Last month, however, dozens of these went offline when the operator of Immunicity and other related proxy services was arrested by City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit. He now faces several charges including breaches of the Serious Crime Act 2007, Possession of Articles for Use in Fraud, Making or Supplying Articles for use in Frauds and money laundering.

While it’s generally accepted that running a site like The Pirate Bay is likely to attract police attention, merely unblocking a domain was not thought to carry any such risk. After all, visitors to torrent sites are just that, it’s only later on that they make a decision to infringe or not.

In our earlier article we discussed some of the possible reasons why the police might view “pirate” proxies to be illegal. However, there are very good arguments that general purpose proxies, even ones that are expressly setup to bypass filtering (and are able to unblock sites such as Pirate Bay), remain on a decent legal footing.

One such site is being operated by Gareth, a developer and networking guru who grew so tired of creeping Internet censorship he began lobbying UK MPs on the topic, later moving on to assist with the creation of the Open Rights Group’s Blocked.org.uk.

After campaigning and documenting Internet censorship issues for some time, Gareth first heard of last month’s proxy arrest during a visit to the United States.

“I was at DefCon in Las Vegas when the news of the Immunicity arrest reached me and I realized that for all my volunteer work, my open source applications, operation of Tor relays, donations and letters to MPs to highlight/combat the issues with Internet censorship, it was not enough,” the developer told TorrentFreak.

“I felt that this issue has moved from a political / technical issue to one about personal liberty and Internet freedom. e.g. first they came for the ‘pirate proxies’, then the Tor operators, then the ISPs that don’t censor their customers. The slippery slope is becoming a scary precipice.”

Since his return to the UK, Gareth has been busy creating his own independent anti-censorship tool. He’s researched in detail what happened to Immunicity, taken legal advice, and is now offering what he hopes is an entirely legal solution to website filtering and subsequent over-blocking (1)(2).

“Unlike Immunicity et al I’m not specifically building a ‘Pirate Proxy’. Granted people might use this proxy to navigate to torrent websites but were I to sell a laptop on eBay that same person may use it for the same reasons so I see no difference,” he explains.

“In fact Section 44, subsection 2 of the Serious Crimes Act 2007 even states [that an individual] is not to be taken to have intended to encourage or assist the commission of an offense merely because such encouragement or assistance was a foreseeable consequence of his act.”

The result of Gareth’s labor is the anti-censorship service Routing Packets is Not a Crime (RPINAC). People who used Immunicity in the past should feel at home, since RPINAC also utilizes the ability of popular browsers to use Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) files.

In the space of a couple of minutes and with no specialist knowledge, users can easily create their own PAC files covering any blocked site they like. Once configured, their browser will silently unblock them.

Furthermore, each PAC file has its own dedicated URL on RPINAC’s servers which users can revisit in order to add additional URLs for unblocking. PAC ‘unblock’ files can also be shared among like-minded people.

“When someone creates a PAC file they are redirected to a /view/ endpoint e.g. https://routingpacketsisnotacrime.uk/view/b718ce9b276bc2f10af90fe1d5b33c0d. This URL is not ephemeral, you can email it, tweet it (there is a tweet button on the left hand side of the site) etc and it will provide the recipient with the exact same view.

“It’ll show which URLs are specified to be proxied, which have been detected as blocked (using the https://blocked.org.uk database) and if the author passed along the password (assuming the PAC was password protected) they can add or remove URLs too,” Gareth explains.

“Each view page also has a comments section, this could allow for a small collection of individuals to co-ordinate with a smaller subset of password possessing moderators to create a crowd sourced PAC file in an autonomous fashion. There is also a ‘Clone’ button allowing anybody to create their own copy of the PAC file with their own name, description and password if the PAC file they’ve received isn’t quite what they need.”

This user-generated element of the process is important. While dedicated ‘pirate’ proxy sites specifically unblock sites already deemed illegal by the UK courts (and can be deemed to be facilitating their ‘crimes’), RPINAC leaves the decision of which sites to unblock completely down to the user. And since no High Court injunction forbids any user from accessing a blocked domain, both service and user remain on the right side of the law.

In terms of use, RPINAC is unobtrusive, has no popups, promotions or advertising, and will not ask for payment or donations, a further important legal point.

“To avoid any accusations of fraud and to avoid any tax implications RPINAC will never ask for donations,” the dev explains. “The current platform is pre-paid for at least a year, the domain for 10. At a bare minimum PAC file serving and education for creating local proxies will continue indefinitely.”

Finally, Gareth notes that without free and open source software his anti-censorship platform wouldn’t have been possible. So, in return, he has plans to release the source code for the project under the GPL 3.0 license.

RoutingPacketsIsNotACrime can be found here and is compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE. Additional information can be sourced here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“We are angered by the censorship that is happening in the UK and in other countries across the globe, so we got our thinking caps on and decided to do something about it,” Immunicity’s operator said.

The site’s core motivation came from the famous John Gilmore quote that was prominently placed on the site’s homepage. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” And that was exactly what the service offered.

Those who set up their browser to work with Immunicity would gain access to blocked sites, by running their traffic through its proxy server. In just a few clicks the service was able to unblock any censored site, hassle free.

For more than a year Immunicity helped tens of thousands of people to unblock censored websites, but that was brought to an end last week. Tipped off by copyright holders, City of London Police labeled Immunicity a criminal operation and arrested its 20-year old owner.

The idea behind the police action was to send a deterrent message and make it harder for the public to access blocked sites. However, it appears to have resulted in just the opposite.

Just days after the original Immunicity site was taken offline at least two clones have appeared. Both Immunicity.co.uk and Immun.es offer the same unblocking functionality, completely free of charge.

The two new services are a direct result of the Immunicity takedown, once again showing that censorship enforcement may lead to counterproductive results. TorrentFreak spoke with the operator of Immum.es who, considering recent events, has taken the necessary precautions to stay out of police sight.

“When purchasing the domain and server I made steps to protect myself from potential adversaries,” the operator says.

Immun.es uses a hosting service that allows proxies and has unmetered bandwidth, which should guarantee smooth sailing in the short run. The operator informs us that the backend is coded in node.js, which he may release as open source later.

The end result is that the actions of City of London Police have made matters worse, from their own perspective. Instead of one Immunicity, there are now two, and possible many more to come in the future.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Initially it appeared that the domain seizures were the result of a request PIPCU sent to the domain registrar, as happened previously with other ‘pirate’ domains. However, as more information came in this case turned out to be different.

City of London Police inform TorrentFreak that they actually arrested the alleged owner of the domain names. The 20-year-old man from Nottingham was interviewed at a local police station and later released on bail.

Pending further investigation he agreed to voluntarily transfer the domains to the police.

This is the second arrest since the start of “Operation Creative” last year – the first involved the alleged admin of sports streaming site BoxingGuru. As is often the case, the police were assisted by Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group FACT.

According to Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe, the arrest is a prime example of a successful partnership between the copyright industry and local law enforcement.

“This week’s operation highlights how PIPCU, working in partnership with the creative and advertising industries is targeting every aspect of how copyrighting material is illegally being made available to internet users,” Fyfe says.

“We will come down hard on people believed to be committing or deliberately facilitating such offences,” he adds.

While the arrest is being framed as a major success, none of the domains operated by the man were offering a file-sharing or illegal streaming service. They were merely proxies that allowed Internet users to access The Pirate Bay and other sites that were blocked per court order by some (not all) UK Internet providers. Many UK ISPs still routinely offer access to the very same sites on a daily basis.

Commenting on the arrest, FACT Director Kieron Sharp argues that these proxy sites and services are just as illegal as the blocked sites themselves.

“Internet users have sought ways to continue to access the sites by getting round the blocking put in place by the ISPs. One of the ways to do this is to use proxy servers. This operation is a major step in tackling those providing such services,” Sharp notes.

Whether this argument will hold up in court has yet to be seen. That is, if the case ever goes to court. Unlike the blocked pirate sites the proxies didn’t appear to be operating for profit, but as a hobby project instead.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This week prime minister David Cameron’s announcement that ISPs will be instructed to implement a ‘default on’ filtering scheme to deny access to porn and other yet-to-be-defined content has only added to the controversy.

Of course, it’s almost inevitable that when content is blocked there will be those who seek to unblock it. That’s been the case with the High Court-ordered blockades of various torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and, as reported this week, against popular TV torrent site EZTV.

But while dozens of proxy sites have appeared to offer workarounds, those too are slowly being added to the UK’s blocklist. If only there was a proxy service to unblock torrent sites and unblock the proxies too, people have cried.

Well now there is.

Called Immunicity, it’s from the people behind Torrenticity and it’s the first web-based tool to offer both a torrent site and torrent site proxy unblocking service.

“We are angered by the censorship that is happening in the UK and in other countries across the globe, so we got our thinking caps on and decided to do something about it,” Immunicity’s operators told TorrentFreak.

“We saw that there was a gap in the market for anti-censorship services. VPNs are great but they often require a subscription, Tor is great too but it’s very slow and getting it running just to browse a few torrent sites can be cumbersome. Immunicity is different because it is free and implemented in such a way that the end result is seamless access to previously blocked content.”

Immunicity currently unblocks a range of sites listed here. It can unblock censored websites over http and https, route censored sites over its own servers, and will work for users in any country, not just the UK. It’s free to use, there’s no software to install and registration is not required.

“All it needs is for the user to change one setting in their web browser, then when they next attempt to access a blocked site, it will be seamlessly routed via our proxy servers to get unblocked,” Immunicity’s operators explain.

Users of the service have to follow a specific set of instructions depending on the browser they’re using but it’s really simple. In Firefox, for example, users only have to click options, network, settings, click a checkbox, paste in a URL and click OK. To turn the service off again is even more straightforward.

Interestingly, while Immunicity unblocks torrent sites now, it will also unblock porn sites in the future.

“With Cameron’s upcoming porn ‘opt-in’ filter, we intend to include many of the web’s porn sites in our offering. The end result will be seamless access to pornography that would typically be blocked under his plans. When these sites are added, users will not have to update their configuration or do anything else, they can simply start browsing like they did before,” Immunicity explain.

“We are planning on having multiple configurations, ‘all’, ‘torrent sites’, and ‘pornography’, so users can decide which type of site they want to use with Immunicity. Changing will simply be a case of entering a different PAC file. Of course we’ll be adding more and more servers as and when we need to in order to handle all the traffic,” they conclude.

Update: The site’s operators also inform us that they do not log.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.