Torrent is not valid bencoding: uTorrent users on proxy hit with ISP block

Internet piracy is seeing an ever higher knowledge barrier to entry

Christopher Hooton
Friday 27 March 2015 13:17 GMT
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The war between internet service providers and pirates seems to have gotten even more complex, with carriers blocking the unblocking methods that target its blocks.

Nearly all of the most popular torrent sites, including Kickass Torrents and Isohunt, are now banned by UK providers, but until recently these blocks could be fairly easily circumvented by proxies.

Scores of uTorrent users are now reporting being hit with 'Torrent is not valid bencoding' error messages however, which appear when they try and open a file in uTorrent or BitTorent.

It has been posited that ISPs are corrupting the torrents on purpose, as the proxy only works for access to sites in browsers, and won't cover the launching of the torrent.

There's always a fix on the internet however, and many torrent users will now switch over to a VPN, which will mask the torrent traffic too.

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