties. Click the "Use the following DNS server addresses" radio button, and then enter one of those pairs of addresses above. OK your way back out.

[1] Blocking at the IP level is problematical since the hosts can so easily shift the site around different physical addresses, coupled with the fact you frequently end up censoring completely unrelated sites that just happen to be served from the same machine - and that tends to get their owners upset.

[John Rumm]

for TV shows eztv.it is pretty good I am told...

[Robin]

FWIW (bearing in mind you are not (usually) a VM user) I don't think it is DNS. Two reasons: (i) switching to another DNS does not allow HTML access; and (ii) tracerts to TPB are not blocked or diverted whatever DNS is used.

[John Rumm]

You may well be right - I don't have a way of testing on VM, however I was going from reports of what BT etc seem to have done.

A quick check would be for VM users to see if they can reach the site using 194.71.107.15 in their web browser rather than the normal URL (that IP resolving to the site as of the time of writing at least).

Another obvious workaround is to simply do a search on google for a site's URL with the word "cache:" appended to the front - getting a copy of the most recent cached copy from google's own cache rather than direct from the site (although note this is not as well suited to access to database driven "dynamic" sites like TPB)

[Robin]

Indeed (and I can confirm it don't work). Nor (contrary to what some claimed) does the use of an https connection.

But if Adam insists on using TPB (even when his CCTV and neighbours seem to offer so much entertainment) then I am given to understand that at present there are still plenty of proxies - eg

[John Rumm]

If they have layered their block on top of cleanfeed, then they internally route any http requests that match a blacklist of IP addresses through the IWF filtering proxy server. Which in theory can match on a page by page basis. Even https connections can terminate at the proxy and allow it to see the content.

Out of interest, I wonder what happens if one creates your own hosts file entry for a target site, but with a different name, say:

mypbay 194.71.107.15

http://mypbay/browseThat ought not match on a full URL comparison...

[ARWadsworth]