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The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has made its first arrest under the new ‘Operation Creative' initiative to fight piracy on behalf of the entertainment industry. A 20 year old man from Nottinghamshire has was arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement for hosting a proxy server, which allowed access to 36 sites that are blocked at the ISP level here in the UK.
FACT aided the police in this arrest after discovering evidence linking the man to the creation of the Immunicity proxy server, which has now been taken down and replaced with a Police warning notice.
Immunicity wasn't set up purely for piracy like many other proxy services, it is actually purposed as a censorship circumvention tool, which will unblock all sorts of things, not just access to torrent sites or pirated content.
As TorrentFreak points out, the police's actions in this instance are concerning as this proxy server merely anonymises network traffic in a similar way to VPN services and the TOR network. The service itself isn't hosting any copyrighted content or even linking to it, which means legally it should be in the clear.
However, in addition to Immunicity, several proxies actually related to piracy were taken down including Piratereverse.info and Kickassunblock.info. It seems that Immunicity may have just been caught in the crossfire.
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KitGuru Says: People use VPN's and proxy services for all sorts of reasons, many of which are security related. It's not all about piracy, which means we could be looking at a serious problem if the police continue to go after similar services that anonymise network traffic rather than those that are purely dedicated to hosting and linking to copyrighted material. What do you guys make of this? Did the police have the right to arrest this man and take down Immunicity?
Source: TorrentFreak
i don’t see how they can make this stick, as long as he did not have any links on his site to web sites containing copyright material i cant see what he has done wrong . its no different to any other site that hides your location like cyberghost / hidemyass etc. . it will be very interesting to see how this ends
even if he had links to copyrighted material i believe in the UK that is not illegal if it is user-submitted and he does not profit from it in any way such as ad revenue. This is outrageous, i personally host a proxy for one of my favourite streaming sites as I know I’m legally in the clear but this is giving me second thoughts….
Of course it’s giving you second thoughts, that’s what they morons are trying to do. If you’re hosting this sort of stuff, you shouldn’t be doing it for popularity then cowering away when the government starts making threats. You’re supposed to be doing it to oppose their shit, no matter what. This stuff is meant to be a risky game in the name of freedom, not “haha people will think I’m so cool if I host this”.
Keep hosting or you’ll be branded a coward by the rest of the internet.
This is disgusting, I hope Scotland leaves the UK so I can live there instead of the newly created United Nazi Kingdom. It’s getting just as bad as the US.
havent they got better things to spend the money on! im sure this is top of everyone’s list catching someone hosting a proxy server so other people can access stuff thats not a load of crap like the rest of the internet
So I think this is just a scare tactic like all of the examples of piracy over the years, such as the people who were fined $100,000 per mp3 they downloaded. Etc. I don’t think a lot will come of this personally.
It does make sense for them to block this as it blocks access to 36 other illegal sites.
Arresting proxies intended for a high spectrum of other uses as opposed to the actual source of pirated content? This is bullocks.
Hate to break it to you, but as shit as the U.S. is with its freedoms, the U.K. has been worse for some time. If it makes you feel better though, Obama is trying his damnedest to change that.
Actually Obama let the people decide what to do about the internet.
Don’t mind this guy notroot. He’s just one of those political retards who is obligated to hate/lie about everyone he disagrees with. Its the standard these days and its whats REALLY killing this country. Here is that letter btw:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/net-neutrality