Saturday
Dec262009
Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 1:13PM The Top Ten Pirated Films of 2009
The most illegally downloaded film of the year was Star Trek, according to TorrentFreak (and reported by TrekMovie). The film was downloaded 11 million times, while Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was pirated 10.6 million times. Wolverine, which was leaked online well in advance of its release in May, was number nine on the list. Recently, an arrest was made in that case.
2 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
3 - RocknRolla
4 - The Hangover
5 - Twilight
6 - District 9
7 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
8 - State of Play
9 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
10- Knowing At first, Rocknrolla might seem like an unexpected entry, but the film was only in 800 US theaters at its peak. Given the Guy Ritchie-Gerard Butler connection and the fact that Warner Bros. doinked the release altogether, it begins to become a little clearer. It's still a very high ranking, but there's at least some logic to it. All told, the top ten films accounted for over 75 million swipes. Paramount wrote a report to the FCC about the problem of piracy, which you can read in full here. But the illegal downloads only constitute a percentage of online viewing, which has seen an increase in video streaming over the past couple of years.
2 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
3 - RocknRolla
4 - The Hangover
5 - Twilight
6 - District 9
7 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
8 - State of Play
9 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
10- Knowing At first, Rocknrolla might seem like an unexpected entry, but the film was only in 800 US theaters at its peak. Given the Guy Ritchie-Gerard Butler connection and the fact that Warner Bros. doinked the release altogether, it begins to become a little clearer. It's still a very high ranking, but there's at least some logic to it. All told, the top ten films accounted for over 75 million swipes. Paramount wrote a report to the FCC about the problem of piracy, which you can read in full here. But the illegal downloads only constitute a percentage of online viewing, which has seen an increase in video streaming over the past couple of years.
"By the end of August, Paramount Pictures counted over 5 million worldwide unique IP addresses downloading a copy of Star Trek using forensic technology provided by Bay TSP. By comparison, approximately 35 million people attended the film in theaters. As staggering as these piracy numbers may seem, they tell only part of the story. Illicit digital film downloads, which can take an entire day to complete on a P2P network, are now complemented by streaming video versions available almost instantaneously, and the Bay TSP calculations do not include video streams. Streaming video is particular appealing to consumers, as hulu.com and youtube.com have learned, and that appeal has been exploited by sophisticated criminal syndicates now operating professional-quality but illegal websites."We should not expect that number to go down, and as a result, we should not expect ticket prices to do anything but increase. And so the cycle will continue...
Reader Comments (8)
No wonder nobody really saw RocknRolla.....
I did & do think it's pretty underrated for its specific genre, & the soundtrack/score was awesome...
If geeks don't stop pirating shit, it's going to stop getting made. It could probably be argued that so many Jane Austin movies get made because at least their damn audience hands over cash money to watch them!
Illegal downloads are just plain wrong. It upsets the econoic laws that make it possible for people to create products in the first place.
I especially feel for Guy Richie, who's never had a massive commercial hit. I actually enjoyed Rocknrolla a great deal and feel that he deserved an audience for it. To see that his success was stolen from him by illegal downloading is rather sad.
Most of the other films on the list were, with a few exceptions, bloated crap, tailor made for young adolescent audiences. There could be a lesson in there. Make better movies for grown-ups and people might actually pay to see them,
The PDF attached to this story shows, at least from Paramount's point of view, how illegal downloading has gone - I believe this is the term - "from geek to chic," meaning it's not longer just something your IT guy knows how to do. It is wrong, indefensible, in fact, and I can't believe I know movie fans, really big fans, who engage in this sort of activity. Smart people can be idiots, too, I guess.
It simply doesn't matter if Hollywood continues to make billions of dollars a year. This is the same thing as walking out of a restaurant without paying or filling up your gas tank and driving off before you go inside to pay. It is exactly what it sounds like: Theft.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Still the films on the top ten seem to indicate that it is not the 30-plus crowd that is downloading. Most people in their 30's or 40's would be prepared to pay for their own consumption of movies.
It seems that it's the around-20s that download the most. That is no doubt a challenge for the industry as that used to be the prime target group. (That's also the reason why so many film are stupid.)
Star Trek and Transformers were engineered for 17 year-olds but it seems that they don't want to pay for their movies
Maybe the studios should engineer more movies for the paying audience, the 30-plussers who have jobs and pay their way?
But would people go see these films if they HAD to pay for them?
If you can watch them for free... why not? The doors open go inside and see what its like.
Or they can wait for an age and rent them (who rents DVD's anyway!) if they watch them online, maybe they are more likely to buy merch, go see it for real on the big screen or buy the DVD (even if its a gift for someone else?)
Im not saying downloading/streaming films is good.... but its got it's pros as well as it's cons
Well, I rent DVDs or rather BluRay discs if I'm not certain I want t buy a movie.
I've never downloaded a movie in my life (yes, I know how to and I have good broadband, but it is illegal and wrong).
It is easy to steal or commit murder too, but I guess you mean that you are less likely to get caught downloading movies?
I have worked in a couple tech support call centers in my time and that environment breeds content sharers. The part that the studios miss out on, much like RIAA, is that to many, this is a means to preview. I knew hundreds of people that would download movies and music, and most (not all) would also pay to view the same material when it came out. Almost any of the 'new' stuff available for download is rough, or shot with a camcorder in Thailand and really not that enjoyable to watch. The good stuff comes when a movie has been pressed to DVD. By that time, these same sharers have spent a Thursday night waiting up for the Midnight showing of Twilight, which they had already seen in some rough edit that didn't have special effects added or something.
I am not condoning the theft, but I think if they cared to show numbers from 10 and 20 years ago, it would make more sense to compare paid for seats than sold seats vs downloads as seat for seat is comparing apple to apples, and comparing seat sales to downloads is like comparing oranges to citrus. They are different, but at some point, they are the same.