As one of the most notorious torrent sites, The Pirate Bay has been blocked by ISPs around the world.
As one of the most notorious torrent sites, The Pirate Bay has been blocked by ISPs around the world. The UK was one of the first countries to do so more than a decade ago when the High Court ordered local ISPs to prevent users from accessing the site.
These ISP blockades have ignited a cat-and-mouse game, with pirates actively looking for alternative routes to access the site. A popular option is ‘proxy’ sites, which allow access to The Pirate Bay through alternative URLs.
‘The Proxy Bay’ is a site that helps people to find these alternatives. The site doesn’t act as a proxy service directly but does provide an overview of available options elsewhere on the web.
The legality of the service is up for debate but in the UK, thepirateproxybay.com and similar sites have been added to court-sanctioned blocklists.
Police Alert GitHub
Backed by this knowledge, City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) reached out to GitHub a few days ago. On behalf of music group BPI, PIPCU sent a takedown request to the Microsoft-owned company, alerting it to the alleged criminal activity taking place on its domain.
As it turns out, one of the Proxy Bay sites used a GitHub subdomain at proxybay.github.com. According to the DMCA notice, this meant that GitHub could potentially be aiding criminal activity.
“This site is in breach of UK law, namely Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988, Offences under the Fraud Act 2006 and Conspiracy to Defraud,” PIPCU wrote.
In response to the DMCA notice, GitHub swiftly disabled the domain, which now returns a 404 error instead. In most cases, that would effectively end the matter, but the Proxy Bay operator isn’t giving up just yet.
Proxy Bay Files Counternotice
A few hours ago, the operator of the site sent a DMCA counternotice to GitHub, arguing that PIPCU’s takedown request is wrong because there isn’t any copyright infringing content hosted on the site.
“The person claiming DMCA doesn’t understand, that there is no content hosted on proxybay.github.com hence why it is wrong to send a DMCA request for it,” the site owner notes.
“This is why companies like [private] and other reputable Domains Registrators like [private] ignore those fake DMCA claims submitted by bots which are just automatic submissions triggered by keywords.”
The counternotice doesn’t refer to the police directly but uses the term ‘mister DMCA robot’ instead. The notice asks for further clarification on the claimed infringements and notes that the operator is happy to remove content if needed.
“There are no content/media of any kind hosted on proxybay.github.com, if there is – again ask mister DMCA robot to provide with exact links of media files which were infringed and I will be glad to remove them from repository.”
Reinstated?
The counternotice puts the ball back into PIPCU’s court. The police or the rightsholders they represent now have two weeks to file a lawsuit against The Proxy Bay operator. If that doesn’t happen, the DMCA prescribes that GitHub should restore the domain.
In the past, we have seen that counternotice can indeed be effective. Three years ago, Popcorn Time challenged a DMCA takedown request from the Motion Picture Association. And indeed, two weeks later, GitHub restored the repository.
Whatever the outcome, the counternotice clearly shows that The Proxy Bay isn’t giving up without a fight.
Update: The counternotice references proxybay.github.com, which doesn’t exist. The site was available through proxybay.github.io instead. This could mean that GitHub might not take any action at all.
