Avatar Breaks Blu-ray Piracy Records

Avatar has broken Blu-ray sales records and it looks like it may have broken the record for illegal downloading too.

Over the last few days, people have been talking about the DVD and Blu-ray release of James Cameron's Avatar. Having sold 6.7 million copies in the four days following its DVD release, the movie sold 2.7 million Blu-rays and overtook the Dark Knight's Blu-ray sales on the first day.

Today TorrentFreak reports that the Blu-ray version of Avatar is well on its way to becoming the most pirated Blu-ray title.

"With more than 200,000 downloads in the first four days, Avatar has squashed all competition," TorrentFreak's Ernesto writes. "The download figures are still quite low compared to those of 'regular' pirated DVDs – this could be in part due to the larger file size (~10GB) and the fact that Blu-ray market penetration is nowhere near DVD levels yet."

Ernesto goes on to say that in the first few days, a high percentage of the downloads were coming from the UK and Australia, something that can probably be attributed to the fact that the DVD did not go on sale in those countries until after the torrent was made available on line.

The fact that Avatar is smashing Blu-ray records left and right should come as no surprise. However, more and more people are starting to believe this has less to do with how "revolutionary" the hugely popular movie is and more to do with the fact that Blu-ray is getting increasingly popular as time goes by. When the Dark Knight hit Blu-ray in 2008, adoption of the format was not what it is today.