Torrentz.eu Domain Name Suspended 226
First time accepted submitter S37Rigor Mortis (1601271) writes "Torrentz.eu, the largest torrent search engine on the Internet, has had its domain name suspended following a request from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in the UK. The site continues to operate under two alternative domains, and is hoping to move the .eu domain to a new registrar." Update: 05/27 12:53 GMT by T : That was quick; the site is back, "after the owners pointed out that its suspension was illegal."
Re:Now a redirect (Score:5, Informative)
hate replying to myself, but after proxying through my home server (on BT infinity), torrentz.ch is certainly not blocked. Way to go UK!
Re:Criminal scum (Score:5, Informative)
I did a search and if you are looking for copyrighted materials you can find them. But you find a lot of other stuff as well. Linux distributions, freely distributable music. Public domain materials etc. this is a search engine.
Re:Brits still think they own the world... (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, the Police of London is a very small, mostly corporate controlled entity with much less impact than they purport to have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
In case anyone reading this believes this ios hyperbole or some left wing rant, it is literally true. The companies in the City get to vote in proportion to the number of employees and so vastly out vote the citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
civilian votes: 7.000
corporate votes: 32.000
Basically, corporations determine what the City of London Police's policies and priorities are.
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
Going on... The City of London is often also called "the square mile" because it's a really very small part of the blob of the UK called "London". All of the London councils dwarf the City in both number of people resident and square miles covered. The rest of london has somewhere between 6 and 10 million residents.
The City has a population of something like 7000 people, yet has something like >5,000,000 visitors every working day. To some extent, it makes sense not to let 7000 people define the local government policy for so may visitors (just about all of whom work for one of the areas employers).
However, by the same token, those employers shouldn't be defining local government (or in this case, local police) policy. The City Police have asked for things like this before, and mostly been rebuffed, as seems reasonable, given who/what they represent.
As the GP notes, We the People have never been asked if we'd like this sort of thing to go on - but then we actually don't pay for the City Police directly, as it is really paid for by the Corporation of London, who are paid for by the businesses within it. Hence we have this fscked up setup where there's a (small) police force for hire by whomever pays the most. That wouldn't be so bad if they just stayed in the square mile, but sadly they're starting to see their remit as "the Internet" as well. We the People could argue that the actions of the City Police brings the actions of the wider police force into disrepute though, I guess (not such a bad idea actually, now I think of it).
The moral of the story is: If you receive an "official" communication from some police force or other, politely decline to do what they ask unless they can provide a court order. This will keep you out of trouble for longer than trying to be "helpful". Our judges might not be perfect, but for the most part they won't furnish the City Police with a court order for something as flimsy as this.
Protests (Score:0, Informative)
Years ago I was in London and watching the changing of the guard.
People were all over the place, in the road and all over that big statue in front of the gate there to get a better point of view.
The mounted police came and ordering people back was this gooooorreous blond cop.
She ordered the people out of the street - several times. Apparently most of us tourists didn't speak English. I had a hard time understanding since I speak American.
She kept yelling at them and saying the guards are "very large men who weigh 2 logs and 3 stones" or whatever they use over there for measures and they will just march over you.
Finally, mostly due to her horse moving towards the curb, they moved back out of the street.
The statue people just wouldn't move. She yelled to show some respect and they still wouldn't move. After several more tries she left in exasperation - while her mounted comrads looked on.
God! I was soooo turned on by her.
So, I'd offer to join the protests but I'm afraid of being labeled as a sex offender and here in the States, well, we're like Saudia Arabia in regards to many things.
Re:Do we have a better file sharing solution? (Score:3, Informative)
Most people have things they don't want to have freely available (child porn, for example) and prioritize suppressing them over free availability of other things, thus they shy away from free, anonymous file exchanges.
That's the problem with anarchy in general: everyone's free to do what they want, including things I don't want them to do.
Re:City of London Police paid by (Score:5, Informative)