Just wanted to point out this only on BT's Mobile Broadband offering, not their home product.

It's understandable that providers might want to block access to torrent sites on mobile solutions - bandwidth tends to be more limited on them anyway and they're likely to be paying third-party carriers for access if you're not using a BT Openzone hotspot.

BT aren't likely to want torrent downloading hogging all of their hotspot bandwidth and they're certainly not going to want to pay Vodafone for 3G/GPRS coverage to download it. Add to that the extra hassle of potentially having to track down mobile users if asked to following a copyright infringement case and you can see why it's not worth the hassle.

There is a pretty good reason that network carriers lock down handsets. If they are absorbing fairly hefty subsidies on each piece of hardware sold then they need to have some reasonable certainty that they are going to see that money back. If that means locking their customers into using their services then of course they are going to do that.

It's not like you can't buy a non-subsidised, unlocked, SIM-free phone and just go to a carrier for a connection and do what you like with it. You pay your money and you take your choice.