Instead they decided to target ISPs, companies that are responsive to legal threats in most corners of the world. In time, court orders rendered The Pirate Bay and similar sites blocked, but not for long. Proxy sites enabling access to the world’s largest torrent indexes soon began to thrive, but their time would also come.

The biggest proxy battle anywhere on the planet is taking place in the UK, a country where it’s become almost a formality to have sites blocked at the ISP level. Today we can report that yet another silent round of blockades are being put in place.

One of the main targets is PirateProxy, an extremely popular proxy service that’s particularly well known in the UK. The site was previously accessible at PirateProxy.net but moved to a new domain earlier in the year after its domain was blocked.

The site switched to PirateProxy.in during April and successfully maintained its traffic. As can be seen from the Alexa chart below, PirateProxy is the 125th most popular domain in the entire country, an impressive feat for a site that offers nothing but a Pirate Bay block workaround.

Notable too is the site’s placing in Ireland, where The Pirate Bay is also blocked by ISPs. As of this morning PirateProxy was the country’s 131st most-popular domain.

However, visitors to the site through the major UK ISPs are now beginning to see the familiar “domain blocked” message. The example from Virgin Media, which confirms the existence of a court order, is shown below.

Also under attack are the various proxy services available through Come.in, a portal which facilitates access to a wide range of torrent and other similar sites blocked by numerous European ISPs.

In addition to sundry others, at the moment the site’s PirateBay, KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, YTS/YIFY, TorrentReactor, BitSnoop and 1337x proxies are being subjected to UK blockades.

This is the second time this year that multiple Come.in proxies have been targeted by rightsholders. Back in June its EZTV and YTS proxies were blocked in the UK but were re-established by the site’s operators who vowed to keep putting up new services to maintain service.

While blocking proxies continues to be a key weapon of choice, proxies with UK-based operators have greater concerns. As reported in August, City of London police’s PIPCU unit arrested the operator of Immunicity and several other proxies.

According to a police response to a Freedom of Information request obtained by TorrentFreak, he now stands accused of a wide range of crimes 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 plenty of proxies still exist (including several which rotate at the bottom of The Pirate Bay homepage under ‘proxy’), others aren’t doing so well.

Visitors to sites including TorrentProxies, Torrenticity, FenopyReverse, FirstRowProxy, GetPirate, H33tUnblock, KatProxy, LivePirate, Metricity, ProxyCentral, KickassUnblock and YifyProxy are greeted with a message from PIPCU that the domains are under police investigation.

Finally, and despite efforts by the BBC to have all VPN users labeled as pirates, use of such services to evade blockades and enable geo-unblocking continues.

The BPI, PirateProxy and Come.in were not immediately available for comments but we’ll update this report when they arrive.

Update: The operator of PirateProxy informs us that a new domain is up and operational at PirateProxy.bz

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

The initial action, against Ziggo, the Netherlands’ largest ISP, soon encompassed another. XS4ALL decided the case was too important to stay out of and joined its rival to fight against BREIN. The case took many twists and turns, with victory first for the ISPs, then for BREIN. Refusing to give in, the ISPs fought back and in January The Court of The Hague delivered a huge blow.

That ruling, which deemed that ISPs did not have to block their subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, threw BREIN’s whole strategy into turmoil. With no ruling against Ziggo and XS4ALL, BREIN would be unable to get any kind of victory against KPN, UPC and Tele2, the other ISPs the anti-piracy group had unfinished legal business with.

Things soon started to unravel. Within days UPC said it had lifted its Pirate Bay blockade and KPN and Tele2 quickly followed. Agreement with BREIN had been reached in private, with most other details unavailable.

Now, in a fresh announcement, it’s clear that BREIN will back away from all legal action against ISPs pending the Supreme Court ruling it seeks against Ziggo and XS4ALL.

“BREIN has laid the case against the other providers to rest in anticipation of the outcome at the Supreme Court,” said BREIN lawyer Joris van Manen. “The ISPs have a golden rule that they will only block under judicial coercion. BREIN, however, is reasonable.”

While the ISPs will be breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of around 18 months respite from legal action, they aren’t the only ones in the clear. BREIN says that it will also end hostilities against Pirate Bay proxies. These services, including Kuiken.co and one operated by the Pirate Party, worked hard to circumvent the now-defunct ISP blockades but were attacked for their actions.

“We’re not Don Quixote,” van Manen told Webwereld. “If there is no blockage of the Pirate Bay any more then a proxy makes little sense, and also any lawsuit against one.”

The fact that BREIN feels it has no legal basis to force proxies into compliance is very interesting. Earlier this week the anti-piracy group said it had killed in excess of 200 such sites in 2013.

Whether any will now return to their former glory remains to be seen but given that their services aren’t just of use to Dutch citizens (proxies are also very useful to Internet users in the UK) some are likely to restart their engines to operate legally from the Netherlands – at least until the Supreme Court ruling, that is.

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