All around the world the copyright lobby is pushing for increased censorship of 'pirate' websites, The Pirate Bay in particular. Thus far this has resulted in court-ordered blockades in several countries including the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. However, in recent months evidence has started to stack up showing that these blocking efforts are futile. BitTorrent traffic is not decreasing and the blockades may actually be counterproductive.

The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet.

Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and more are expected to follow.

The idea behind these blockades is that they will help to decrease online piracy. However, more and more evidence is appearing that suggests that this aim is not being fulfilled. In fact, the blocking attempts may actually be having the opposite effect.

Last week, Dutch Internet provider XS4All revealed that after they started to enforce the Pirate Bay blockade, BitTorrent traffic went up instead of down. The ISP looked at the traffic on its network and found that over the past year traffic increased on ports that are commonly used for BitTorrent.

Today, two other major ISPs in the Netherlands – KPN and UPC – have made statements suggesting that censoring The Pirate Bay does little to stop BitTorrent traffic.

KPN saw no traffic decrease at all after the blockade was implemented. UPC initially observed a small decline in download traffic, but this went back to normal shortly after. While the data says little about the legality of the files being downloaded, it’s a clear indication that most BitTorrent users don’t quit their habit despite the apparent obstacles.

A third ISP, Ziggo, says it is keeping its download data confidential until their appeal against the blockade has been heard in court. However, the provider did point to earlier findings by researchers from the University of Amsterdam, which showed that the blockade has had no impact on the number of BitTorrent pirates.

In this study the researchers compared the number of Dutch participants in popular BitTorrent swarms, before and after The Pirate Bay was blocked, and found no difference.

The results are not really unexpected, as there are countless other ways to download the torrents available on The Pirate Bay. There are also countless other BitTorrent sites out there plus hundreds of proxy websites that allow blocked subscribers to access The Pirate Bay.

One of the most popular proxy websites for The Pirate Bay is operated by the UK Pirate Party. And according to Party leader Loz Kaye the censorship efforts are not only ineffective, but they are also engaging the public in the politics surrounding these issues.

“The Pirate Party’s website is now in the top 500 websites in the UK – above any other political party. If the aim was to change people’s behavior, the most noticeable change we have seen is an upsurge in interest in our kind of politics. I doubt this was the BPI’s intention,” Kaye writes in The Guardian today.

Considering the above, the entertainment industry might be better off pumping money into business models that give customers what they want, legally. The censorship route doesn’t seem to work out for now.