Cloudflare starts blocking pirate sites for UK users

PSA: UK users can visit all their favourite websites in Tor Browser. Just don't run your torrent client using the tor network. Thank you.

You can also access 4chan, Tattle Life, and other nasty gossip websites that the UK nanny state wants to ban.

And you can access the porn on Reddit and Twitter (though in some cases you'll have to make an account). And of course the "tube" sites work fine.

After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the government to repeal their awful law.

> After you've done that, as a UK citizen, please go to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 and ask the government to repeal their awful law.

There is literally no point in signing those petitions. The only disagreement between the major political parties in the UK is how draconian it should be.

If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in parliament. However the bill was already debated in parliament and got through and the petition doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in the UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law wrote to their MP.

> If it hits 100k then it needs to be debated in parliament.

I don't think so. It says on the site "At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament".

I've seen people get excited about petitions before that got to 100,000 signatures and it all fizzled out, or it wasn't debated seriously in parliament. Often you will get a cookie cutter response with these petitions that is a paragraph long.

The reality is that most of the public are indifferent or supportive of the current legislation and most MPs know that.

> There would be more of an impact if, perhaps, everyone in the UK who has had to shut a web site because of this law wrote to their MP.

Each MP would get maybe a max of 10s of emails/letters each. Many of those MPs wouldn't even bother answering you. Those that do will often will probably give you the brush off.

I've written to my MP before (about encryption legislation), spent a lot of time presenting a clear and cogent argument and I got a "well I might have a chat with the home secretary" and they were still singing the same tune years later. What I was telling them was largely the same as other industry experts. They don't care and that is the unfortunate reality.

The fact is that the direction the UK government (doesn't matter whether it was Red Team or Blue Team) has been going in has been clear for well over a decade at this point. It would take a major political shake up for this to change IMHO.

True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say “this law has affected me in this way” is IMO far more likely to be effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says “I don’t like this law which you recently approved”.

MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had responses to various issues. It obviously depends on the MP. Many MPs were very much opposed to this issue.

> True, but MPs receiving a few mails that say “this law has affected me in this way” is IMO far more likely to be effective than a petition with 100k signatures that says “I don’t like this law which you recently approved”.

I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe that is true.

> MPs have been known to respond to letters. I have had responses to various issues.

Getting a response is one thing. Having something done is another.

> It obviously depends on the MP. Many MPs were very much opposed to this issue.

The legislation was going to happen at some point or another. The direction of travel was quite clear. There are always going to be some dissenters, but the awful legislation got passed anyway. So what did their dissent achieve? Nothing.

I came to the realisation a number of years ago that for the majority of people, the only care about being able to use their Netflix, shopping on amazon, check their email and post photos on Facebook. Concerns outside of that are simply too abstract/distant to care about.

> I think they are both ineffective. So I don't believe that is true.

I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective. Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be effective in this case is another matter. Maybe when people start to experience the block it will gain traction.

Of course if you don’t even make low-effort attempts to make your voice heard and exercise your democratic rights, you can be certain that you’ll lose them.

> I disagree that writing to MPs is always ineffective. Some campaigns have been successful. Whether it will be effective in this case is another matter.

It won't be effective in this case. It been going in the same direction of travel and none of the parties (including outsider parties such as the Greens, Reform etc) proclaim to believe in in reversing this direction of travel. They are much more interested in other issues that are much more hot button. Those issues are easy for the public to understand because they are likely to have encountered them often.

> Maybe when people start to experience the block it will gain traction.

No it won't. People will either find a way to circumvent via VPN/Tor or some other mechanism (which is what they already do) or they will simply shrug their shoulders and won't bother.

There has already been a large number of forums/sites that have been shutdown or site been blocked in the UK and there hasn't been any significant traction on this issue.

> Of course if you don’t even make low-effort attempts to make your voice heard and exercise your democratic rights, you can be certain that you’ll lose them.

I don't really know how to respond to something like this because I believe it is naive on a number of levels. I consider myself a realist. I believe "making your voice heard and exercising your democratic rights" is about as effective as talking to a brick wall (at least on a national level).

I have personally made attempts. I wrote to my MP often. I cited links, news articles etc to back up my argument. It was an utter waste of time. At best you may get a short response. I realised I was ultimately wasting my time, I stopped and will never do it again. I actually feel stupid for believing that I could make any difference at all. I suspect this is the experience for other people and is often not spoken about.

Moreover much more notable people have tried to make themselves heard around a number of related concerns about freedom of speech, threats to privacy, iffy counter-terrorism laws etc. More often than not has always been either ignored entirely, responses that completely ignored the crux of the issue, or straight up lies from successive governments for almost two decades now.

Realistically our options will be to learn to live with the poor legislation, circumvent it, or leave the country.