Pirate Bay proxy operator visited by police

By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 11 June 2013

The operator of a Pirate Bay proxy site has been visited by police, according to TorrentFreak, and ordered to shut down the service or face criminal action.

Pirate Bay proxies help web-users circumvent the blockades put in place by the internet service providers to stop people from accessing the controversial file-sharing website. As previously reported, the UK ISPs have been operating such blocks since being ordered to do so by the English courts after action was taken by record label trade body the BPI. At one point political group The Pirate Party operated a proxy, but chose to remove it after the BPI threatened legal action.

The operator of the PirateSniper proxy has told TorrentFreak that he was visited at his home by the police and reps of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. The FACT men did most of the talking, and said that unless he shut down his TPB proxy he could face criminal charges that could result in a jail sentence.

The legalities of running a Pirate Bay proxy are something of a grey area, as the injunctions ordering the original web-blocks are specifically targeted at the ISPs not the proxy operators, and said operators are two steps removed from the primary copyright infringement (in that they provide access to the website that provides access to the link that is then used by the infringer).

Though there would still be a case for contributory or, in English law, authorising infringement against the proxy runner, and if the rights owners could secure an injunction ordering the proxy be shutdown, and the operator ignored that injunction, then there would be a more tangible legal wrong.

In the meantime, the operator of PirateSniper – which he insists isn’t a massively utilised proxy – says he is taking legal advice, but will keep the proxy online for the time being because “we have to show companies that we will not get bullied into doing their bidding – censorship is like a cancer, we must kill it before it spreads”.