The Pirate Bay’s traffic increases by 12 million following UK ban

This probably isn’t what the British Phonographic Industry hoped to achieve. The Pirate Bay’s traffic has increased by 12 million following a high court ruling that the site should be blocked by six major UK ISPs. “We should write a thank you letter to the BPI,” a Pirate Bay insider told torrent news website TorrentFreak.
On Wednesday, Virgin Media’s four million UK customers became the first to be denied access the infamous file-sharing site. Users trying to access the site were greeted with a message saying “Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to this site in order to help protect against copyright infringement”.

The internet is awash with workarounds to circumvent the ban, but according to TorrentFreak the ruling works at a high level, preventing access to The Pirate Bay’s IP address. There are even more workarounds to get past this, but it’s uncertain how long they will last before the’re pulled by the courts.
In not-unrelated news, today is International Day Against DRM, according to boingboing. Aggressive digital rights management policies have long affected gamers, but the growing rise in ebook readers such as the Kindle sees them affect readers, too. There are events happening around the world, such as this one in Manchester:
“We are meeting at Madlab at 7pm *sharp* (so don’t be late) on Friday, May 4th, 2012. We will have a brief overview of DRM and then we will go out around Manchester campaigning until about 9pm. Then to the pub for discussion.”