Carnegie Mellon researchers have authored a study on how website blocks impact consumer behavior, and whether such actions can be used to reduce content piracy. The group’s findings indicate that website blocking does reduce overall piracy rates — but only if the blocks are comprehensive and target a large number of sites in a short period of time. This is the first study of its kind to rely on measurements of consumer behavior as opposed to aggregate market data, and as such, it should offer a more accurate window into how these bans and restrictions actually impact content consumption.

The team examined data from the UK, where website blocks and bans are common. In November 2011, the High Court ordered British Telecom and five other ISPs to begin blocking access to the Pirate Bay. Later, in 2012-2013, these same ISPs were ordered to block a total of 19 additional infringing websites that provided access to copyrighted video content. It’s not clear if all the sites were torrent search engines, or if the UK also blocked access to illegal streaming sites in these orders.

The purpose of the study was to attempt to answer how effective such bans are at lowering the number of people accessing infringing content. There have always been arguments for and against such actions, with copyright holders claiming that blocking popular websites had at least a moderate impact on total piracy. After the French adopted their anti-piracy “HADOPI” law, digital music sales increased by roughly 25%. The shutdown of MegaUpload was found to increase digital movie revenues by 6-8%. Other studies of consumer behavior and spending, however, found essentially no benefit. Torrent networks are designed to survive the death of any particular search engine — provided that the torrent is still well-seeded and available online, taking down a website like The Pirate Bay has little impact on the availability of the actual content.

Here’s what the researchers found, in aggregate: When the Pirate Bay was blocked, the total drop in piracy was effectively zero. As some have argued, the impacted users simply found other sites to use or, in a few cases, adopted VPNs. There was no mathematical increase to the total number of consumers using paid, legal streaming services as a result of the Pirate Bay going dark in the UK. Data suggests that traffic to other torrent sites increased markedly after TPB went down, which is precisely what you’d expect to happen.

When the 19 blocks are considered in aggregate, though, the consumer consumption patterns shifted. Unlike when TPB was blocked, visits to legal streaming websites did increase thereafter. VPN usage increased again, but the majority of users did not turn to VPNs to bypass the IP lockouts on various websites. The conversion rate to legal services from illegal copyright infringing ones varied depending on how often the end-user had been relying on now-blocked content in the first place.

The lightest users of the blocked sites converted to legal streaming services at a poor rate. If you visited blocked sites 1-2x a month, the conversion rate was just 2.2 to 4.4%. Midrange users, however, tended to convert in higher numbers, up to a maximum of 42.4% conversion rate for those visiting copyright infringing sites up to 24x a month. The exception was the heaviest group of infringers, who only converted over to legal consumption in 14.8% of cases. The more likely consumers were to visit an illegal site before the block, the more likely they were to turn to legal methods of content consumption after the block.

Conclusions

We can draw several tentative conclusions from this data. First, the only copyright enforcement actions that are likely to be effective are those that target multiple sites simultaneously, limiting the total number of alternatives users are aware of. Second, many people will convert to legal streaming from illegal services, though this undoubtedly depends on the quality and type of streaming service available in the host country. This last point shouldn’t be surprising — music piracy and the rise of Napster may have caused fits for the music industry, but the long-term success of digital downloads and the iTunes Music Store also illustrates that it’s perfectly possible to compete with free, provided you offer people a service that they want to buy.

As the battle over content royalties and media consumption shifts from digital downloads to a streaming model, questions of how to convert users to using that model are going to be front and center of the discussion. Netflix and Hulu have thrived in the new economy precisely because they offer US customers large amounts of content at excellent prices. In the grand scheme of things, making websites unavailable (as opposed to pursuing draconian judgments of jail time or enormous fines) is likely a far better policy for converting pirates to paying customers. No, you’ll never catch everyone that way — but once people have subscribed to well-liked services, they’re less likely to return to illicit methods, provided the content remains available and timely. Finally, the research team argues that their data does show evidence that piracy does displace use of legal alternatives, even when those alternatives are low-cost and readily available.