The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit have arrested a man for running a proxy server to circumvent site blocks.
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has arrested a 20-year-old man in Nottingham on suspicion of copyright infringement for running a proxy server providing access to other sites subject to legal blocking orders.
The man was questioned by police but has been released on bail. The arrest was made after police - with the support of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) - found evidence relating to the creation of a proxy server that provided access to 36 other websites that had been blocked for hosting illegal or infringing content.
The proxy server in question is Immunicity, run by the Torrenticity Group - as first highlighted by TorrentFreak - which was designed to unblock both torrent sites and proxies. It required users to make a simple change to their browser settings - adding a Proxy Auto Configuration file (PAC) - which could then instruct your browser to send your web traffic through different proxies depending on the URL you are looking for. This means that you could access sites that had been blocked by UK ISPs following High Court orders, such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, HEET, ExtraTorrent, YiFY and EZTV. This means that Immunicity and similar services fall foul of anti-circumvention provisions within UK copyright law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @04:25AM
Wouldn't it have made more sense to run this server from outside the UK? Maybe from a ship in the North Sea (pirate radio)?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @04:45AM
Maybe he wanted to go to court. Often, the only feasible way to kill a bad law is to challenge it in court. But you can't challenge a criminal statute unless you are charged because otherwise you have no 'standing.' For example, that is why Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus, it was not a spontaneous act of rebellion but a carefully coordinated legal strategy, they even picked her to do it because she was a total goody-two-shoes and so would be as sympathetic as possible in court.
At least that's the norm in the US and our justice system is from the same school as the UK's.
Or he could have just been an impulsive geek. I don't know, I didn't even RTFA!!!
(Score: 3) by mojo chan on Thursday August 07 2014, @07:23AM
If that's the case I'm glad someone is standing up to the anti-democratic, borderline criminal scumbags running the City of London Police. The organization itself is an affront to society and completely out of control.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Jaruzel on Thursday August 07 2014, @07:46AM
This is the UK Police, not the City of London Police. The UK Police Force have powers UK wide and that includes stuff like enforcing the anti-piracy laws - they also have quite a large anti cybercrime unit.
The City of London Police only have powers within the City of London[1] (not even the whole of London; that's the Metropolitan Police). However all local Police forces fall under the UK Police. Typically local Police forces are County based, So Kent Police, Yorkshire Police, Essex Police etc. It gets even more complicated if you factor in Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland, who do things completely different.
-Jar
[1] The bit in red on this map of Greater London: http://aqma.defra.gov.uk/images/aqma_maps/London.jpg [defra.gov.uk]
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Thursday August 07 2014, @08:03AM
Ok, my bad. I hadn't actually RTFA yet, so I was going on the opening words in the summary 'The UK Police'. However I forgot that PIPCU is run by the CoL Police. PIPCU has a UK wide mandate and was formed under request from the UK Government, it's just run by the CoL Police. I'm assuming CoL Police got the gig due to this sentence on Wikipedia:
"It will be funded by £2.5m over two years of public money via the Intellectual Property Office."
The IPO are also based in London (Although not in the City... odd).
-Jar
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Thursday August 07 2014, @03:01PM
What TFA says is irrelevant, given that there is no such thing as "The UK Police". The police only exist as separate regional police forces. They cooperate, but there's no national body in control, other than government.
I don't find it at all strange that the City of London police run the IP crime unit, as they are the specialists in economic crime. Just as if it were related to terrorism anywhere in the country the Met would certainly be involved.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday August 07 2014, @08:29AM
http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/advice-and-support/fraud-and-economic-crime/pipcu/Pages/default.aspx [police.uk]
It's like the Mafia, only government backed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SlimmPickens on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:18AM
This happened because those domains existed specifically to circumvent a court order. I don't believe for a moment that proxy servers have become illigal.
Now I'm all for leftie/holistic points of view and this is sureley cause for concern but let's call this what it is and not the sensationalist crap that wired made up (again).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Thursday August 07 2014, @09:31AM
The court orders in question were server directly to the ISPs doing the blocking. IANAL, is 3rd party circumvention of a court order illegal?
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:12PM
It's not circumvention if you were not told to block those sites in the first place. There are in fact a few ISPs who don't block them, simply because they were not named in the court order. It was only the big ones (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc.) who were targeted.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 07 2014, @07:33AM
...specifically set up to circumvent legally implemented* site blocks.
C'mon Soylent, you've been very slack with headlines lately.
*utterly stupid, but legally implemented
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @07:50AM
> C'mon Soylent, you've been very slack with headlines lately.
It isn't that soylent has been slack with headlines, it is that people have been overly literal. Like that rocks-for-brains guy who complained about the "Carbon Offsets Boondoggle" headline because he wasn't aware that "Offsets" was both a verb and a noun.
> ...specifically set up to circumvent legally implemented* site blocks.
You know that was implied. At least it was to me as someone who had not heard the story before but did have a general knowledge of what is and is not legal in the western world. It was obvious they had some issue with whatever it was that he was proxying.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 07 2014, @08:49AM
What does being aware have to do with it? I know it's both. That's why there was amibiguity.
No, I didn't know what was implied. How could I, if all I'd read, at first, was the headline?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday August 07 2014, @12:33PM
So, you are saying it's everybody's fault that you are to lazy to RTFA, or you want TFA to be presented in the title?
Or you just like being an obtuse jerk? What's your problem?
I've noticed this pattern with your posts, and I just can't quite figure out what you are trying to accomplish, because it does not seem that actual discussion is part of your agenda.
Anyone that has been paying attention to the news over the past few years already knew the gist of this story befor even reading the summary. TFA has to only provide the details, the rest you should be able to recall from MANY recent news reports about UK's domain blocking.
Pull your head out, wipe your eyes and ears, and quit being part of the problem. I'm fed up with all of you 'Entitled Ones' who want everything served up to your spec's BEFORE you even think to ask for it.
You consiously make a choice to not exert the effort to be informed, want everyone else to accomodate your laziness, and then take it out on the world when it blows up in your face.
Your attitude is exactly the one that has enabled the people in this country to be so uninformed to be able to vote intelligently.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 07 2014, @02:10PM
I'm saying there's a difference between "man arrested for running proxy server" and "man arrested for running proxy server specifically to circumvent privacy blocks" (not that I'd expect the headline to be worded in the latter way; "for running pirate proxy server" would have been concise and informative).
A news site shouldn't assume that. He could have been providing proxy services to other illegal material. Or maybe he was just providing a generic proxy, perhaps in an effort to aid people in a country more restrictive than his own, and fell foul of what one of his users did when the IP traced back to him.
All I'm suggesting is that a little bit more could be done to make headlines and summaries a little bit more accessible to more readers.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday August 07 2014, @02:32PM
I don't see it that way, so we probably will not agree.
That is enabling the laziness I alluded to, and I don't support that.
I feel no need to ammend anything I said earlier. Staying informed requires a choice to do so, and effort to do so.
If you prioritise things differently and make different choices, bully for you...but take responsibility for it, and don't expect the world to cater to your desires.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 07 2014, @02:52PM
The entire news industry enables laziness. I mean, if people really wanted to know what's going on on the other side of the world, they can get on a plane and find out for themselves. Mind you, planes enable laziness a bit, too. They should swim.
Why not combat laziness by ROT13ing all stories? That way we can be sure that only those people who really to know can find out what's going on in the world!
I didn't ask you to!
I don't see why such effort should be compounded by someone not taking a little more time on the provider's side to lend clarity to a submission.
I don't. I was just suggesting, in case in had escaped someone's attention when the story was prepared, that the headline was incomplete at beast, misleading at worst, and that the cost for clarifying it is not high.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @04:28PM
> What does being aware have to do with it? I know it's both. That's why there was amibiguity.
Oh shit! That was you!
LOL
Well at least you are consistent, like a broken record.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday August 07 2014, @07:53AM
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Thursday August 07 2014, @09:11AM
One of the bugs/features I raised on the SN GitHub was to allow longer headlines as some of the science ones with long words didn't fit in. Sort of a double edged sword as for short summaries like this, I can fit the whole summary in the headline and then not have anything left for the summery. I kept this summary as one line so the "circumvent site blocks" bit should be clear (assuming people read more than just the headline)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @09:25AM
The word "server" is completely redundant (what else would a proxy be, if not a server). "Running", while not really redundant, could IMHO also be safely removed. That would make sufficient space for "circumvention":
UK IP Police Unit Arrest Man for Circumvention Proxy
I don't know what exactly the headline limit is; maybe it would even have been sufficient for
UK IP Police Unit Arrest Man Running Circumvention Proxy
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @03:22PM
What else do you use a proxy for other than circumvention?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:14PM
Privacy. Testing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:19PM
Circumventing surveillance.
Circumventing the need to deploy your code directly and use it in production.
Captain Pedant, awaaaaaay!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 08 2014, @01:11PM
Filtering. Caching. Virus scanning. To just name a few.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Thursday August 07 2014, @12:39PM
Your headline and summary were just fine. You should not be held responsible for 'WonkeyMonkey' being to lazy to even read the summary, much less the article.
I knew from the headlines what had happened, the linked article fleshed out the details. That's how it has,should, and did work. No problem.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tomtomtom on Thursday August 07 2014, @09:27AM
This whole thing feels odd. Firstly, the sites the proxy presumably allows access to are only blocked by individual ISPs when a court order is obtained specifically against that ISP. Smaller ISPs have not been required to block those sites since the media groups didn't (couldn't be bothered to?) take them to court. If the ISPs themselves had implemented the proxy, or if the orders granted were made against all and sundry (like orders relating to eg media reporting of certain cases are), then there would perhaps have been a case for contempt of court.
Secondly, previous criminal cases against people who ACTUALLY RAN torrent indexing sites (tvlinks) effectively failed in the UK (case was dropped before going to court, presumably because the CPS thought they would lose or someone decided it wasn't in the public interest to try). A proxy is one step further removed from that - so on the first of those theories, which seems more likely, it seems like there is little prospect of a successful conviction for anything.
Given this history, I wouldn't be surprised if no charges follow and the arrest is designed to scare people off. Which is pretty unpleasant behaviour by the police, but then I expect nothing more in this country.
(Score: 1) by http on Friday August 08 2014, @05:08AM
Police actions MUST instill paranoia in the general population. If they aren't in the habit of being seen to make percieved lawbreaker's days worse, why would people obey laws?
Unpleasant behaviour by the police is essential to their work.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Friday August 08 2014, @11:41AM
Um... last I checked, that (deterrence) was one of the jobs of whatever penal system you have that kicks in after being found guilty in a trial. The police being a part of that system could be viewed as one sign of the country in question being a totalitarian or police state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 08 2014, @01:16PM
No, the police is there to find the lawbreakers. The justice system is there to punish them.
An effective police is a police that finds as many of the lawbreakers as possible. The only scare it should give the lawbreakers is the scare to be found. Everything else is the task of the courts the lawbreakers will face afterwards, and the prisons/jails they'll be put into if their lawbreaking is bad enough.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 07 2014, @03:15PM
We work on the premise that the summary is meant to summarise the supplied article or story, but the headline is not meant to summarise the summary but to give an idea of the subject matter at hand - we hope members of the community might read TFS but not, necessarily, the TFA.
I was not the editor for this story but I will say that the headline was accurate (a man has been arrested by the police for running a proxy server) and was sufficiently informative to let you know whether it was worth your while reading the rest of the summary or even the link that we had provided.
I do not consider that it is misleading or inflammatory. It what way did you feel that you were misled? Was there no arrest, was it not a man, was it not the UK police, was he not running a proxy server? Furthermore, what did you feel 'inflamed' to do - write to your MP, protest on a street corner or crack open a beer? Or were you only sufficiently inflamed to criticise the editor? Nevertheless, your views have been noted.
There is only so much space available in the title field, so we left out certain information that we had included in the summary.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday August 07 2014, @03:34PM
I just feel that it's the difference between "man arrested for driving car" and "man arrested for driving car over pedestrian."
As for being inflammatory, I did toy with putting "slightly inflammatory," but somewhat ironically did not have the space.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07 2014, @04:50PM
"you cannot call that "party line" phone number because on the other end some person is reading a book."
-
morally it was right to *blob* this server on the internet but it was stupid.
you cannot actually believe that people with no knowledge of technology can make sensible laws for such, thus this was sure to happen.
One might consider this as a kind of demonstration to get media coverage and drag the issue into te light but this could also backfire because you then might be coerced to work for the legal "bad guys", thus accomplishing nothing.
every failed digital warrior must be considered a "turn coat" now. "now" has 3-letters.