Tag Archives: block

Lofree has recently launched its latest creation, the Block 98 wireless mechanical keyboard. The keyboard is a perfect combination of classic aesthetics and cutting-edge technology, inspired by the design philosophy of ‘Less is More' and the iconic Braun elements. The keyboard's design draws inspiration from the legendary Braun design ethos, …

The FTC's case against Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition finally entered federal court in recent weeks. While the UK's CMA wanted to block the deal on cloud gaming concerns, the FTC's case primarily focused on the deal's impact on Sony and the PlayStation business. Now, the judge has rejected the FTC's …

Blocking torrent sites has become a drab, somewhat frequent occurrence in countries throughout the EU over the past decade, though it rarely seems to have much of an effect. After a court in Sweden once again demanded that ISP Banhoef block iconic torrent search site, The Pirate Bay, the company's CEO …

The Digital Economy Bill (DEB) has a lot of people worried, driving many to take up VPN subscriptions to try and give them the privacy that the bill would strip away. It looks like the matter may become ever more complicated though, as the government looks to pass the buck, …

Do you partake in pornography that is considered “non-conventional?” Who knows right? That's a pretty vague term, but it's the exact wording of the currently under-debate, Digital Economy Bill, which is being pushed through parliament. If enacted, it could force ISPs to put blocks in place for any sites that …

Digital advocacy organisation, the Open Rights Group, has lambasted a number of politicians for making a proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which would make it perfectly legal to block porn sites which don't add effective age registration. On top of labelling the idea censorship, the ORG criticised the …

EA Games made the somewhat surprising move in September, to begin complying with United States trade sanctions, whereby it stopped offering its Origin service and exclusive games in affected regions. What's even more surprising though, is that when those sanctions are lifted, it doesn't remove the blocks. This is most …

Apple has been blocked from importing or selling refurbished iPhones in India. The company had requested approval to sell some of its older, used devices at a cheaper price in India earlier this year but has been rejected for the second time. Apple tried to obtain approval last year but …

This morning, Amazon UK customers suddenly found themselves unable to purchase certain video game titles without having a Prime subscription. A few games have now been added to Amazon's “Prime-Exclusive Items” list, meaning unless you fork out the £79.99 per year subscription fee, you will need to go elsewhere to …

It has been a few months since Netflix officially announced that it would be taking a harder stance against VPN users and those trying to circumvent geographical content restrictions. This has been a fairly controversial move but apparently, it isn't having an effect at all on the company's pocket. During …

One of the more common put downs by those unconcerned by encroaching filtering systems on British internet, is that they are easy to get around. Using a proxy, VPN or DNS tweaks to circumvent government or other filters might be easy for the tech-savvy, but for the majority of internet …

Over the last couple of months, motherboard manufacturers have managed to tweak their BIOS updates in order to enable overclocking on Intel's non-K series Skylake chips. Obviously, this was never officially supported by Intel and now rumour has it that the chip maker may be moving to block BCLK overclocking …

A German court has just made it harder for copyright lobbyists to sue content platforms for what their users post, after it ruled that Youtube was not responsible for the content published on its site by its members. It reinforced that by stating that this was the case even if …

Under the pressure of movie studios and politicians, Netflix has become much more interested in cracking down on those circumventing its content geo-blocks, forcing people to only watch what's available in their home country. However the streaming service is giving a pass to all army base users, allowing soldiers to …

Twitter may be set to bring an end to its most iconic feature: the ability to type no more than 140 characters in a tweet. The number is synonymous with the service, but according to various sources that are said to be “familiar with the company's plans,” the prevailing winds …

The UK High Court has once again ordered internet service providers to expand its list of blocked sites, with a new wave of 85 sites set to be blocked this week on the likes of Sky, Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk. This will be one of the larger ban waves …

The future of AMD's current flagship graphics card, the Fury X, could be put in jeopardy soon, as Asetek, maker of coolers and cooling systems, has filed a cease and desist against AMD. The reasoning? It claims that the card uses water cooling technology that infringes upon its patents. There's …

In a continuing trend that shows ISPs on the continent have more backbone than all of the big ones in the UK, T-Mobile Austria has refused a request from a copyright lobby group to voluntarily block The Pirate Bay and a number of other sites, after a rival ISP was …

In a never ending battle to look like they are doing something to curb the ongoing issue of piracy, copyright lobby groups have managed to have British ISPs block a number of new domains, this time mostly proxies and mirrors of previously blocked sites. As you might expect, most affected …

The end game of the past two years of ‘cracking down' on online pornography is finally here. Following on from UK PM David Cameron's continued assault on pornography that even our most reasonable of attempts to dissuade him have failed to stop, our illustrious leader has now pledged to implement …

In a move that sounds an awful lot like David Cameron's recent announcement that he would go after effective encryption standards in the event of his re-election, a member of parliament in Putin's government is pushing for a ban on VPN and TOR access, in an attempt to stop people …

As file sharing has evolved over the past decade, the efforts of lobby groups and studios to stop it have done so too. Back in the day the technique of choice was to sue individual downloaders and uploaders, but that's time consuming and ultimately has little effect on the number …

For most onlookers, the Destiny launch seemed to go off without a hitch earning Activision $500 million in a single day. However, for a lot of students, the experience has been dramatically different as the game isn't accessible on many college and university campus networks worldwide. So far, Bungie is …

Much of our coverage of the British government last year involved David Cameron's courting of Chinese firms and how he was very interested in the filters they put up to stop citizens looking at a large variety of content, including anti-government messages. However, the big problem Mr Cameron saw in …

The business of blocking websites relating to The Pirate Bay has become old hat in the past year or so. We've seen the original blocked in countries all over Europe and proxies getting the same treatment every few weeks since, but that hasn't made it much harder to get on …

Following on from yesterday's news that Dutch ISPs Ziggo and XS4All were entering their third year of fighting lobby groups in courts, comes the news that British ISPs have blocked a bunch of extra torrent site proxies which have sprung up in the wake of their initial blocks. This happens …

Google looks set to strip a number of Indie artists from its Youtube video streaming site due to contract disputes, with the upcoming launch of its paid for, music subscription service. This will see artists like Adele and Radiohead, blocked on the site “in a matter of days,” if the …

The Pirate Bay is one of those dogs that not matter how many times you kick it, it just won't stay down. Despite its owners being in jail, its servers raided at times and massive studio funded lobby groups the world over gunning to take it down, it's still alive …

There's a big anti-pornography campaign going on in the UK at the moment, with David Cameron using it as a way to curry favour with Chinese investors, media lobbies as a way to get more proxies and pirate sites blocked and the cries of “think of the children,” being used once …

The last few years have seen copyright lobbyists turn from targeting individual downloaders in the court room, to going after the sites themselves, by attempting to have them blocked in every country and by every ISP the world over, despite these DNS blocks being exeedingly easy to circumvent. However, the …