Last Thursday, our campus IT department did something to our internet which hasn't worked well. We're now incapable of downloading torrent files, using P2P services, and in fact the web pages for a lot of CLIENT PROGRAMS like deluge, Azureus, and Kazaa have been blocked, including their forums and some freeware download sites. This even includes Your-Freedom, a wide range of web proxies, and even temporarily Save the Internet (which they removed the block on apparently). The move strikes me as pretty unfair and overreaching especially considering it was not done to save bandwidth or something (we have plenty).

Which services does your school, government, or business block? What is your stance on this? How do you get around it? Do you believe internet filtering is fundamentally unfair?

EDIT: Nevermind, found an alternate download-link which isn't blocked.

All I know is that kproxy is your friend.

*ehem*, our school doesn't block shit. My high school was HORRIBLE though - they even ended up trying to block YouTube but some teachers had complaints because they used it for educational purposes.

kproxy seems to work rather off and on... I can get to the Deluge site, for example, but can't download, but can't view the Kazaa site.

I really thought this shit was over with in high school. I'm worried my school's network blocks are going to start interfering with legitimate activity that doesn't relate to P2P, like games, streaming video, etc.

I don't know if this will offer better results, but the link I provided was an HTTPS, meaning it was on a secure connection. You could try http://www.kproxy.com and see if that gives you better luck, but I make no promises or guarantees... just a thing to try.

If your school isn't in the habit of blocking proxies then there's a myriad of proxy servers available to you.

The only things I've found blocked here at school are IRC (this fucking sucks) and torrents.  Never the torrent sites themselves, I just can't torrent anything here.  I think it's unfair, but I can see that they're just trying to cover themselves legally (I know you can get illegal stuff through IRC but that is the one thing blocked that really pisses me off).  I'm sure I can get around it but I haven't really tried.  I think blocking torrents is fair, although incredibly inconvenient, because of the legal issues, but blocking IRC isn't very reasonable, and I think blocking individual websites is absolutely wrong, because once they start there's no line as to what they will and wont block based on "bad content" or whatever.

edit:  This doesn't apply to school computers though, they can block whatever the hell they want on their own computers, I just mean stuff blocked on networks that are intended for your own computers.

My school blocks IRC and torrents, as well as some websites, apparently (I've only discovered one - a porn message board).

Ironically, searching my school's website for "IRC blocked" last year led me to a school-sponsored webpage that gave me step-by-step directions on getting around the IRC blocking (and partially the torrent blocking) - by setting up a Virtual Private Network.

Everytime I go on IRC, I have to connect to this VPN, which makes my normal HTTP downloads a little slower (but still cable speed). Normally torrent speeds are under 2kb/s, but connecting to VPN makes them go around 30-80kb/s depending on the torrent.

My high school uses internet filtering during the school day (blocks the basic stuff like YouTube, forums, Facebook, etc) but it becomes more lax during the after hours.  You can't access stuff that is high bandwidth usage, such as YouTube (without access to a Teacher's override password) but its a little better.  Regardless though, there are plenty of ways around it, (most of the people, including myself, use OperaTor, which is a small self-executable opera-based browser that connects to a Tor network that is outside of the school's hardware filtering).  They don't block any IRC ports or torrent ports though at my school.  (although using them are not really efficient, since the connection is generally slow, and usually I dont' have the time to be on IRC during the school day anyway)

Sigh, why did I read the topic title as Internet Flurting?

Never had this problem, sounds pretty...opinionated. If I were living on campus I would be pissed, at work? no because I don't live at work.

my high school blocks youtube and basically anything that has been requested to be blocked by anyone

all it takes is one parent's request and its blocked.

I've never experienced my college blocking anything.

wait, colleges block places?

what on earth!

Today I tried running a Tracker-only proxy through Your Freedom and it did nothing. I think I am doing it wrong.

My high school was pretty good at blocking websites that contained keywords pertaining to online gaming (they blocked most Flash game sites) or pornography..

However, they were weak to alternate forms of student rebellion: I put one of those looping "Coffee Cup Holder" javascript programs in the Startup folders of 25 computers in one classroom and the Shared folder of the school network. Hehe..... apparently the school network administrator opened it up and freaked out and couldn't figure out how to turn it off (hint: Task Manager - Processes). Such fools...........

ahhhh but those were the foolish days of my youth.... all but gone

Man, offtopic but does anyone remember sending text messages through dos in, like, middle school? The ones that'd pop up in query boxes on another user's screen.

That was badass.

I remember we had a Java class where we would do nothing but send text messages to the projector. The ability to use dos was turned off when some dumbass sent FUCK 50x to every computer on the network.

I guess schools are made for torrenting/playing flash games/irc

Man, offtopic but does anyone remember sending text messages through dos in, like, middle school? The ones that'd pop up in query boxes on another user's screen.

That was badass.

I remember we had a Java class where we would do nothing but send text messages to the projector. The ability to use dos was turned off when some dumbass sent FUCK 50x to every computer on the network.

Oh, man. This reminds me of something. We were in programming class in highschool and we used the language Turing. Anyways a bunch of us got into the help file and starting playing with the more advanced commands. Eventually the kid that nobody liked got in on it and sent a message to the network which went to everyone's screen. The teacher like yelled at him for five minutes before saying "You're just lucky it was just this room." And just as he said it our network admin came into our room, pointed at him, and said "You!" Anyways the kid got suspended for three days for 'hacking' or something lollll

I guess schools are made for torrenting/playing flash games/irc

Fair enough at schools, but if I lived at college (and was paying for it) I wouldn't want anything blocked.

I guess schools are made for torrenting/playing flash games/irc

Of course high schools should have a certain mindset of internet regulation, but there is absolutely no reason for it in college.