Error - site blocked.

I'm assuming that the message "Error - site blocked" means that BT have blocked a website I visit?

I guess its my Welcome to big brother moment!

Might have been added to the IWF block list for some reason. If the site is fine it may have been in error in which case contact BT - if the site hosts some content which is illegal then it may have been blocked for parts of the site. Or it could have been a court order.

Assume you have checked your parental filter is switched off? It may be that they have turned it on for your account for some reason and may just need you to turn it off.

You are quite right. It happened to me when I visited a frieand whose ISP is BT and I tried to go to a web site I visit, but when I'm at home with no problems as I am with a different ISP. So the only conclusion I can come up with is that BT has blocked the said web site.

IWF block list should not usually give a blocked page, but the parental controls systems will give a positive blocked page.

Thanks. Obviously I don't visit any blocked sites so didn't know what happened if you did

It seems to be a BT blocked page. I've noticed on facebook others have had a similar experience.

I'd say its been blocked for copyrighted material, though like torrent sites, they don't host anything themselves.

I don't use the site myself but a friend asked me to test to see if I could reach it.

I think 99% of pirating would disappear if these silly national geo-locked deals disappeared and they started releasing or allowing legal access to view any programme in the world via the internet. Similar to like hulu and other sites do.

Annoys me the error site blocked message. More annoying the fact that how inefective it is and how easily virtually it can be worked around kind of makes the IWF URL list almost useless but ho hum

In reply to a post by bowdon:

It seems to be a BT blocked page. I've noticed on facebook others have had a similar experience.

I'd say its been blocked for copyrighted material, though like torrent sites, they don't host anything themselves.

I don't use the site myself but a friend asked me to test to see if I could reach it.

I think 99% of pirating would disappear if these silly national geo-locked deals disappeared and they started releasing or allowing legal access to view any programme in the world via the internet. Similar to like hulu and other sites do.

Sites such as thepiratebay can easily be accessed simply by using the IP address (that one in particular can be found by Googling).

Have you checked that the parental filter is disabled?

IWF block list is NOT about pirated content. IWF is about content that is clearly illegal and would see you in jail if found in possession.

The blocked message the user is posting about sounds like the civil case of a supposed copyright infringing or encouraging website being blocked due to a court order.

I'm using BT Infinity and as of today I'm getting "Error – site blocked" when trying to visit Warez-bb, it was working fine before.

Does anyone know a workaround?

Not blocked by EE. So must be done by BT Retail only.

Have y'all tried changing your DNS to public ones?

A proxy or VPN.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Have you checked that the parental filter is disabled?

Yes... I took that thing off immediately I got my account setup lol

This whole copyright issue on the Internet needs to be sorted out as we're heading down a rabbits hole in what should be a civil case between the site owners and the copyright holders.

Anyways thats my 2 penny's worth.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

This whole copyright issue on the Internet needs to be sorted out as we're heading down a rabbits hole in what should be a civil case between the site owners and the copyright holders.

Or in the case of peer-to-peer, the individual peers. TPB always argued it was the peers doing the infringing, and not the website.

But didn't the courts reject their argument?

The problem is it is easier to get a court order to block something than to get the courts to go after the people breaking copyright - especially as those people probably aren't in UK jurisdiction and are likely very difficult to track down in many cases. The courts can only change things under their control - and UK ISPs are under the control of UK courts.

Just seen this on BBC news.

Can anyone recommend another fibre ISP to move to from BT ?

That will be the culprit.

A full list of sites blocked can be found here

It'll have to be 1 of the smaller ones (and I doubt resellers). The Big 5, incl. PN, are covered by the Court orders.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

It'll have to be 1 of the smaller ones (and I doubt resellers). The Big 5, incl. PN, are covered by the Court orders.

I thought Plusnet would be covered by the BT court orders too. But aside from TPB I'm not aware that any infringing sites are blocked on Plusnet.

As Oliver says, PN aren't covered by the BT Court Orders. I think Pirate Bay is blocked at source.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I think Pirate Bay is blocked at source.

No, it's blocked by Plusnet, but they claim it is technically infeasible to unblock it. http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1171...

Towards the end of that thread it appears that the problem is that Plusnet traffic may sometimes be routed over BTNet (global peer) and other times over Level3. That would explain why the OP in the other thread got through a few times but not always.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Towards the end of that thread it appears that the problem is that Plusnet traffic may sometimes be routed over BTNet (global peer) and other times over Level3. That would explain why the OP in the other thread got through a few times but not always.

Point being, that if this was Facebook being blocked by "accident" then Plusnet would have sorted it. However they made a moral judgement call and decided that finding a way to unblock TPB was not worth their time. It sets an interesting precedent for the future.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Just seen this on BBC news.

Yes that seems to be what's happened.

Though as the story said these blocks are easy to get around. VPN are advertised a lot these days, and also there seems to be browser addons that are out there as well.

I think their aim is to try and stop the majority of people accessing the sites.

There needs to be a better solution. The film industry I think needs to take a similar position to the music industry and make their own site for people to download films from, for a fee. I mean imagine how much money they would make if they offered films, tv shows etc, not region locked, 1 or 2 months after release.

Don't be silly.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Don't be silly.

Not silly at all. If Facebook had become "accidentally" blocked in this manner, there's no question that Plusnet would have sought to unblock it.

The key there is "in this manner". It implies Facebook may be the subject in future of blocking Court Orders. A spurious example.

Shall we just leave it? You can invent things forever and I can demonstrate their irrelevance. It helps no-one and demeans us both.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The key there is "in this manner". It implies Facebook may be the subject in future of blocking Court Orders.

No, it's nothing to do with a court order as far as Plusnet are concerned, because as far as we know Plusnet has never received a court order to block TPB. Certainly Plusnet staff never said on the Plusnet forum that they were required to block TPB by law, just that it was too much hassle for them to unblock.

The fact remains that Plusnet have a site blocked which they are not required to block by law, and that makes them rather unique.

use https:// or use zenmate firefox/chrome addon

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

... it appears that the problem is that Plusnet traffic may sometimes be routed over BTNet (global peer) ...

It seems it's quite easy to get to TPB via PN regardless of which route the traffic takes ...

Since BT broke their DNS interception, this site is now working again