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The 2010 Oscars - Most Pirated "Best Picture" Nominees

By John Danz Jr

BitTorrents have become increasingly popular over the last decade. With the Oscars fast approaching, one site did a little research to find the most frequently pirated movies in the Best Picture list.

For those of you who don't know what BitTorrent is, BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing service, akin to Limewire or Kazaa. However, BitTorrents usually contain large amounts of data, such as music albums, movies or games. Even though many BitTorrents are large in size, the protocol allows even low bandwidth users to download the wares.

BitTorrents are controversial, as people download movies in lieu of seeing them in theaters. The same scenario goes for music; people can download entire discographies of their favorite bands without having to purchase the actual CDs or MP3s. Numerous companies have issued cease and desist letters to the torrent sites, but to seemingly no avail.

The website torrentfreak.com compiled a list of the number of times all of the Best Picture nominee films were pirated. Personally, I don't really feel moved to shed a tear for any of the men and women who worked on these films - in the end, they all grossed much more than the cost it took to make the things.

When a movie is leaked within weeks of its release, it is usually a grainy, poor quality version that someone captured via a camcorder. Therefore, if someone downloads the movie and enjoys what they see, logic would tell them to actually go out and buy the high-quality DVD. If not, then the film industry still can't be suffering that bad.

The list is as follows:

District 9 - 12,639,000 downloads
Avatar - 11,326,000 downloads
The Hurt Locker - 7,930,000 downloads
Up - 5,437,000 downloads
Inglourious Basterds - 5,376,000 downloads
Precious - 4,922,000 downloads
Up In The Air - 4,855,000 downloads
A Serious Man - 3,836,000 downloads
The Blind Side - 1,845,000 downloads
An Education - 683,000 downloads

Some movies have been available for much longer, while some have been leaked recently. Torrentfreak.com acknowledges this: "We have to note that comparing the downloads of each of the nominees is not really fair since some films have been available online for more than a year already, while others only leaked a few weeks ago. Avatar, which is second in the list with 11,326,000 downloads, became available in DVD-quality a month ago, while District 9 was already widely available last September."

John Danz Jr. is a work in progress, who enjoys the freedom of writing. Contact him at undertakerlives@gmail.com.