The most recent dispute between The Pirate Bay and a Finnish anti-piracy group appears to be over. CIAPC, known locally as TTVK, lifted the code of The Pirate Bay's home page in order to promote their own anti-piracy message but were called out over their double standards. Now, in an unusual move the anti-piracy group has withdrawn the campaign, even though they say it was extremely successful. Attention has now shifted to claims by TTVK that they achieved an 81% reduction in The Pirate Bay's traffic.

Last month, Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC, known internationally for tracking down a 9 year-old girl and having her Winnie The Pooh laptop confiscated, launched a new publicity campaign.

Their efforts caused immediate controversy when it was discovered that the campaign site, which depicted a Pirate Bay-style ship sinking into the sea, had been constructed with components ripped from The Pirate Bay itself. To use a turn of phrase preferred by the copyright industries, it was a product of “stolen” content.

This apparent double standard caused headlines around the world which only intensified after The Pirate Bay mockingly threatened to sue, CIAPC said bring it on, and the whole thing ended up in police threats.

A couple of months on and the entertainment industry anti-piracy group have just revealed how pleased they are with the results of their efforts.

“The publicity campaign exceeded CIAPC’s expectations. In less than two months we have received visits from an average of 5,000 people a day, a total of more than 200,000 unique visitors,” CIAPC reveal.

But interestingly and despite its reported success, CIAPC say they have taken the decision to terminate the campaign and replace it with another. The image below shows their new effort.

CIAPC say their ‘movie poster’ is designed to sum up the past few months of news – illegal pirate sites profiting from advertising revenue and running away more often due to mounting problems – although the picture seems to depict a laptop with the screen broken away.

Nevertheless, The Pirate Bay has indeed had more problems than most. The site, its former owners, affiliated connectivity providers and ISPs providing user access to the torrent site have lost countless court battles in recent years. It’s been one disappointment after another.

But while none of these setbacks can be denied, it is also evident that The Pirate Bay is operating in a new mode and mindset, where court battles, endless paperwork and propaganda campaigns against them do little to change the position on the ground. The site is up, running and doing the same work as it always has done.

So the arguments continue, largely around whether the efforts against the world’s most famous torrent site are damaging to the extent the anti-piracy groups claim.

CIAPC say that following their successful legal action to have the site blocked by local ISPs Elisa, TeliaSonera and DNA, between January 2012 and January 2013 visitors to The Pirate Bay from Finland were reduced by a massive 81%.

This figure is an interesting one. The three ISPs now blocking TPB have a market share of around 80%, so on face value CIAPC are sort of telling the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.

TorrentFreak spoke to The Pirate Bay who told us that direct traffic to the site from Finland did indeed drop significantly. CIAPC, however, are deliberately missing out other problematic factors. The Pirate Bay spokesman told us that many Finns have probably switched to using proxy sites.

So how many might that be? Precise figures are unavailable, but the graph below shows the times during last year when Finnish Google users became most interested in the search term “pirate bay proxy”. It will come as no surprise that Elisa implemented their block in January and the other ISPs began blocking mid year.

These are just searches though, so how many are successful in getting through?

According to stats from Alexa, ThePirateBay.se is the 111th most popular domain in Finland. To compare, Vimeo is 109th, YouPorn is 144th, Torrentz is 146th and isoHunt 169th, none of which are blocked.

There can be little doubt that Finns are getting through in large numbers. If they aren’t and 80% of the problem really has been removed, surely we can expect The Pirate Bay to fall out of the headlines as a significant problem for the entertainment companies in Finland.

Yeah, kun lehmät lentävät….