Torrent site proxies shut down as battle intensifies against online piracy

The Pirate Bay graffiti in Makarska, Croatia.Wikimedia Commons/Flickr/Jakov Vilović

The fight against online piracy is getting stronger as thousands of torrent and proxy sites have been shut down mysteriously.

Popular banned sites like The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents never fail to gain supporters and as a result, proxy sites have been created to allow people to access them. These proxy sites duplicate the bigger and popular torrent sites under a new domain name, giving users a new access to pirated content.

However, many of these sites have also been blocked most likely due to copyright issues, as discovered by Torrent Freak, considering their existence still breaks the law.

The outlet reported that the proxy sites have been removed with some of them offered for sale. There is a huge list of these sites, and it includes piratelist.net, yify.me, piratebay.onl, and kickasstorrents.nu, among many others.

Torrent Freak dug deeper into the case and discovered that many of the blocked sites are in connection with sites that control proxy sites, ProxyHouse and ProxyAds.

It wasn't revealed why the sites were blocked, but it is most probably due to legal actions carried out by the music and movie industry — two favorite subjects of content piracy.

Shutting down the proxy sites may have put off several of those that are scattered in the online world, but thousands of them are still operational. It is still a never-ending game of chase involving those responsible for the torrent sites, the proxy sites, consumers, and the law.

Many countries, including Austria and Indonesia, are now active in the fight against piracy.

Shutting down one site, apparently, gives birth to another and to get around that problem. Some countries, such as those aforementioned, have decided to let Internet service providers (ISPs) step in and block users from accessing those sites.

As previously reported, more countries are starting to consider ordering ISPs to block access to torrent sites.