U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"
259 comments
·July 31, 2025blackjack_
parliament32
This is precisely the problem, and the whole reason why we still pirate TV/movies. I would have no problem paying $XX to a unified service that has basically everything; I have no interest in paying a dozen different streaming platforms for effectively "cable packages" that often add/remove/shift content around.
The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.
Why is this so hard for the film industry?
tomwheeler
> The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.
> Why is this so hard for the film industry?
My theory is that the United States has compulsory licensing for music, but not movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_Stat...
To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law. However, that doesn't hold true for movies. Each video streaming service has to negotiate the right to carry a given movie with the film studio that owns it. Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.
jasode
>To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law.
The copyright holders can legally prevent their recordings from being streamed by Spotify. Famous examples were Taylor Swift and Neil Young withholding their music from Spotify.
For extra nuance, copyright holders can't stop cover songs from appearing on Spotify. So the Taylor Swift cover songs do have to pay compulsory license fees to her and her record label.
anon7000
Yep. This kind of exclusivity agreement should probably be illegal across the board; they basically exist to make competition legally impossible. Great for business, sucks for people.
sofixa
> Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.
Even worse, a lot of the big studios have their own streaming service (Disney, Paramount, Peacock, Canal+ in France, etc) and have no incentive to have lease the rights to competing services.
That's ultimately what pushed Netflix to focus so much on creating their content, they knew that at some point the original content owners will realise streaming can be lucrative, and just build their own services.
MSFT_Edging
> The music industry figured this out
> Why is this so hard for the film industry
Music industry runs on barely paying any artist that cant fill a stadium. Movie industry runs on constantly re-licensing content to min-max their returns from IP. Music industry can happily barely pay musicians via the spotify model, but the Movie industry can't continually re-license their stuff to a higher bidder if it's all on one site.
standardUser
I broadly agree with your assessment, but I think the important takeaway is that these situations are created artificially, usually by dominant market players for their own benefit. There is nothing natural or neccesary with the way these markets work, and it's certainly not unchangeable.
hyghjiyhu
If you have Indie artists on the music side of the comparison, you should have barely paid tiktokers and YouTubers on the movie side.
jasode
>Why is this so hard for the film industry?
It boils down to money.
Movies & tv have higher monetary value to the studios than songs to the record labels.
So the ip owners of video content get more revenue by restricting it as exclusives to their respective platforms rather than licensing it out to everybody and get a smaller fractional payment from an everything-unlimited-catalog video streaming service.
E.g. HBO would rather get 100% of their own $16.99/month subscription -- vs -- licensing entire HBO catalog to Netflix and getting a fraction% of $17.99/month.
How much extra would Netflix conceivably have to charge per month such that the fractional amounts to each movie studio (HBO, Disney, etc) would be enough $$ that the studios wouldn't bother with their own exclusive streaming platforms? $99/month? $149/month? Right now, there isn't a number that Netflix + all studios + subscribers can converge on so instead, we get the current fragmented streaming platforms of video content.
For more evidence of how video content is more valuable than music (in terms of digital streaming platforms), consider that tech giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple -- all created their own movie & tv studio business to produce even more exclusives for their streaming platforms. But none of them have started their own record labels to sign musicians to get exclusive songs or albums.
ozgrakkurt
Games make way more money than movies but it also seems to be solved for games in the form of steam
michaelt
> Why is this so hard for the film industry?
The logic is pretty simple:
* It has been widely demonstrated that, in the US, many consumers are willing to pay more than $100/month for cable TV, with ads.
* Netflix costs $8/month with ads.
* Why leave that money on the table?
HWR_14
Music recording copyrights have a single owner, and can be licensed for streaming by that owner. Older movies have a lot of IP owned by various entities with licensing to allow for theatrical and home release, but all of which have to cooperate to make the movies available for streaming.
jasonjayr
Old media competes with new media.
If you, as the rightsholder can just eliminate that competition without any further effort, it makes logical sense to do so.
Excessivly long copyright is what enables this.
lanfeust6
I only understand the frustration with finding any legal avenue at all to see certain films. I don't really understand why disparate services are a big deal. You don't need to subscribe to multiple things all at once, and it's all done in a few clicks in the convenience of your own home.
I'm concerned and curious about one thing, which is that tech giants have a monopoly on renting. If you want to rent a digital movie that isn't otherwise available from subscription, you might be able to get it from MSFT, Google or Amazon. Meanwhile the telecoms only seem to offer this through cable machines, just new releases at that.
I'm interested in seeing a few Korean films, the kind that aren't on criterion or mubi. Basically no legal way to see them.
ozgrakkurt
Why not have some platform that lets users to actually buy the movie and download/stream it as a file at full quality on their device?
Renting is sucky compared to just buying things, you could watch any movie you want and have unlimited access to it instead of juggling 5 subscriptions and get frustrated with shitty products. And publishers that make actual good movies that people want to watch would be rewarded
mmcclure
I recently joined a local independent video rental store and it's so, so good. My partner looked at me like I was crazy when I told her, but she was a convert after one trip to pick out a movie in person.
Something about browsing in person is just so much more enjoyable than flipping between 9 services. Having a cinephile right there behind the desk that wants to nerd about movies and help pick something out is awesome. It's not a big store, but they've got thousands of movies in their catalog, which is (apparently) way bigger than any of the streaming services.
This doesn't solve your problem, but for the folks that are near the few remaining physical rental stores: consider supporting them, because they're great.
Edit: Actually, on the "your problem" part...maybe give the store a call? Looks like he'll mail discs too: https://myvideowave.weebly.com/services.html
thefourthchime
This is actually a larger problem that has to do with lost licensing negotiations and residuals. For a place to offer up streaming, they have to know they can license the content.
But oftentimes, that production company is closed shop. They've sold the licenses off to someone else, who split it into something else. And then there's the music rights. The whole thing becomes extremely complicated.
There's a whole set of movies that were somewhat popular that you just cannot find streaming. 100 cigarettes and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors are good examples.
I'd say if they can't figure out the rights, just put it on YouTube.
Pfhortune
The length of time it takes for media to enter the public domain is absolutely absurd. It if didn't take over a century for works to enter the PD, we could say, "Eh, just wait a few years." But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.
If we had a more reasonable period like a decade, it would be a driver for creating new art, and prevent works from being locked away arbitrarily until our great-grandchildren can enjoy them (unless the art was just... lost to time).
ryandrake
> But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.
In many cases, the conglomerates aren't even making money from them. How much do you think the movie company (and all the various middlemen) are making from some obscure movie from the 80s that they don't even make available on DVD or streaming anywhere? They're just griefing the public by withholding it and not even making any money.
larrik
The Roku app is actually really good at determining where everything ever is currently streaming (or purchasable). It's not 100% perfect, but it's generally correct. I go there first for basically everything.
For example, it tells me Wake Up Ron Burgundy (which isn't even a "real" movie) can be purchases on Prime, Fandango, or iTunes.
Actually, iTunes and Prime have mostly everything for rent, what movies were you actually looking for?
a2tech
Just wanted to watch a relatively recent movie yesterday (Antichrist) and the only place that has it is a streaming service called Mooby. Not signing up for a service to watch one movie. Would have gladly paid 4 bucks to watch it, so had to find it in the usual places instead.
AlotOfReading
My spouse loves watching old direct to home video movies and I'd say about 75% of them have no accessible copies outside maybe eBay. Most of the remainder are only available via piracy. A vanishingly small percentage are available from streaming platforms.
One that I wanted to watch recently was Disney's 2000 animation short John Henry. It's now part of the American Legends compilation, which is only available for purchase on Amazon, not rent. It's not even on Disney+.
buran77
It gets worse when you're looking for a movie only to realize it's different from what you remember. Either a change of substance (different scenes), or a change of form (adjusted color palette). Occasionally the original version is no longer officially available anywhere.
fluidcruft
IMDB does something similar (it at least lists Wake Up Ron Burgandy as available for rent on Prime, doesn't mention iTunes or Fandango but I'm not logged in to IMDB so I'm not sure what's enabled/disabled as "preferred services" by default)
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nickthegreek
Plex does this as well.
llbbdd
Too much. I love Plex but it's increasingly hard to avoid the search integrations and other non-local features. I recently set up access to my library across a few devices and it's disappointing how hostile it now feels to turn off a lot of stuff that should not be enabled by default just to get to my own files.
philips
An archival incentive is the reason I am pro 25 year copyright. This current situation is causing our cultural heritage to rot.
criddell
Seems like a fair solution might be limiting damages on pirating movies that aren't widely available. For example, if a movie isn't available for streaming cap damages at $2.99 or whatever the going rental rate is.
AngryData
I don't see why there should be any damages paid out if something isn't available to stream. How can you claim a loss of sales for a product you aren't even selling? Why why should anyone be rewarded for not providing a product and just sitting on it so nobody else can use it? There certainly isn't any excuse for not being able to bring a product to market fast enough when it previously was already on the market and there are plenty of services to license it for streaming or sale.
haunter
Not just 80s-90s but try everything non-vanilla Hollywood stuff. Asian cinema, MENA, Eastern Europe etc. Piracy is just superior because I can actually watch what I want.
tarnith
Video games too. Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.
brnt
Oh boy. That one. And Battle for Middle Earth 2.
Nobody wants my money, so to the bay we go.
blackjack_
I Still have my OG copy of BFME2. The joke is that I don't have a disk drive, or an OS to support it.
FirmwareBurner
>Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.
I searched the biggest used online (flea)marketplace in my country and I could find the DVD for sale from several people. So I can buy it and play it right now legally if I want to, without resorting to piracy.
What point were you trying to make with this? Because I also can't buy a brand new 1969 Ford Mustang. Nothing is made forever.
bilekas
The point could be made that if it's not available from the publisher for sale then piracy is not illegal.
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LeonardoTolstoy
How's your local library system?
HanClinto
I live in a small country town. It's decent for its size, but it's very small.
In contrast, Archive.org is an absolutely fantastic library, and we're happy to support them.
Way better than my public library -- especially for hard-to-find media.
bombcar
Ask about interlibrary loans; our rural library can get almost anything, given time.
standardUser
I wonder what the material difference is between borrowing a film from the library (is this DVD? Blu-ray? Streaming?) and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network.
I suppose it's an act of support for your public library. But no one with a financial stake in that particular media is impacted in any way by using either method to obtain the film.
endemic
Came here to recommend this. A viable option, at least until Republicans completely defund public libraries.
benreesman
I've recently switched to privacy respecting computing options, so of course lost access to everything I've bought from Apple and Amazon for the last 20 years.
If I never paid for content again they'd still be in my debt.
You wouldn't steal a car would you? No, but I'd repossess one from some delinquent son of a bitch in a suit.
bombcar
I see no strong moral argument against ripping DVDs (from the library or similar) of content you paid for on Apple or Amazon.
unsupp0rted
There's no moral argument against ripping DVDs one way or the other.
There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.
But there's nothing immoral about copying or watching something you came across. The author isn't injured by it- nobody is. Except, like I said, perhaps society in general.
JoshTriplett
> arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.
They really, really don't. The tradeoff of offering temporary legal privileges in exchange for a future richer public domain resulted in better stuff for everybody. Those legal privileges have become effectively permanent, so the trade is broken.
Voultapher
> There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.
They make rich people richer, we have ample evidence for that. But research ... the majority is funded by governments. But content creation ... the majority of high quality Youtube for example in funded in advance by Patreon and similar solutions.
thedevilslawyer
>There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.
You raise a valid point. When copyright was first envisioned in 1710, the world population was 600M, literacy rates b/w 5-25% (rural/urban).
That argument does not stand today - we don't need protections since the number of producers of better stuff will simply compete in the market of ideas. Pearl clutching of ideas isn't a problem.
beanjuice
citation?
xtracto
In my country it is not illegal to download or share copyright content for non-profit and personal use. It's the IPTVs, torrent and streaming pirate sites with Ads or asking for money the ones that should die (that's why I don't agree with Anna's Archive profiting from sharing copyrighted content).
As I said before: it's 2025, we shouldn't need an ad infested "website" to share, discover and download content in a p2p fashion. Kademilla and similar DHT truly decentralized tech has existed for more than 15 years...
The problem is that new generations want to profit from everything and have stopped "sharing is caring"
MangoToupe
The main moral argument for intellectual property rights seems to be "because that's how the world already works and we don't want to disrupt that less it be artists or inventors that get the shaft", and yet we don't have strong cases of intellectual property protecting artists or inventors in the first place. Not as a primary effect of IP, anyway.
int_19h
There are ways to get your content out of DRM walled gardens, e.g. Streamfab.
msgodel
It's easier to just make a list and torrent.
burnt-resistor
You only rented licenses if you didn't receive physical copies or DRM-free downloads.
benreesman
The button said "Buy" and it was next to one that said "Rent". I bought it.
If they choose to make retrieving my purchase from the warehouse difficult, then I will take it by force with a torrent.
CamperBob2
"If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing."
mystraline
I've argued that if 'buy' is DRM encrusted shit (hardware or software), then the sale should be considered fraudulent conversion to a rental.
And since its a rental, and the company still retains control, that's a lot of capex they failed to declare with the IRS. And yeah, tax fraud.
Henchman21
This should be pushed into the public consciousness as far as possible
antonf
> The granted orders would stay in place for a year with the option to extend if necessary. If blocked sites switch to new locations, the court can also amend blocking orders to include new IP addresses and domain names.
What if the "pirate site" uses foreign cloud provider, and regularly changes IP addresses? Will I lose access to all websites hosted by the foreign cloud provider once their whole ASN will be blocked?
> Block BEARD does not mention VPNs, but its broad definition of “service provider” could be interpreted to include them.
This seems easy to circumvent - you can just use foreign VPN provider, who don't advertise themselves for piracy use, for... piracy. IP/DNS blocking proven to be a good censorship tool though.
thedevilslawyer
No one would steal a car. More importantly, everyone would clone a car. Of course we should support this fully.
Oppose this bill.
dfxm12
Oppose the bill based on freedom, as in speech. This comes above all else.
Arguing over what is or isn't piracy is a non-sequitor when it comes to government censorship of the Internet.
thedevilslawyer
I'd argue freedom of access to knowledge is atleast as important, if not more, than speech. Down with copyright - restriction on this freedom.
arunabha
> The site-blocking proposal seeks to amend U.S. copyright law, enabling rightsholders to request federal courts to designate online locations as a “foreign digital piracy site”. If that succeeds, courts can subsequently order U.S. service providers to block access to these sites.
Of course, because what we need is the govt deciding which sites can be banned. I'm hoping this dies in committee, however for Bay Area folks, Rep Zoe Lofgren is the house sponsor for the companion bill and Adam Schiff is the Senate co sponsor. They can be reached at
https://lofgren.house.gov/contact/offices and https://www.schiff.senate.gov/contact/
If you oppose this bill, take 5 min and let your congressperson know. They might seem to be bought and paid for by lobbyists, but they care deeply about being reelected and even a small number of constituents showing up can be effective. In order of impact personal visit > letter > call > email. The higher effort channels(visit, letter) tend to get treated more seriously. Emails are largely ignored unless they are absolutely deluged.
RiverCrochet
This bill is different than the domain seizures of the past; it seems to be the start of a framework where the government is using its power to tell ISPs to block access to IP addresses - in this case, those identified as foreign piracy sites. Honestly I don't know what's already happening in this space, though. I haven't heard of many instances where U.S. judges are ordering ISPs to block traffic to sites like in other countries, but maybe I haven't been paying attention.
There's a number of precautions and exceptions in the bill, and they're good ones, but I don't think we've seen anything like this before.
I feel like this bill is the beginning of a type of thinking that could grow past piracy by riding the current isolationist wave in U.S. politics. I think once this passes, it's probably going to be easier to justify ordering ISP blocks of non-U.S. IPs/ASNs on other criteria.
It will also further cement social media as the primary thing that is "Internet," instead of websites or other applications based on network protocols. After all that's probably what most people think of as the Internet - social media, a few apps, and streaming. Big social media will always have an international reach as its owners are very rich, they cooperate with governments, their users are individually accountable, and those users will likely become more so over time. I bet soon, that's all that will be left to the masses - social media and streaming.
Mountain_Skies
Governments saw how much they got away with during the pandemic, most of it to thunderous applause. This has emboldened them to grasp even more power.
ryandrake
Isn't torrenting way down from its heyday? Streaming companies are not perfect, but I always thought they were at least moderately successful such that in 2025, average, casual, non-techies no longer bother to jump through the VPN and private tracker hoops just to download a movie.
dsissitka
In my circles the modern alternative seems to be using Yandex to search for "$show stream".
I don't know about BitTorrent but Usenet is way up:
namrog84
Daily volume could just be more bluray high quality downloads with people with better internet. And not neccesarily larger number of people right?
kimbernator
I would be pretty surprised if the quality of rips since 2017 would account for a 20x increase in traffic.
dml2135
It's down from it's heyday for the mainstream, but for the dedicated few, it's better than ever before. Gone are the days of manually searching for a movie on tracker sites, downloading them, organizing your library and watching stuff on your laptop.
There are now open-source, self-hosted applications that automate that entire process, so it's as simple as requesting a movie on your phone and having it show up on your own personal streaming service on your TV a few minutes later.
IshKebab
What are the names of these immoral piracy applications, so that I can know to avoid them if I happen to stumble upon one?
xtracto
Do not under any circumstance download Stremio (available in Firestick as well). Also don't try to install the Torrentio extension for Stremio. That would allow you to play pirated content with one click I your TV, similarly to PopcornTime.
DaSHacka
Plex/Jellyfin for streaming, the *arr suite for cataloging/downloading [0]
kylehotchkiss
:D I'm glad you're protected from these terrible services now
neuralRiot
I know a guy who knows a guy that says that you don’t even need that, you just browse the movies and press “play” as there is direct torrent streaming now. But I don’t know anything about all this i just use my VCR with the clock flashing 12:00.
aegypti
Yes, for $30 a year you can instantly stream any torrent with no real setup or install. The most used client is a PWA that calls out to VLC or whatever.
Bluray 4K 100+GB copy of Dune Part 2 at >70Mbps with maybe 5 seconds of buffering at the start. Literally can’t replicate it with legal streaming.
e40
I torrent content I’m legally allowed to watch because the UX is far better with Plex than with the plethora of crappy apps.
Marsymars
I rip stuff from YouTube for the same reason. Currently watching Taskmaster which has all or most episodes freely available on YouTube, but no way am I interested in using that dumpster fire of a UX.
IshKebab
I think it was down when the answer to streaming was "get netflix, it has most stuff", but now it's "pay for netflix, Disney+, Amazon prime, apple tv, ...".
SSLy
dunno about public sites, but the private ones are healthier than ever
shkkmo
For a while, streaming was better than any alternative. However over the last several year prices have a spike while the collections available for streaming have shrunk and splintered. Then a bunch of the streaming sites started adding ads for their paying customers.
At this point streaming servcies have been enshitified enough to make piracy again the better experience.
seanw444
Can confirm. The only streaming service I use anymore is Disney+, and I only have it because I like to watch the new Star Wars stuff when it releases at good quality. Everything else I care to watch, which isn't much besides older stuff, I'll just torrent now.
Greedy companies really need to heed Gabe Newell's words.
bombcar
Even Disney+ is crappier than Netflix in the streaming heyday - there are Disney Junior shows that Disney+ didn’t have (maybe still doesn’t).
Buying DVDs and ripping to Jellyfin is much easier.
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int_19h
I still subscribe to some of the services, but the experience has deteriorated sufficiently that at this point I rip all videos I care about and then watch them in Plex.
medler
> Block BEARD does not mention VPNs, but its broad definition of “service provider” could be interpreted to include them.
The prospect of all VPN providers being required to block pirate sites, or being unable to operate in the US, is very scary indeed
mystraline
Piracy, eh? So copied without approval.
Like archive.is or other news aggregator and paywall-bypass sites.
Or, just needs 1 falsely filed DMCA to ban. And whoops, made a mistake, and no process to unban.
By sneaking in with 'piracy', they're setting the stage to block any content they don't like.
__MatrixMan__
Intellectual property has been a cover story for censorship for hundreds of years. Nothing new here.
iooi
> courts can subsequently order U.S. service providers to block access to these sites.
So looks like this will be at the ISP level, so should be able to be circumvented easily with VPNs.
The scary part is it's likely to lead to a lockdown on VPNs in the future.
johnisgood
Amazing. These kind of bills / laws are being passed left and right "recently".
JumpCrisscross
> These kind of bills / laws are being passed
It hasn’t been passed!
johnisgood
Many of them have, but you are right, should have used a different term.
leptons
I have no doubt that it will pass. If it is overly broad and can be used to needlessly hurt someone, Republicans love it, and they are the ones with power right now.
mindslight
Both major parties are corpo-authoritarian, with the main dynamics of elections being to gauge how much the public is willing to accept and to make half the people think they actually wanted the resulting policies. And for this round the people have spoken that they want it good and hard.
lokar
I don’t think they care about the policy. They just see a one sided debate: companies will to pay and an indifferent public.
keybored
That’s a false equivalence. Companies can pay people to agitate for them full-time. Then they can pay the politicians, albeit indirectly. Finally the public have the privilege of using their free time to agitate against the politicians. Which just starts out as unorganized disruptions, “people were mildly inconvenienced on their way to work today”.
That versus cash.
mindslight
Sure, you're up against "the purpose of a system is what it does". I'm sure many mainstream politicians actually earnestly care about individual liberty and reigning in corpos - it helps them sell themselves to the public. But the net effect is that when the dollars come calling, enough set aside those ideals to make the corpo agenda happen.
johnisgood
I have a feeling the public is going to be willing to accept a lot of things.
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pessimizer
> And for this round the people have spoken that they want it good and hard.
Actually, the people have said "please stop this, this can't go on" at every election since 1992, with the possible exception of 2012 (unless you admit that 2012 President Obama was running against 2008 Candidate Obama.) They again said it in 2024.
mindslight
I agree that's what the people have wanted to say and that they believe it is what they have said, but they get taken in by simplistic populist messages that transmute their frustration into support for the next corpo con long into when the results have become apparent. But for 2024 the usual excuses of "he reneged", "stick with the incumbent", or "less bad option" don't even work - it's a clear case of people putting their foot on the gas with a known quantity, but thinking it must be a good thing because those other people are really upset about it.
tharmas
>corpo-authoritarian
"corporate fascist"
tracker1
Wonder if having your own DNS resolver will work around the issue... I mean, the caching from cloudflare/google-dns is nice, but I'm fine if 1/8 of my dns lookups has to make the full cycle through domain resolvers.
sybercecurity
I haven't seen the text of the bill, so don't know for sure. If it says "resolvers must block site" then yes, running your own resolver would still work. If it says "domain registries must remove delegation" then it won't, but that could only be enforced for registries that are based in the US. Unless your ISP blocks well-known DNS ports, which none due as far as I've found.
The article says one of the requirements for the complaint needs to be that the site to be blocked must be found to be foreign based, so I guess the assumption is that the current set of laws to take down the site or sue are unavailable.
Henchman21
So is this an opening move with an end goal of “private national internets”? Fracturing the international nature of the ‘net seems like every power worldwide would like and benefit from this.
_boffin_
If that is need the end goal, which would make sense, disgusting.
hellojesus
Won't they just instruct isps to block the ip addresses of the sites and bully cloudflare into dropping them so they can't hide behind their proxies?
It'll be a cat and mouse game, and tor could easily mitigate blocking efforts.
But this seems like a 1A violation to me.
monksy
So how much are they getting bribed to do this?
whynotmaybe
Only the powerless are bribed, the powerful are "lobbied".
seanw444
It's just different, otherwise it wouldn't be a different word... right?
I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been an absolute pain. There are theoretical catalogue sites, but they are all randomly out of date to the point that its not very useful.
I'm literally at the point where its looking like pirating the movies is the only way to watch them...