In the digital age it is easier to pirate movies. Either copies are made; master versions are stolen from studios; or grainy copies are made from cinemas. Some pirated copies are clearly (excuse the pun) better than others.

Movie piracy is not, in most cases, a way to ‘get back’ at corporations or the same as borrowing a film from a man in a pub. In most cases it is part of a large criminal network, and often it funds illicit activities and this can include terrorism (for example, see the Sydney Morning Herald).

Despite poor quality and suspicious activity, movie piracy is big business. In 2015, the mots pirated movie was the science fiction epic Interstellar. It is estimated that over 47 million illegal downloads were made during a 12 month period.

For the complete top 10, piracy tracking firm Excipio lists these as:

1) 46,762,310 Interstellar (2014)

2) 44,794,877 Furious 7 (2015)

3) 41,594,159 Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

4) 36,881,763 Jurassic World (2015)

5) 36,443,244 Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

6) 33,953,737 American Sniper (2014)

7) 32,126,827 Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

8) 31,574,872 The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armys (2014)

9) 31,001,480 Terminator: Genisys (2015)

10) 30,922,987 The Secret Service (2014)

In terms of television shows, Game of Thrones was top for the fourth year running.

Here are estimated download numbers via BitTorrent for top 10 most pirated TV shows in 2015 according to TorrentFreak :

1) Game of Thrones 14,400,000

2) The Walking Dead 6,900,000

3) The Big Bang Theory 4,400,000

4) Arrow 3,900,000

5) The Flash 3,600,000

6) Mr. Robot 3,500,000

7) Vikings 3,300,000

8) Supergirl 3,000,000

9) The Blacklist 2,900,000

10) Suits 2,600,000

Graph representation:

According to BBC News, Brazil accounted for the most illegal film downloads, followed by Russia, China and India.