Last week the UK High Court ruled that several of the country’s leading ISPs must block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. The decision is designed to limit traffic to the world’s leading BitTorrent site but in the short-term it had the opposite effect. Yesterday, The Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, providing a golden opportunity to educate users on how to circumvent blocks. “We should write a thank you letter to the BPI,” a site insider told TorrentFreak.
Last Friday the UK High Court ruled that several of country’s leading ISPs must censor The Pirate Bay website having ruled in February that the site and its users breach copyright on a grand scale.

The blocks – to be implemented by Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media (BT are still considering their position) – are designed to cut off all but the most determined file-sharers from the world’s most popular torrent site.
On hearing the news a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that the measure will do very little to stop people accessing the site and predicted that “the free advertising” would only increase traffic levels.

It’s not possible to buy advertising “articles” from leading UK publications such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph, but yesterday The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeated around the UK, across Europe and around the world reaching millions of people. The results for the site were dramatic.
“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.

“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.
The blockade, which was not contested by any of the ISPs listed above, will be implemented during the course of the next few weeks. While that time counts down, The Pirate Bay say they are viewing the interim period as an opportunity to educate site visitors on how to deal with censorship by bypassing it.
“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added.
In court papers released today, Mr Justice Arnold said that since the terms of the court order (how the blocks would be implemented technically) had been agreed to by the ISPs in question, there was no need for him to detail them in his ruling. However, The Pirate Bay told us that by taking a range of measures, any blocking technique employed by any ISP can be overcome.

First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.
These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such asVPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.

Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.
While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.
As readers will recall, there are other simple unblocking solutions where domain names are blocked by ISPs but their related IP addresses remain unfiltered. These include theMAFIAAFire plugin and the simple action of typing a site’s IP address directly into a browser. However, in this UK case there is a problem with these solutions.
According to court papers made available today, it seems that on the advice of an expert and after being agreed to by the ISPs in question, IP address blocking of The Pirate Bay is now part of the injunction. This means that the techniques in the above paragraph simply won’t work.
To circumvent this kind of problem, The Pirate Bay can be accessed via a 3rd party – a so-called ‘proxy’. One of these purely for the job is being operated by the UK Pirate Party.
Quite how long this particular proxy stays up remains to be seen though. The Dutch Pirates tried a similar thing and were quickly pursued by rights holders. Nevertheless, there are countless free proxies online that can do the job just as well.

In just a few weeks the block of The Pirate Bay will be implemented and despite all the coverage and millions of extra visitors to the site, thousands of users will remain unprepared. Those patient enough to type a question into a search engine will regain access to the site in a few minutes.
But will the impatient start pumping more money into the pockets of the BPI? That’s the big question.
Update: Virgin Media just started blocking The Pirate Bay.


Blocked

Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White has released a new research report today outlining some of the takeaways from a recent trip to Asia to talk with companies in Apple's supply chain. According to White, chatter from those suppliers is pointing toward a larger 4-inch screen on the iPhone 5, which will also include a redesign bringing a "new, sleek look".

Quote

White notes that some suppliers are expected to begin ramping production of components in June, ahead of a launch in the August-September timeframe leading into a blockbuster final quarter of 2012.

Sleek "iPhone 5" mockup based on leaked 2011 case designs

As in any discussion of a larger screen on an iPhone, the issue of screen resolution is certain to be a key sticking point. With the iPhone currently offering a 3.5-inch Retina display, an increase to 4 inches would require one of two changes: an increase in resolution that would yield difficulties for developers by adding yet another device size to the mix, or a decrease in pixel density that would maintain the current resolution but see density drop to roughly 285 pixels per inch from the current 326 pixels per inch.

Among White's other takeaways from his trip:

- Display issues have caused a bit of a bottleneck on supplies of the new iPad, but the shortages seem to be easing. Any small constraints on March quarter sales numbers would be compensated for by a boost to June quarter sales.

- Suppliers suggest that a smaller "iPad mini" is still in the works, but launch timing remains unknown.

- While the new iPad is not yet officially available in China, some resellers are already carrying the device. Speculation is pointing to a potential May release for the new iPad in China, although evidence for that timeframe beyond a recent regulatory approval

Facebook ha s announced it is buying the extremely popular photography app-maker Instagram for a reported $1 billion.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a blog post today:

Quote

Apple named Instagram its iPhone App of the Year for 2011. Instagram is also the 19th most downloaded free iPhone app of all-time. Instagram launched an Android app just last week.

Instagram is a free download on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Digitimes points to a report in Taiwan's Economic Daily News claiming that Apple is planning to introduce updated iMac models in June, a bit later than some had initially hoped given Intel's Ivy Bridge launch schedule that would see quad-core desktop processors launch at the end of this month.

Quote

The report repeats a claim from earlier this week indicating that Apple will be using anti-reflective glass for the new iMac, and also suggests that updated MacBook Pro models are due "at the end of the second quarter".


Unfortunately, Economic Daily News does not have a terribly good track record when it comes to Apple rumors, with past misses including an iPhone nano in 2009, a 7-inch iPadin 2010, and a Retina-display iPad by the end of 2011. But perhaps coming in support of the newspaper's claim of a June launch for updated iMac models, How to Arena earlier this week claimed a similar June-July timeframe for updated iMac models.

As for Economic Daily News' claim that Apple will be releasing MacBook Pro updates at the end of the quarter, which would mean late June, Apple's situation appears to be complicated by chip availability from Intel. While quad-core chips appropriate for the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro are said to be launching on April 29, dual-core chips viewed as successors to those used in the current 13-inch model do not appear to be launching until early June.

Recent reports have indicated that production on new 15-inch models has begun ramping up but that 13-inch MacBook Pro updates won't begin ramping until June, and it is unclear whether Apple would introduce the new 15-inch models before the 13-inch models are ready.

Alright, it has been brought to my attention that forum activity is hitting a little bit of a low spot. To counter-act this, I have removed the shoutbox for the time being. Don't worry, you can still have your smalltalk, just it will be on a post instead of s a shoutbox.

For any of you familiar with other forums, such as HackForums, groups have threads which are designated "the lounge". This is where smalltalk and irrelevant posting goes. Posting quality isn't as strict in the lounges, and posts are allowed to be short. I'm going to try out this method for now, and see how it turns out. I'm not sure whether the shoutbox will comeback... only time will tell.

Until then, here is the first Lounge: http://mldxgaming.co...xgaming-lounge/

Feel free to spam it with jokes, meme's, questions or anything else. Please use your own discretion.