What follows has been posted in various other threads and has been repeated in IRC - but I thought it was probably an OK idea to post it all together in one place if only so I could point them to it - anyway:
As far as we have been able to work out someone has informed and organisation in the UK called the Internet Watch Foundation http://www.iwf.org.uk/ of our little place on the net and they have deemed it to be unacceptable due to either race hate OR childporn... probably both. They have place ONE SPECIFIC URL on a block list.
Seemingly NTL and BT subscribe to this block list to different degrees (although oddly some people are still getting through from at least NTL not sure about BT). The URL they are blocking is the main /b/ http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html one which is why you are seeing a 404/403 on that one, but are still capable of seeing links within /b/.
There are quite a few ways to get around this, the two that I employ when Im on my work BT line is by using the IP address of the of the /b/ server, so then the URL would be: http://66.207.165.178/b/imgboard.html - this also works for NTL users. NTL users can also just add a '?' mark to the end of the normal URL to get around it thus: http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html?
You can also use proxies and tunnelling an other crap, such as http//securebar.secure/...
or installing your own copy of squid maybe.
BT users only are currently finding them selves banned completely from the img.4chan servers, I have no idea what that is about as I dont think anyones said.
Are BT/NTL logging failed connects to the boards? No idea. How long is this gonna last? No idea. Is there anyway to ge the block lifted? Having read the IWFs complaints procedure... only if you want the police at your door if its still found to be CPy.
I think thats it, be brave /b/tards. You can get through this.
D.
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Anonymous2006-06-20 19:01
I phoned up NTL and spent 4 hours on the phone with the head manager of our local telecommunications department, explaining that I'd make a huge deal about it and take it to the media, which is the one thing they actually fear.
I also explained to him just what 4Chan was and I explained just how many people go there. The guy (who I can't name for legal reasons) was flabbergasted as I explained who the minority were.
In my local area, 4Chan is now available and for those of you DN37, you can see me sporting a shirt that says "This man is your friend: He fights for /b/".
I'm using NTL, I can get into /b/ just fine without fucking with the URL or anything. Either they removed the block after realising it wasn't actually what IWF said it was, or the site-blocking is as half-arsed as the rest of their operation.
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462006-06-22 11:34
oh! for some reason >>41 didn't show up, must have been an old cache. thank you, sir.
Name:
2006-06-22 13:52(capped)
How should I go about addressing this? Neither BT nor NTL have contacted me :(
Name:
Anonymous2006-06-22 17:45
They won't - they're just members of the IWF and as members agree to abide by it's decisions. The IWF won't contact you because they don't have to. You can't even find out 'officially' if you're on their shitlist unless you pay for membership - which costs thousands of $ and which they won't give you because you're on their shitlist.... It's not a pretty picture is it?
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Anonymous2006-06-22 18:23
Options I suppose would be:
1. Go to IWF and demand a reassessment.
IWF may agree or not - if yes, no guarantee that their
faceless and nameless 'analyst' will arrive at a different
opinion. If no, end of that avenue officially speaking.
If yes and reassessment is positive then big win.
So that's a 1 in 3 chance of getting it fixed.
2. Get enough /b/ tards to complain to BT and NTL that the
ISPs either revoke their agreement to ban, or force a
reassessment themselves from the IWF (with, presumably, a
much higher chance of success than one originating from
yourself). So that's maybe a 1 in 2 or better chance of
success - BUT getting anyone to complain to a semi-official
body about an alleged CP site is going to be, at best,
pretty difficult. People are SCARED of any association
with CP and not many will stick their necks out.
3. The press. Well, do you feel lucky?
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Anonymous2006-06-22 20:47
hmm... my girlfrend had this problem when browsing /b/. I checked some urls, and remembered that multiple slashes often get ignored but work ok in urls - so http://img.4chan.org//b/imgboard.html works fine :)
(I remembered this after some controversy many years ago about IE4 (I think) automatically removing double slashes and geeks complaining that it shouldn't)
Gives me a banned image. Really don't know if I'm banned from img or if this is another BT plot to redirect everyone to the banned page. Heard rumours somewhere BT was behind this too, and not 4chan.
Moot replied to me asking the same question, any folks with BT and NTL try and find a number or something for him? lets help out our glorious leader keep the regime going, ive had a look but i hate companies that make themselves hard to get hold of.
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Anonymous2006-06-24 7:01
BT(yahoo) is stupid to get hold of, even when you do they wont talk about any thing unless you have an account with them.
Name:
Anonymous2006-06-24 11:15
Yeah, but whoever said that people are scared ob being associated with pedophilia here are right, doesnt matter if its true or false accusation, in britain if your taitned with pedophilia, rightly or wrongly, you can expect a witch-hunting mob outside your door.
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Anonymous2006-06-24 13:49
well i'm here saying the ip & port workaround thats stated to work for BT works for NTL as well, thanks for having this, if not particularly visible.
>>55
Whenever i try to call BT (or when they call me) im always re-directed to their call centre in India or somewhere, and they rarely understand what your saying.
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Anonymous2006-06-25 16:53
>>56
In Britain people are paranoid and scared of everything. That's why they live in police state. Oh well, their country seems to be dying anyway. Long lost are days of glory for British and their currently non-existand Empire. Good riddance.
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Anonymous2006-06-25 21:31
A. stop posting CP
B. Stop banning tor and proxy users from VIEWING 4chan
Name:
Anonymous2006-06-26 10:09
>> 61
I agree with both those points
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Anonymous2006-06-26 12:25
>>62
I disagree with the second. The first too, when I think about it.
Correct it doesn't, #58 posted actual email addresses to try, but I doubt you'd get a worthwhile response. However it does show the hoops you have to jump through to get a site unblocked.
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Anonymous2006-06-27 17:20
Update - it seems that the UK ISP 'UK-Online' has implemented a block on /b/ as well - presumably this means they are also paid-up members of the IWF. Meh. This is getting silly.
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Anonymous2006-06-27 21:22
So are any admins trying to get this lifted?
Name:
Anonymous2006-06-28 6:37
Perhaps the best solution is to
1) Inform other Internet users of this problem
2) Boycott any provider who is a member of the 'Internet Watch Foundation' until they lift the ban (keeping customers is more important than being moral)
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Anonymous2006-06-28 8:40
one final point for the solution:
Posts like 60 should shut up and keep their politics/race hate to themselves.
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Heynonnymous2006-06-28 9:33
Just a reminder to those on BT finding themselves redirected to the "Banned" screen even while playing with the URL, you can use a different BT proxy to get around it, as #6 in this thread said.
Just change your http proxy to webcache.bt.net 8080.
Problem is they don't *want* to keep us. People who use /b/ are the type of people who use loads of bittorrent, and download 150GB a month. We're the people that *use* the bandwidth we pay for, and ISPs HATE us for it. They'd get rid of us any way they have the chance.
This is why all the start-ups that offer no port throttling, no traffic shaping, absolutely no limits and static IPs all DIE. They're shunting through hundreds of times more traffic than normal ISPs, and with a lot less people paying them.
Western internet censorship is becoming common, it's really fucking depressing. All they have to do is say the secret list only blocks CP, AND YOU'RE NOT A PEDO ARE YOU?!? then naturally nobody dares to challenge it.
It's even worse when you consider it in the wider context of moves away from 'net neutrality' and proposed legislation like IPRED2 that will indirectly criminalise filesharing networks, especially anonymous p2p like freenet and i2p, and even software development generally due to the vast number of trivial software patents. A good summary on the freenet mailing list : http://archives.freenetproject.org/message/20060628.130036.22d30ac3.en.html
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Anonymous2006-06-30 17:54
Don't wanna speak to soon, but NTL users (inc myself) are reporting in irc an in the other thread that NTL have unblocked /b/.
Weird. I thought there was no chance in hell.
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Anonymous2006-06-30 20:47
NTL (for me) did unblock /b/ for about 3 hours. Now it's giving me the 404 message again.