Operator of Torrent Proxies Arrested

British police have arrested the alleged operator of Immunicity and some torrent website proxies. The young man was first questioned at the police station, and then released on bail. The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit took offline the proxy service Immunicity, along with a number of reverse proxies offering access to blocked portals like TPB and KickassTorrents.

At first it looked like the domain seizures were the result of a police request sent to the domain registrar, which also happened earlier with other infringing domains. Nevertheless, in this case the situation turned out to be different. City of London Police announced that they actually arrested the alleged owner of the domain names. An individual, 20 years old, was interviewed at the police station. As a result, he agreed to voluntarily transfer the domains to the authorities.

Industry observers point out that it’s not the first arrest since the start of “Operation Creative” in 2013 – the first involved the alleged admin of sports streaming service named BoxingGuru. As usual, the UK police were assisted by Hollywood outfit FACT. The authorities say that the arrest in question was a prime example of a successful partnership between the copyright industry and the police.

Although the law enforcement referred to the arrest as a major success, none of those domains operated by the man were offering a file-sharing or unauthorized streaming service. They were merely proxies which allowed people to access TPB and other websites blocked per court order by some British ISPs. Many Internet service providers still routinely offer access to the very same websites on a daily basis.

In the meantime, FACT argues that those proxy websites and services are illegal, just like the banned portals themselves. Of course, after torrent trackers were shut down in the United Kingdom, Internet users have sought ways to continue to access them via bypassing the block set by the Internet service providers. Proxy servers are one of the methods to do so. FACT claimed that the “Operation Creative” is a major step in tackling companies providing such access.

However, it is unclear if this argument satisfies the court, if the case ever goes there. It is clear that unlike the blocked pirate websites, the proxies aren’t run for profit, but usually as a hobby.