Blocking orders, proxies and VPNS: a reader asks

Blog reader Dan Scofield writes to ask the following question:

"With the recent order forcing ISPs to block Primewire.ag and other sites that provide hyperlinks to 'infringing hosting sites' what can be done, if anything, about the use of proxy websites and VPNs to bypass these blocking orders?

My 13 year old sister knows how to use proxy websites and I doubt it will be long before kids (even the most technically illiterate of them) figure out how to use these sites. They really aren't complicated to use and I don't know if the courts have the powers to block the use of proxy websites (given they have perfectly legitimate uses) in order to stop this practice. Therefore, it seems to me that the only thing the courts can do to stop this is to actually have the infringing sites taken down rather than blocking access to them -- a feat that will be incredibly hard when the hosts can easily kickstart a new server in some remote location.

I suppose the blocking order of the sites that facilitate copyright infringement is a victory for IP rights holders, but when one reaslises how easy it is to get around the block, it becomes a rather hollow victory. And, in this day and age, people will quickly learn of proxies/VPNs for this purpose and the block will rendered a futile attempt at putting a stop to copyright infringement".

Readers' thoughts are welcome, both on the legal issues and on the wider commercial issues on both sides of the equation.

Some The Pirate Bay users use VPNs… now there's a surprise!

Sailing the seas in an invisible boat
© Joriel Jimenez

Swedish legal researchers have published a paper entitled: "Law, norms, piracy and online anonymity: Practices of de-identification in the global file sharing community". The purpose of the study was to "understand more of online anonymity in the global file sharing community in the context of social norms and copyright law", meaning that the researchers have looked at who uses VPN or similar services in terms of their age, gender and geographical location as well as in relation to whether they file share or not.

 

The study was mainly conducted by way of a web-based survey and was conducted in collaboration with the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay which enabled the survey to be linked to the main logo of The Pirate Bay website. Within 72 hours the authors had received over 75,000 responses.

So what did the survey show? Overall, 17.8% of respondents used a VPN or similar service (free or paid). The paper says that "a core of high frequency uploaders is more inclined to use VPN or similar services than the average file sharer. Online anonymity practices in the file sharing community are depending on how legal and social norms correlate (more enforcement means more anonymity)."

Of course the people willing to participate in a survey on a site like The Pirate Bay are likely to be those who know that they are anonymous, i.e. those using VPN. Those who are not using VPN can be traced and so might be foolish to complete the survey, making the survey likely to be slightly skewed in favour of VPN users. That said, the general concept makes sense: use of VPN services correlates with increased illegal activity and with increased enforcement.

The paper says that: "This study adds to the knowledge of how the Internet is changing in terms of a polarization between stronger means of legally enforced identification and a growing awareness of how to be more untraceable." Meaning that we are in a cat and mouse situation because every step that rightsholders and/or legislators take to clamp down on file sharing only makes file sharers delve deeper into the technology available to them to hide what they are doing.

What can rightsholders do to trace filesharers who use VPN? The answer, at the moment, is not a lot. Using VPN is, in most countries, not illegal. This is an angle which most legislators appear to either have been unaware of or to have disregarded when drafting legislation presumably because there is no magic solution. I'd be interested to hear readers' thoughts on what steps law enforcers could take with regard to VPNs.