The most pirated movies ever

Try as they might, Hollywood just can't seem to stop those damn pirates.

Downloading films illegally is still a healthy non-industry and leading torrent news site TorrentFreak decided to assemble a list of which movies the basement-dwellers have nabbed the most times.

They've been keeping track, week-by-week, of public BitTorrent trackers since 2006 and have offered up the top 10 for us all to sneer at.

Here they are:

10. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (14 million)

9. The Incredible Hulk (14 million)

8. The Departed (14 million)

7. Kick-Ass (15 million)

6. Star Trek (16 million)

5. The Hangover (17 million)

4. Inception (18 million)

3. Transformers (19 million)

2. The Dark Knight (19 million)

1. Avatar (21 million downloads)

The list offers up some interesting points. Firstly, most of the films have also been box office hits, suggesting that the piracy hasn't affected the gross too badly. Secondly, there's only one film that didn't score $100 million at the US box office on the list and that's Kick-Ass, which didn't even make half of that, making it the most popular non-hit of the past few years.

Finally, unlike regular cinemagoers, downloaders did get progressively sick of the Transformers trilogy as only the first, lowest-grossing, instalment makes a showing on the list.

They can't all be bad'uns then...

(Images: All Star)