Pirate Bay proxy gets shut down after music industry legal threat

A proxy service allowing access to banned piracy website The Pirate Bay has been shut down after legal threats from the music industry.

Minor political group the Pirate Party UK launched the proxy earlier this year ahead of a High Court order blocking The Pirate Bay site.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) threatened legal action if the proxy was not removed.

The group has now said such proceedings should no longer be necessary.

The High Court's ruling in April this year meant The Pirate Bay - which was formerly one of the UK's most visited websites - had to be blocked by all the country's major internet service providers.

However, the Pirate Party UK - which is not affiliated with the Pirate Bay - launched a special section of its website which allowed UK users to circumvent the ban and still get onto the site and download movies, music and other pirated material.

After launching the proxy, the Pirate Party website's popularity skyrocketed. According to monitoring service Alexa, prior to the proxy's launch the site was ranked 1,943 in the UK.

It then jumped to 147 - higher than the likes of Netflix, the Huffington Post and the NHS.

:story: BBC News