14 DAY TRIAL // The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has managed to shut down proxy service Immunicity, as well as several torrent site proxies. All domain names that were affected by this now sport a banner warning about the police’s investigation.
The City of London Police has been working to take down online piracy by sending letters to many ISPs and sites, even when there were no court orders to back up the request. Now, the police targeted sites that offer access to pirated content, with Immunicity being one of its first targets because the proxy service provides people a way to circumvent censorship.
The move is a worrying one because Immunicity doesn’t specifically allow access to torrent sites, but to all types of sites that have been blocked off for one reason or another, just like any other anonymizing service, including TOR or VPNs, TorrentFreak reports.
It wasn’t just Immunicity that got taken down, but also Piratereverse.info, a Pirate Bay proxy, and Kickassunblock.infor and katunblock.com, two KickassTorrent proxies. The list continues with h334unblock.info and movie2kproxy.com and several more.
While the latter sites aren’t exactly a surprise since they are often included even by judges in various orders towards ISP, asking for them to be blocked, it is a big concern that proxy services are considered as running a criminal operation.
Once more, there has been no court order to back up the PIPCU’s investigation, but the police did ask the domain registrar to cooperate.
“The owners of the aforementioned domains are suspected to be involved in the criminal distribution of copyrighted material either directly or indirectly and are liable to prosecution under UK law for the following offences: Conspiracy to Defraud, Offences under the Fraud Act 2006, Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988. Should a conviction be brought for the above offences, UK courts may impose sentences of imprisonment and/or fines. PIPCU has criminal and civil powers in UK law to seize money, belongings and any property in connection with these offences,” reads a note sent out by the British police.
While it is unclear why Immunicity was targeted beyond the nature of the service it offers, it seems that the proxy sites were actually handed over by the owner voluntarily as further investigation pends.
Lately, there’s been an increased number of attempts to take down anonymizing tools, including the famous Tor network. VPN services and VPN tools are particularly hated by authorities and copyright holders.