Following the recent shutdown of Immunicity and various other proxies, it appeared that these were the result of the UK police contacting the domain registrars. According to an updated story on TorrentFreak, the UK police have informed them that they have actually arrested the alleged owner of the domain names, who then agreed to voluntarily transfer the domains to the police. This is different to previous website take-downs where the police contacted the domain registrars.
The alleged owner of Immunicity and various other proxies arrested is a 20-year-old man from Nottingham and was questioned at a local police station. He has been released on bail, pending further investigation. This is the second arrest since "Operation Creative" went into effect last year, with the first arrest being the alleged admin of the streaming website BoxingGuru. The police were assisted by FACT, a Hollywood backed anti-piracy organisation.
According to the PIPCU chief inspector Andy Fyfe, this is a clear example of how the local law enforcement is working with the copyright industry to target every means of illegally making copyright material available and they will come down hard on those who commit it or deliberately facilitate such offences. Even though this arrest involves the running of proxies, the FACT Director Kieron Sharp claims that these proxy websites and services are just as illegal as the blocked websites themselves as they allow users to circumvent the blocking measures put in place by the ISPs.
According to TorrentFreak, these proxies were run as a hobby project and not for profit, unlike the blocked file sharing websites.
