A week or so ago word of UK internet providers forced to block the Pirate Bay’s website made news around the net. I won’t get into all the details and politics surrounding the case as it’s been fleshed out on many many websites already.

You can read up on a high court ruling forcing internet providers to block the pirate bay’s website here:
http://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-must-censor-the-pirates-bay-high-court-rules-120430/

What we will go over is proving how futile such a block is as there are countless ways around the block. There is even a way to use Google cache to bypass the block.

Here are some mirror/ web proxys that should get you back on Pirate Bay if your internet provider is blocking the main site:

https://piratereverse.info/

http://www.thepiratebay.musicmarketonline.es/

http://www.pirateproxy.net/

http://freedomto.us/

http://unblockedpiratebay.com/

There are many many more web based proxies for example the following site has a long list of web based proxies
sorted by country and status: http://about.piratereverse.info/proxy/list.html

For others that would like to use the Google Cache trick I mentioned earlier here is a write up about using Google to bypass the internet provider block:
http://torrentfreak.com/unblocking-the-pirate-bay-the-hard-way-is-fun-for-geeks-120506/

A simple word of warning though when using web proxies and mirrors, I would recommend not using your actual Pirate Bay username/password to log into the site via proxy. I can’t vouch for security, but just play it smart. If you would like some info on logging into the Pirate Bay with your account using a proxy then I recommend going to the official Pirate Bay forums and there are a few discussions that can point you in the right direction.

Pirate Bay official forums: https://forum.suprbay.org/

There are many torrent sites around, from the famous to the infamous and many private sites that either require hard to get invitations or hoping you load a particular torrent site’s page when they are accepting new membership.

Instead of going into full reviews of different sites I will just list the main 3 torrent sites that I use regularly.

• Pirate Bay – Started in 2003 it’s become the “face” of torrents as the most popular torrent search engine. Frequently blocked by many ISP’s, suffered raids, lawsuits, and lots of pressure to shut down it has always managed to stay online. In February 2012 they switched from offering torrent files to using magnet links instead which makes hosting cheaper using less bandwidth and harder for it’s enemies to stop them.

• KickAssTorrents – Started in 2008 with a redesign of their website in 2010. They stopped mainly using the usual .com/.net/.org top level domains to avoid the warrant-less seizures that had started sweeping the net the past couple years. Similar to Piratebay switching to their .se domain but they do keep a top level as a redirect.

• Demonoid – Also started in 2003 and 5 months older than the Swedish Pirate Bay, Demonoid remains a “pseudo-private” torrent site. Although new user registration does open at random times, you could refresh the page one day and see registrations open, any members can generate an invite code they can give out to friends and are limited to a certain amount of codes they can generate per month. Demonoid also stopped mainly using a top level domain and moved to the .me domain in early 2011 to also help avoid the warrant-less seizures that were hitting websites.

For those interested in what BitTorrent client I recommend. For Windows I use uTorrent, I prefer to use the older version 2.2.1 for personal reasons, I didn’t really like the direction that version 3.0 went but I am keeping an eye on development and will see what happens. On Linux I prefer rTorrent which runs from the command line but there are a few great GUI frontends for X Windows and I also use RuTorrent which is a web based frontend for rTorrent.

If at any time mobile users wish to view the normal layout of the site then at the bottom of the page is a toggle button to flip between mobile version and desktop version. The mobile version of the site makes it easier to read, comment and bookmark your favorite posts.

I have also been working on ideas for new content to bring to Dude-Suit.Net that should be more interesting, and perhaps bring a bit more discussion and be a little more interactive.

Also as a reminder there are ongoing updates to Dude Suit Radio! Over the weekend over 300 new tracks have been added to the playlist!

So if you’re a fan of trance, triphop, and/or house music don’t forget to check out Dude Suit Radio.

Dr. Tyson’s lectures are some of the most thought provoking, inspiring, yet humorous talks I think everyone should check out!

You can find other talks on youtube, vimeo, or just google searching.

From the Album “Come on in”

EVE Online: Crucible forges community feedback into a release filled with player-requested features and fixes. New battlecruisers, a massive graphics update, time dilation and an improved UI are just some of the 100 additions and improvements that have arrived November 2011 in EVE Online’s 15th free expansion.

Music by Hazar
soundcloud.com/hazar

Well think again…

Police in Teaneck, New Jersey, with apparently too much time on their hands, are investigating an offensive wireless network name. Although the police didn’t reveal the name, the New York Daily News reports that it was anti-Semitic and racist in nature. The incident is being investigated as a possible ‘bias crime.’ It’s definitely not what proper people do, but a ‘bias crime?

Sounds very Orwellian ’1984′ “thought-crime-ish”

Source: http://goo.gl/zn9EE

Megaupload’s info: http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shut-down-120119/

FBI website crippled by Anonymous led retaliation to Megaupload raid

The websites for the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group were among the first to go, with the sites for US Copyright Office, Warner Music, BMI, and RIAA following suit shortly after. At around 7:40 PM ET, FBI.gov finally went down.

Ongoing attacks have also been waged against WhiteHouse.gov, the official site for the Executive Branch of the United States.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload,” Barrett Brown confirms to RT. A frequent collaborator with Anonymous, he is mastermind a separate campaign aimed at attacking Congressman that support the SOPA and PIPA legislations.

Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/crippled-fbi-megaupload-anonymous-239/

Seems Anonymous is definitely on the warpath.

Update – Slashdot article and discussion on Anonymous’ raid against government sites.: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/19/2238202/anonymous-takes-down-doj-riaa-mpa-and-universal-music