Efforts by anti-piracy groups to make The Pirate Bay inaccessible have turned into a proxy war, quite literally. After the Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN managed to shutter several proxy sites, their Belgian colleagues at BAF are now attempting to do the same. The group has threatened to sue the owner of a proxy if his site stays online, but thus far the threat hasn't had the desired effect.

Last October the Antwerp Court of Appeal ordered two Belgian ISPs to block subscriber access to 11 domains connected to The Pirate Bay.

The local anti-piracy movement applauded the landmark verdict which opened the doors for further censorship attempts. However, this cheerful mood was short-lived.

Countering the court decision The Pirate Bay team registered a new domain name that was not covered by the ruling. This domain, depiraatbaai.be, quickly became one of the most-visited websites in Belgium. And that was not the only effort to circumvent the blockade, several Pirate Bay users also started their own proxy sites.

These sites are a thorn in the side of local anti-piracy group BAF, who this week took action against the newly launched thepiratebay.at. The group is demanding that the owner takes the site offline within five days or face legal action.

By threatening the proxy site owner with legal action BAF follows in the footsteps of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. This Hollywood funded group has already managed to shut down several proxy sites in the Netherlands, where a similar court ruling compels two ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay.

According to BAF’s director it was BREIN who prompted them to take action.

“This is the first time we have taken action against a proxy site”, BAF director Van Mechelen told Tweakers. “BREIN discovered the proxy and informed us after they found out that the site is owned by someone from Belgium.”

Whether BAF’s threats will be very effective remains to be seen as thepiratebay.at is still up and running.

And in the Netherlands BREIN is meeting some resistance as well.

Earlier this week the Dutch Pirate Party informed BREIN that they are not going to shut down their proxy site. The Pirate Party is especially irked by the fact that the anti-piracy group is using an ex parte decision against another proxy site, to force others to close shop as well.

“Unless someone calls them on their tactics, they will be allowed to continue those tactics indefinitely. Yielding does not make the problem go away. We would preferred to tackle this issue in parliament, where it belongs. However, if we have a chance to stop this ex-parte from being reused again and again, we ought to grab it,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak.

So instead of caving in the Pirate Party says it will meet BREIN in court. This case will define how far the proxy war against the Pirate Bay, and website censorship in general, can be stretched. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

Or are VPN providers next?