Banning The Pirate Bay didn’t lead to any increase in sales, a major study has found, but blocking a much bigger amount of its peers could.

The pioneering study goes against policy in the UK, where the High Court can order any site suspected of piracy to be blocked by internet service providers. The research, which is the first to look at people’s behaviour rather than market data, shows that there is no link between the Pirate Bay ban and making people buy films, music, TV shows and other content from shops – but the broader bans worked.

In 2011, The Pirate Bay was one of five sites to be placed on the High Court’s list, which forces internet service providers not to let their customers see the pages. Since then, the policy has been broadened out to many other sites.

Researchers found that blocking The Pirate Bay sent consumers to other piracy sites, to mirrors that had been set up to host the Pirate Bay at a differnet location, or virtual private networks (VPNs) that let people get round the block by routing the traffic through a different country.

But those that used other piracy sites — one or more of the 19 that were blocked in October and November 2013 — did tend to move towards legal channels.

Those that used the blocked sites most heavily increased their clicks on paid streaming sites like Netflix by 23.6 per cent, the study found. Even those that only used the sites lightly still clicked on legal sites 3.5 per cent more.

“Our results suggest that website blocking requires persistent blocking of a number of piracy sites in order to effectively migrate pirates to legal channels,” the researchers concluded.