The Pirate Bay’s visitor count has doubled since 2011 despite repeated attempts to block the website. Courts around the world and entertainment industries have pushed for Internet providers to block subscriber access. Meanwhile, about 9 percent of the site’s users connect to it through a proxy, showing that some people are willing to bypass court-ordered blockades. The numbers do not prove that blockades are ineffective, however, since the increased traffic could be from different countries.

“Denmark was one of the first countries to block The Pirate Bay, but the biggest impact came in 2012 when major ISPs in the UK and the Netherlands were ordered to deny their users access to the site,” explains TorrentFreak.

While the entertainment industry views these blockades as a successful method, numbers show that the number of unique visitors and pageviews has increased.

Whether or not this increased traffic comes from countries that do not have blockades in place is unclear. However, the number of people that visit the site through a proxy to work around the blockades does hint at a failure of the attempts to deter users.

“Interestingly, the United States is by far the biggest traffic source for the notorious torrent site,” notes the article. “This is somewhat ironic, as American record labels and movie studios are the driving force behind the blockades in other countries.”