A week ago today, customers of the ISP Orange across the UK and France found that they could no longer access The Pirate Bay. Many of them fired off emails to the service provider, worried that Orange was censoring their access to the Internet. Now, a week later, Orange have answered officially - its customers should have no further difficulty accessing the world’s largest tracker.
When reports from last Friday started to escalate over the weekend, BitTorrent users with the ISP Orange grew more and more concerned. Out of nowhere it appeared that The Pirate Bay was off limits and they could no longer access the site.
Reports coming in from France told the same story - no Pirate Bay and no helpful explanation from Orange, despite many complaints. Many believed that Orange had taken the decision to block the Swedish tracker and they began voicing displeasure.
TorrentFreak picked up the story on Monday, contacting Orange PR for an explanation. After a reminder on Tuesday, we published the response from Orange who said: “Our understanding is that Orange doesn’t block access to any sites other than those identified by the Internet Watch Foundation, that relate to illegal child abuse imagery. However, we’re looking into this and will update you again as soon as we can.”
File-sharers live in uncertain times and when organizations such as the IFPI actively take steps to force ISPs to censor the Internet, it’s little wonder that people come to the conclusions they do. So we asked Orange customers to tell us directly if they could access The Pirate Bay or not. An overwhelming majority said they couldn’t, but a few explained that they could, which cast some doubt on the ISP-wide block theory. However, with nothing official coming back from Orange, lingering suspicions remained.
Finally today, an Orange spokesperson responded officially, thanking TorrentFreak for bringing the matter to their attention and offering the following message:
We can confirm that we have not actively stopped customers accessing the web sites reportedly affected. However, following investigation by our network partners, a small section of our Internet traffic was rerouted by one of them which has now restored access to the sites concerned.
As has always been the case, it is Orange UK’s policy to not block customer access to websites, other than to those containing images of child abuse as identified by the IWF.
So there it is in black and white - Orange customers can officially access The Pirate Bay again. As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we encourage feedback in the comments - are you an Orange customer and has the site returned for you?
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