Fun with British Internet Censorship

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Good Morning!
Pip-pip, and Cheerio

Not a fox, but we'll allow it.
Not a fox, but we’ll allow it.
Good Morning, Friends of the Fox. 

It’s been a bit since we’ve posted here on the blog, as your blogess has had some interesting times in the real world of late. As always, I’d like to remind you about our awesome Proxy and VPN service, free software downloads, and fabulous custom corporate plans.

There’s a reason we’ve been in the business for 10 years. We’re good at what we do.

Anyway, those interesting times have meant that I’ve been in the UK for the past couple of weeks, so it could be worse. In the midst of eating as much clotted cream (Google it) as I possibly can, and doing my best to soak up the Cornish sun, I stumbled across a bit of good old fashioned internet censorship while trying to do some catching up on my stories via a video streaming site.

This has been my diet for the past two weeks.
This has been my diet for the past two weeks.

This being Britain, it’s polite and to the point, loading up this simple message:

2016-06-26
Okay, then.
Interesting, indeed.

Naturally, I followed the link to get a better idea of just who decided that I couldn’t internet surf freely. Which led me to this:

Isn't that interesting?
Isn’t that interesting?

If you have a moment, take a look for yourselves. It turns out that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has a lot of influence over what our friends in the UK can see. Over 60 sites on that list are blocked by order of the MPAA, with even more getting blacklisted courtesy of the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), and the Premier Football League. As you might suspect, these blocked sites are mostly streaming, torrents, and sports streaming websites.

Cartier has also obtained court orders against some of these websites. Yes, the jewelry company. Most of the websites they and a couple other jewelry companies have blocked are what I assume are knockoff sales sites.

But here’s where it gets weird. One of the websites blocked by Cartier is www.pasmoldsolutions.com, which for some reason redirects to a story about an online prostitution sting. The original link, or so the Google cache tells me, was www.pasmoldsolutions.com/fake-cartier-jewelry-trinity-bracelets-c-144_139.html.

What this has to do with an online underage prostitution sting from 2011, I have no idea.

Good thing for our British friends that you have us for all your proxy needs!