14 DAY TRIAL // Users are now reporting that more British ISPs are blocking popular BitTorrent proxy sites with BT subscribers discovering that several proxies can't be accessed anymore, including the most popular.
Last week, Sky subscribers started complaining that the proxy sites they were using became inaccessible.
In fact, a long list of proxy sites, some dedicated to particular pirate sites, other merely indexing other proxies, were blocked in one fell swoop.
At the time, it wasn't clear whether other ISPs would follow though it seemed unlikely that Sky was acting out on its own accord. Now, it's clear that the block affects all ISPs.
With the UK authorities now taking down sites on demand, on the behalf of the entertainment industry, plenty of people found themselves cut off from their favorite file sharing sites. The Pirate Bay was the first big BitTorrent site to be blocked in the UK, but many others followed.
Luckily for the pirates, it didn't take long for reverse proxy sites to pop up and help people get back to the sites they used.
In effect, the court-ordered block didn't do much to curb piracy and didn't even do much to prevent people from accessing the sites targeted.
But, while the entertainment industry is slow to adapt to the web and the modern economy, it's been refusing to do so for a decade and a half now, it is quick to adapt in the fight against pirates.
So it didn't take long for proxy sites, the most popular at least, to find themselves added to the list of sites censored in the UK.
Proxy owners are adapting, most are already working on ways of bypassing the block, which seems automated and more expensive than previous ones. And, of course, no block could ever encompass all the pirate or proxy sites out there.