Sci-fi film "Interstellar" was the most illegally-downloaded movie this year, and it appears that the volume of torrented movies is on the uptick as well.
According to figures from Excipio, which tracks BitTorrent downloads, the Matthew McConaughey flick got a whopping 46.7 million downloads from the start of this year to Dec 25. Compared with "The Wolf of Wall Street", which was number one on Excipio's 2014 list with 30 million downloads, 56% more copies of "Interstellar" were downloaded.
This increase in piracy appeared true across the top 10 lists for both years. In 2015, the #2 spot went to "Furious 7" (44.7 million downloads) and #3 was "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (41.5 million downloads).
In comparison, 2014's #2 was Disney's "Frozen" (29.9 million downloads) and #3 was "RoboCop" (29.8 million downloads).
The Excipio numbers weren't broken down by geography, so it's not clear if the rise in downloads could have been blamed on specific regions. But the overall rise in piracy flies in the face of reports from copyright advocates that say the advent of more streaming video-on-demand services helps drive piracy down.
Asia, for example, has traditionally seen high rates of digital piracy, so it remains to be seen if streaming firms like Netflix launching here will help combat the piracy trend.
Here's Excipio's full list:
46,762,310 (downloads): Interstellar (2014)
44,794,877: Furious 7 (2015)
41,594,159: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
36,881,763: Jurassic World (2015)
36,443,244: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
33,953,737: American Sniper (2014)
32,126,827: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
31,574,872: The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armys (2014)
31,001,480: Terminator: Genisys (2015)
30,922,987: The Secret Service (2014)