ABOVE: Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street was the most pirated movie of the year while Disney’s Frozen tralied closely behind. Nicole Bogart reports.
TORONTO – Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and Disney’s smash hit Frozen have topped the list of the most pirated movies of 2014.
Despite their very different subject matter, the films each earned around 30 million downloads by torrent users between Jan. 1 and Dec. 23, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio.
The Toronto-shot remake of RoboCop garnered over 29.8 million downloads.
This isn’t the first record The Wolf of Wall Street set this year. The film earned itself a Guinness World Record titled for the most swearing in one film – 506 uses of the same f-word expletive to be exact.
The Wolf of Wall Street was nominated for best picture at this year’s Oscars.
Many other Oscar nominated films made the list of the most downloaded movies of 2014, including 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and Captain Phillips.
But torrenting movies is technically illegal and, starting Jan. 1, Canadian Internet service providers (ISP’s) will be subject to Canada’s new Copyright Modernization Act, part of which is aimed at cracking down on illegal downloads.
READ MORE: New law aims to cut down on internet piracy
Under the new law, if a copyright holder contacts an ISP with a notification that a customer’s IP address has been linked to illegally downloaded material, the ISP is required to notify the customer.
Some Canadians service providers estimate they expect to send out as many as 100 notices a day.
Canadians have run into problems with illegal downloading before.
In February, Ontario-based ISP TekSavvy was ordered to identify the customers allegedly linked to downloads of films by the U.S. production company Voltage Pictures, which is behind the likes of The Hurt Locker, Dallas Buyers Club and Don Jon.
However, experts say the majority of people who are served with a notice will think twice about downloading illegal material again.
Top 20 most pirated movies of 2014
- The Wolf of Wall Street: 30.035 million downloads
- Frozen: 29.919 million downloads
- RoboCop: 29.879 million downloads
- Gravity: 29.357 million downloads
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: 27.627 million downloads
- Thor: The Dark World: 25.749 million downloads
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier: 25.628 million downloads
- The Legend of Hercules: 25.137 million downloads
- X-Men: Days of Future Past: 24.380 million downloads
- 12 Years a Slave: 23.653 million downloads
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: 23.543 million downloads
- American Hustle: 23.143 million downloads
- 300: Rise of an Empire: 23.096 million downloads
- Transformers: Age of Extinction: 21.65 million downloads
- Godzilla: 20.956 million downloads
- Noah: 20.334 million downloads
- Divergent: 20.312 million downloads
- Edge of Tomorrow: 20. million downloads
- Captain Phillips: 19.817 million downloads
- Lone Survivor: 19.130 million downloads
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