Avast thah, me hearties!

Google have a new auto-proxy service that speeds up unencrypted web pages by compressing them on Google's proxy servers between the website and your device.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2392284?p=data_saver_on&rd=1

This has an unintended but hilarious side effect. There's a bunch of websites that are blocked by UK ISPs for copyright issues. So if you go to, for instance, http://newalbumreleases.net/ you will normally be blocked by a Virgin Media/BT/TalkTalk warning message. But if you have Google's data saving Chrome extension installed it acts like a VPN and side steps the block.

Then there's https://thepiratebay.se/ They've sucessfully implemented an https:// scheme that also side steps the same UK ISP block.

For the moment, we're saved. But stand by to repel boarders!