Dutch court closes down proxy
BREIN, a Dutch entertainment industry trade association, has obtained a court order forcing a proxy provider to close down on the grounds that the site facilitated access to a well known file-sharing website.
In January, the Court of the Hague ordered two of the Netherland’s largest broadband providers to block the Pirate Bay via both IP and DNS blocking. However, users were still able to access the site via a number of proxy servers, some created with the purpose of circumventing the blocking regime.
But last week BREIN obtained an injunction requiring the proxy site tpb.dehomies.nl to close down or face a fine of €1000 for every day the site remains online. The trade association immediately contacted the operators of a number of other proxy servers threatening similar legal action if they refuse to close down their services. At least four complied within a week.
So far it appears that all of the proxies affected were expressly designed to circumvent blocking, but in principle any proxy server outside of Dutch jurisdiction could be used to get around the Dutch blocking regime. Proxies are in widespread uses for a number of legitimate purposes, including caching, parental controls and scanning websites for malware.

