UK ISPs block Promo Bay

While Pirate Bay spinoff promotional tool The Promo Bay, has no links with copyright protected material – in-fact it by definition promotes submissions from unsigned artists – it has now been blocked by most of the major ISPs in the UK, mere days after its own domain was launched.

Presumably this has just been caught up in the black listing of The Pirate Bay, but it's a worrying revelation since simply by being tenuously linked with a site that's been blocked, many people that might otherwise have seen the artists on the site and helped them get paid for their art, now won't be able to do so. Of course there are ways around such blocks and many of those using sites like The Pirate Bay would know how, but those that might have found The Promo Bay through other circles, might not.

According to TorrentFreak, anyone who's ISP is BT, Everything Everywhere and Virgin are unable to access The Promo Bay. It's possible that other ISPs have also blocked it but that has yet to be confirmed (I can say without doubt that Plus.net has not blocked it however).

Of course this could all be an accident and hopefully it is, because the Promo Bay is designed to help promote the very people that the BPI claims to be protecting through its legislative actions. On top of this, while The Promo Bay was once linked with the Pirate Bay, it has since become its own entity and is now run by Australian Will Dayble. He's remaining a good sport about the block, believing it to be a mistake: “These providers are pretty monolithic and old school, I’d imagine it’s just a broad-scale block against a bunch of Pirate Bay properties and we fell under the net. I doubt it’s a pointed move against the Promo Bay in particular,” he said.

For anyone interested in having these companies unblock the site, you can sign the petition here.

KitGuru Says: While file sharing is a difficult topic to discuss because of the legal ramifications, this just seems silly. It's clearly not got anything to do with file sharing and is in-fact promoting original content in order to make those artists money. Do you guys think there could be another reason behind such a move?

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