Pirate Bay traffic has increased since US ‘six strikes’ anti-piracy scheme – report

The ‘six strikes’ Copyright Alert System that was introduced in the US earlier this year has failed to slow traffic to pirate sites. That’s according to TorrentFreak, which reports that infamous copyright infringing site The Pirate Bay, for example, has in fact seen an increase in traffic that amounts to more than double it received a year ago from US users since the introduction of the six strikes scheme in February.

Its second-highest ever number of monthly page views in March, just after the scheme was launched.

It should be noted that the traffic figures TorrentFreak has been given come from The Pirate Bay itself.

The Copyright Alert System is yet to release figures of how many users have been warned through the scheme.

Another pirate site, ExtraTorrent, reported that there had been no slowing in US traffic since the launched of the Copyright Alert System.

The Copyright Alert System goes through stages of informing users their connection is being used to share copyright infringing material and given legal alternatives, repeat infringers are given sterner warnings and face being temporarily disconnected from the internet.

A similar scheme in France with a ‘three strikes’ rule has been shown to have a more significant impact in the fight against online piracy, with figures showing a 29% decrease in visitors to P2P sites.

Source: Music Week