Pirating movies has been a growing problem in recent years, costing studios millions of dollars in lost ticket sales. For example, in 2016 the Motion Picture Association of America says that nearly $1 billion worth of pirated movies and TV shows were downloaded.
It goes without saying that online streaming has been a growing trend as well. Netflix has led the charge, with Hulu, HBO and others also capitalizing on the trend. While these are the legitimate channels, online pirates subvert them to dodge subscription fees.
“Game of Thrones” is a wildly popular HBO series that was the target of hackers and pirates in 2017 and much of season was leaked online, whether it was plot points or actual episodes. Hackers even tried to press HBO to pay a ransom for the material but ultimately released it anyway.
One of the more popular mediums for downloading and watching content is BitTorrent, which operates as a peer-to-peer file-sharing service. It is capable of distributing a massive amount of data over the internet.
Although it is widely known that many files are shared and downloaded illegally over this service, it still manages to operate. Authorities use the site as well to track some users who don’t hide their IP addresses via a proxy and nab them for illegally distributing or downloading content.
24/7 Wall St. has taken a look at some of the more popular movies that were pirated this past week. These are the top 10 most pirated movies of the past week on BitTorrent:
- Avengers: Infinity War
- 12 Strong
- Pacific Rim Uprising
- Maze Runner: The Death Cure
- Den of Thieves
- Black Panther
- Fifty Shades Freed
- Red Sparrow
- The Greatest Showman
- What Happened to Monday
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