Avatar broke various records at the box office, so it's not too surprising the title has been crowned as the most pirated movie in 2010. It's also worth noting that Avatar beat last year's record of total movie downloads in 12 months: Star Trek with 10,960,000 downloads.
Here is the top 10 list for this year, collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from thousands of BitTorrent trackers. All release formats, including cams, are counted. The data is then checked by hand for errors.
- Avatar: 16,580,000 downloads
- Kick-Ass: 11,400,000 downloads
- Inception: 9,720,000 downloads
- Shutter Island: 9,490,000 downloads
- Iron Man 2: 8,810,000 downloads
- Clash of the Titans: 8,040,000 downloads
- Green Zone: 7,730,000 downloads
- Sherlock Holmes: 7,160,000 downloads
- The Hurt Locker: 6,850,000 downloads
- Salt: 6,700,000 downloads
As always, there are a few notable absentees. The two best grossing movies at the box-office this year, Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland, did not make the list. Both are cartoon movies, which could mean pirates aren't as interested in them, and were in 3D, which would make them less appealing to pirate in the first place. On the other hand, Kick-Ass and Green Zone both made the list, but did not do as well at the box office.