Geeks dominated the most downloaded films and TV shows of 2010

Just as a quick note to start this info-post out – I am neither condoning or condemning piracy. I’m stating the facts, and that is it. How you use the information provided is ultimately up to you.

Q: You wouldn’t steal a car would you?
A: I would if I could.

This type of reasoning seems to be common amongst the geek crowd these days – and for obvious reasons. The mere fact that we’re downloading your music or movie should be payment enough, right? Most artists make their money from touring, merchandise and DVD sales anyway so we don’t even want to hear that side of the argument.

Piracy clearly isn’t killing the film industry

Avatar made $2.8 billion worldwide. Thus endeth the argument. Avatar was illegally downloaded just over 16.5 million times, which marks a 33% increase over the number one illegally-downloaded film of 2009, Star Trek.

Here’s the full list of the top 10 pirated films of 2010*:

1. Avatar (16,580,000)
2. Kick-Ass (11,400,000)
3. Inception (9,720,000)
4. Shutter Island (9,490,000)
5. Iron Man 2 (8,810,000)
6. Clash of the Titans (8,040,000)
7. Green Zone (7,730,000)
8. Sherlock Holmes (7,160,000)
9. The Hurt Locker (6,850,000)
10. Salt (6,700,000)

As is plainly seen, half of the above films were clearly made for the geek crowd. You know – the crowd that is now checking out this article on Geekcentricity. You guys.

Piracy isn’t killing the TV industry, either

Here’s the full list of the top 10 pirated TV programs of 2010*:

1. Lost (5,940,000)
2. Heroes (5,480,000)
3. Dexter (3,880,000)
4. The Big Bang Theory (3,270,000)
5. House (2,610,000)
6. How I Met Your Mother (2,490,000)
7. 24 (2,240,000)
8. True Blood (1,920,000)
9. Glee (1,700,000)
10. Family Guy (1,620,000)

Again, half of the TV shows were geek-related programming. And interestingly enough, the US Nielsen ratings for the above shows verified that piracy certainly didn’t hurt them at all, either.

I’m about to save the entertainment industry from shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultants and research reports, by revealing the marketing secret behind piracy:

People like to get things for free that would otherwise cost them money. And they won’t stop taking them for free just because there’s a convenient legal alternative, if that alternative requires opening their wallets.

Stunned by my unique powers of insight? You shouldn’t be, yet this obvious lesson seems lost in the squabbling among movie studios, quasi-legal peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

As long as the technology is around, people will continue to pirate movies, TV shows, software, etc. A company will come up with new protection, and then someone will crack it.

The only sure way to stop piracy is to kill the technology. And no one can do that.

*The above data was collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers.