Illegal downloads soar by a third

The number of illegally downloaded films in the UK has gone up nearly a third in five years, according to a new report published today.

Research by the internet consultancy firm Envisional says that the top five box office movies were illegally downloaded in the UK a total of 1.4 million times last year and the practice costs the British economy £170million a year and is putting thousands of jobs at risk.

Avatar, which led the list with box office takings of £98million in the UK in 2010, was illegally downloaded an estimated 200,000 times.

Dr David Price, the lead member of the team behind the research, said: "The methods of piracy have become easier, with quicker downloads and easier to find content - anyone with broadband can do it. Broadband speeds have tripled over the last four years and a lot of people think the internet is fair game when it comes to things like this."

Kieron Sharp, of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), said: "Research for the Government] has shown that film piracy costs the [global film) industry about half a billion pounds a year. About a third of that is due to illegal downloading of film and TV content. Clearly that is unacceptable."

Research suggests people are illegally downloading more TV shows, too. The top five most popular shows were illegally downloaded a total of 1.24 million times in the UK last year, a 33% increase on 2006.

"We have a big demand in this country for  American TV shows in particular," Dr Price said. "Shows like Glee and House are heavily illegally downloaded in the UK. We're very eager to get the television shows as soon as they are broadcast in the US. But we often have to wait for one month or two months for those shows to be shown legitimately in the UK."

He added that the film industry needed to be more competitive to fight the problem of piracy. "The best way to challenge this is to give people what they want, he said. "People are prepared to pay for downloads, so making these things legitimately available would be a huge step forward."