An Irish ISP has apparently buckled under the pressure of The Man, and will now block access to any and every site The Man asks it to. Think The Pirate Bay and related sites. Let’s put on our outrage hats, everyone.
The ISP, Eircom, has agreed to Irish Recorded Music Association demands to prevent its subscribers from accessing certain sites. The IRMA—fun fact: “irmã” is “sister” in Portuguese—will henceforth be able to draw up a lists it doesn’t want people—remember, you’re all potential criminals—to visit. Expect sites like The Pirate Bay to be on the list; no word whether or not the subversive nonsense of CrunchGear has been deemed too dangerous.
Now, I’d echo the over-the-top response of the likes of Digg and TorrentFreak, but there’s an easy way to get around this: just use a proxy. Surf the Internet with a non-Irish proxy for the two seconds it takes to download a torrent file, then go about your business. There’s no need to start talking about throwing tea in the water, or whatever other historical allusion you want to invoke when, really, all we’re talking about is getting a few songs for free.