LONDON: The list of piracy websites UK users are blocked from directly accessing was quietly expanded over the weekend. The new additions to the hall of shame aren’t technically sites in their own right, but the five major British ISPs — BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk, and EE — are barring customers from accessing them regardless.
Rather, they’re proxies and mirrors of sites already covered by existing bans, including notorious torrent sites ExtraTorrent and Torrentz. While that may seem to be a matter of cleaning house and making sure already blocked sites are in fact blocked, it marks the first time proxy sites have been specifically targeted.
The proxies — usually reverse proxies — hide the existence of an origin server. Put simply, alternate URLs ultimately lead to the same content but dodge the blocked domains. They don’t require much, if any, technical knowledge on the end user’s part, other than which particular web address to go to.
The new blocks fall under the same 2013 ruling that initially blocked the ‘core’ ExtraTorrent and Torrentz sites. The URLs now barred include torrentz-proxy.com, torrentsmirror.com, etproxy.com, extratorrentlive.com and extratorrentonline.com.
The similarity of the addresses once again highlights the problems copyright holder have in stemming the tide of illegal downloading — as soon as one site is dealt with, dozens more have appeared with the exact same content.
Recording industry association the BPI confirmed that the latest bans were an automatic extention of the previous rulings, telling TorrentFreak that “the High Court has declared that ExtraTorrent and Torrentz are operating unlawfully and infringing copyright. The Court Order which requires ISPs to block the sites also requires BPI to notify the ISPs of changes to the [proxy] sites.”
While bans of multiple piracy sources at once have been found to be effective in reducing download numbers, the back and forth between copyright holders and pirates seems no closer to ending. ExtraTorrent at least is already operating a new mirror site, which went live hours after the proxy ban came into effect.
