Film piracy continues to be a significant problem for the industry. High speed internet connections, good quality camera phones and ever-escalating ticket prices all contribute to the issue. The scale of film piracy and its impact in cold, hard money is difficult to quantify, especially given that not everyone who illegally downloads a film or buys a pirated DVD would have bought a cinema ticket instead, had a pirate copy not been available. The questionable quality of much of the pirated content out there, together with the undoubted diminishing of the impact of a film by having to watch it on a computer monitor are pretty much beside the point. Pirated copies of films are ubiquitous and no doubt here to stay.
Personally, I think pretty much any film is better enjoyed on the big screen and I must confess to never having downloaded a film, so I am unsure as to what the quality is like. I sympathise with frustrations over escalating ticket prices, but share the concerns of the film industry as to the knock-on effect on sustaining film production in the wake of the financial impact of reduced revenue occasioned by the prevalence of piracy, especially for the lower-budget end of the spectrum, where margins are tighter and profits much lower.
Let us have your thoughts below on film piracy. Clearly it is a complicated issue. Where do you stand? In the meantime, here is the top ten list:-
| rank | movie | downloads | worldwide grosses |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | Avatar | 16,580,000 | $2,779,551,867 |
| 2 | Kick-Ass | 11,400,000 | $96,130,432 |
| 3 | Inception | 9,720,000 | $825,408,570 |
| 4 | Shutter Island | 9,490,000 | $294,803,014 |
| 5 | Iron Man 2 | 8,810,000 | $621,751,988 |
| 6 | Clash of the Titans | 8,040,000 | $493,214,993 |
| 7 | Green Zone | 7,730,000 | $94,875,650 |
| 8 | Sherlock Holmes | 7,160,000 | $523,029,864 |
| 9 | The Hurt Locker | 6,850,000 | $48,612,915 |
| 10 | Salt | 6,700,000 | $175,190,850 |
