It's as though they think that people won't be able to use a proxy, circumvent the Cleanfeed block, or simply use a search engine to find another torrent site.

Build Your Own Pirate Bay?

Proxying is a very simple concept.

• Alice is forbidden from speaking to Bob.
• Alice can speak to Eve.
• Eve can speak to Bob.
• Alice, therefore, can use Eve to communicate with Bob.

So, a user who wishes to access The Pirate Bay would have to do something quite complex to use a proxy? No, this is all there is to it:

SELECT * FROM html
WHERE url="https://thepiratebay.se/search/ubuntu/0/7/0"
AND xpath='//tr'

This uses YQL and xpath to extract all the information from a Pirate Bay search (in this case, for Ubuntu - which is legally distributed through Bit Torrent).

Simply, this asks Yahoo (an American site) to contact The Pirate Bay (a Swedish site) to deliver information to a user in Britain.

You can play with the results yourself in the Yahoo Console.

This returns a JSON string which can then be easily parsed (e.g. using jQuery). Simple.

Aha! But What About Downloading A Torrent?

In the olden days (well, last year) there was a fly in the ointment. You had to download a .torrent file from the website. That meant that you needed a way to connect to, in this case, The Pirate Bay or find a proxy which was willing to transfer files.

Nowadays, people use the magnet protocol. Here's what a magnet link looks like:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:fa692da0488aee23e5eb605a87be934ad7cec106

Short enough to fit into a text message and, handily, can be embedded in an HTML document with no need to download an extra file. Paste those 60 characters into your torrent client, and it will connect to the cloud and start downloading the file you requested.

So, a single web request to Yahoo and a line of JavaScript code is all it takes to circumvent this blockade.

Next Move

So, do the UK courts need to order ISPs to block Yahoo as well? Or play whack-a-mole with all the new torrent sites springing up? Let's not forget, in 2004 the huge Bit Torrent search engine Suprnova was sued out of existence. Just like with the Hyrda, a decapitation lead to multiple sites springing up.

Piracy is a problem of convenience. A pirated copy is

• Faster to download.
• Quicker to watch (no unskipable trailers).
• More convenient to transfer to different devices.
• Global availability (no artificial regional restrictions).
• Immense back-catalogue (Star Wars, for example).
• Cheaper.

The only downsides are that they are often of dubious legality, and occasionally of poor quality.

The entertainment industries have to compete on all these points. I'll admit, that they will almost certainly not be able to compete with "free" - although monthly unlimited subscriptions come close.

The rest are problems of their own making. I described how I downloaded The Phantom Menace back in 1999. 13 long years later and the movie industry still isn't even close to where it needs to be.

Amazon have done pretty well from selling raw MP3s - a simple web interface, pay a small bit of money, instant high-quality download which is DRM free. Where's the equivalent for films? Or for TV? Or radio?

The pernicious restrictions around geography also must end. I want to watch Veep just as much as the Americans do. Why do I have to wait even an hour, let alone a week?

Finally, Star Wars still isn't available to (legally) download. If I have a hankering for Jar Jar Binks at 3AM, I have to order a DVD and wait while it is physically transported from a warehouse. That's such a 19th Century way of thinking that it hurts my brain.

Get all that right and maybe - just maybe - the "piracy problem" will solve itself.

Of course, alternatively, it may be too late. For 13 years people have been used to downloading without paying. That's a long period of learned behaviour. How content providers can convince people to change the habit of a lifetime is beyond my knowledge.

Ten years ago, I posted on usenet that I'd watched a bootleg of The Phantom Menace. I discovered the post recently and it got me thinking about how little progress has been made in the digital download arena.

The actual resolution of the bootleg

Picture the scene, it's my first year at university and, like any good geek, I am obsessed with Star Wars - Episode I.  So much so that I help run a fan site, ThePhantomMenace.co.uk.  The guys on my corridor are similarly hungry for Star Wars.  We all grew up with it and we all love it.  Yoda's benevolent gaze eases us through our homesickness.

With Yoda watching over us, we can't possibly fail our exams!

George Lucas is a visionary when it comes to what we now call social media. Huge, detailed websites chronicle every development in the world of Star Wars. Behind the scenes movies, proto-blog posts, forums and chat rooms all blossom around this incredible social object.

Then, at the last minute, it all goes wrong. The release date for the movie is set to 19 May 1999. For the USA.  or those of us stuck in the UK - where the movie was filmed - we have to wait 2 months.

How I felt

I can't accurately describe the sense of betrayal that many of us felt. Not only were we going to have a needless wait - we were excluded from our new-found social life.

We couldn't frequent any of our favourite haunts lest an American blurted out a spoiler. Going online at all was going to be perilous - a casual glance at the wrong website could accidentally reveal something as momentous as Luke's parentage.

A few days after the première, I was ranting about this imposition when I received and anonymous email.

"Heard you couldn't see the movie. Click here. "

I clicked. It was in the innocent days before 419 scams and rampant malware.  This is what greeted me:

TPM1.mpg - 650MB

TPM2.mpg - 650MB

It took over 24 hours to download. The whole corridor kept a vigil, counting every bit as it matured into a byte. We ran out of disk space at one point and had to delete all sorts of important coursework. I missed lectures. I didn't care.

With popcorn, beer and inflatable sofas we gathered in the room with the biggest monitor - 17 inches.

The Most Profound Cinematic Experience Of My Life.

Much has been written about the merits - or lack thereof - of The Phantom Menace. But for me it was the culmination of 18 years of waiting. The grainy picture & tinny sound didn't diminish my enjoyment. I was with my friends and we were watching the movie months before anyone else in the country.  It redefined my relationship with cinema and content consumption.

The next year, Napster exploded in popularity. Those of us on blazingly fast University connections were already downloading TV shows and movies using the humble Windows File Sharing utility.

Since that day, ten years ago, I've paid to see The Phantom Menace - once on VHS, once on DVD, a few times in the cinemas. I've bought the books, the t-shirts and the video games.  I know it doesn't excuse the fact that I downloaded an illicit copy, but it is the perfect example of supply and demand being coupled with the disruptive power of the Internet.  Once my demand could be satisfied with "official" source, that's where my money went.

We've moved a long was since then. We can now download perfect quality copies of movies which play on any of our devices. High definition, surround sound, DVD extras downloading in less time than it takes to view them.  The movie industry writhes in pain, wondering where this viscous assault on their livelihood came from.  They missed the boat ten years ago. They try - but I still can't legally download The Phantom Menace. The movie downloading "problem" is caused by demand far outstripping supply - this is not a threat; it's an opportunity!

We're living in a fantastic multi-media landscape of limitless possibilities.  Can someone please tell the movie studios?