After the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN claimed victory against The Pirate Bay, Dutch Internet provider XS4All has spoiled the fun with a surprise announcement. The ISP claims that BitTorrent traffic increased after the Pirate Bay blockade was introduced, and adds that the entertainment industry's witch hunt is alienating consumers. "Build a legal version of the Pirate Bay," is their advice.

This week anti-Piracy group BREIN celebrated a victory against The Pirate Bay. Now 90% of the Dutch Internet users can no longer access the BitTorrent site directly, the site’s Alexa traffic rank in the Netherlands tanked.

The group conveniently forgot to mention that many people now use proxy sites to access the site, and didn’t mention the uptick that can be noticed at other BitTorrent sites. It was a win for Hollywood, they simply argued.

However, XS4All, one of the Dutch providers that was sued by BREIN, has now burst this bubble. According to the ISP there is no sign that their subscribers are changing their downloading habits, on the contrary.

“Since the Pirate Back blocking lawsuit began, BitTorrent traffic has not been reduced, it increased instead,” XS4All’s Niels Huijbregts states.

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. XS4all claims that all the news about the blockade may be one of the reasons for this increase.

“I think that the increase is a result of all the media attention for the lawsuit and the blockade. Perhaps people who until then had never downloaded thought ‘I hear so much about downloading music and movies, let me try it!’.”

“What I want to say to BREIN is this: your repressive policy does not work. You can block access to the Pirate Bay, but that clearly doesn’t result in the desired effect on the download behavior of the Dutch.”

Instead of demanding more blockades and censorship, XS4All advises the entertainment industry to focus their energy on the positive. In other words, give consumers what they want instead of beating them into submission.

“Put all that money and all that time and effort into something that has an effect. Invest in great new things. And do something about your image,” Huijbregts says.

“With your witchhunt you’ve declared war on the biggest film and music fans. The people who could be your biggest customers hate the entire entertainment industry because of all the lawsuits and lobbying activities,” he adds.

The ISP claims that the solution to piracy is not censorship, but innovation, and XS4All suggests that the entertainment industry should build their own version of The Pirate Bay.

“Build a legal version of the Pirate Bay, where everyone can find and download content. Because that’s what people want: access to everything, anytime, anywhere. That is the reality of the Internet, so that’s what people expect. And unfortunately there are hardly any legal models to meet that expectation,” Huijbregts concludes.

A Pirate Bay admin told TorrentFreak that the news about the traffic increase was to be expected.

“We are not the only torrent site around, and with their high-profile blocking lawsuits they introduced tens of thousands of new users to BitTorrent,” TorrentFreak was told. “With very few exceptions, all the content that can be found on The Pirate Bay is available on hundreds of other sites.”

Besides the Netherlands, The Pirate Bay is also being blocked by all of the major UK ISPs. Whether they have noticed a similar uptick in BitTorrent traffic recently remains the question, but it wouldn’t come as a surprise.