Free2Surf Proxy Blog

The Pirate Bay, arguably one of the most popular torrent sites on the web, has launched a new image hosting service: bayimg. There are tons of image hosting services out there, so what makes this one so special? Well, for one, it’s uncensored. In a time where censorship seems to be rampant, that’s a pretty important feature. They also have a 100MB file size limit, which is more than anyone should ever need for one image. In addition, they allow .rar and .zip archives. Read more about The Pirate Bay’s bayimg project here, or check the site out for yourself!

And yeah, the censorship is worse than you think.

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I don’t know how many of you have had a friend or loved one over in Iraq, but they definitely rely quit heavily on the internet in order to stay in touch with friends and family. I had a friend over there for a year, and MySpace was pretty much the only way I kept in touch with him. I know for a fact that the majority of soldiers stationed over there use MySpace (or a similiar social networking site) in order to stay in touch with people. So for those that are still stationed over there, this article is definitely bad news.

According to a memo that was sent on Friday by the US Forces Korea commander, the Defense Department will soon begin blocking access to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its networks. This is a major step, and will impact soldiers significantly - Possibly more than the Defense Department understands. Fortunately, members of the military can still access the sites on their own computers and networks, but Defense Department computers and networks are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sites affected by this ban are YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, and 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket. You can read the full article here.

I wonder how much trouble a member of the military would get into if they were caught using, say, a MySpace Unblocker site to access MySpace? Surely some soldiers are aware of proxy sites and how to use them… I hope that this move doesn’t affect our soldiers serving abroad too much, and that they are still able to stay connected to their family and friends.

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Censorship as defined by Wikipedia, is the systematic use of group power to broadly control freedom of speech and expression. While marked as a basic right in the US Constitution, freedom of speech is a luxury not everyone in the world is afforded. In some countries, speaking your mind, even online can land you in prison!
The Internet is a medium to promote information, and allow published knowledge to be available and easily accessed by the public. It was created as a non affiliated entity to provide information access to all, regardless of geographic or political boundaries! The best way to fight those who censor online content is to continue to make it available through as many and easily accessible means as possible.
Here are some good resources to help you start accessing the web the way it was meant to be:

• Reporters without borders posted this very detailed article on how to get around online based censorship using legal technical means. Very useful if you are in a country with censored web access.
• Brief article with links on how to break out of ‘corporate proxy jail’. (Although you should be warned that some of these methods may break or violate your company’s internet policy)
• An online list of publicly (and usually free) web based proxies. Although typically geared towards social networking sites, these can be used to access unfiltered content online anonymously.

Keep fighting the good fight to preserve online freedom!

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