Forget Oscars; 'Avatar' beats 'Hurt Locker' for most-pirated crown

By Eriq Gardner

"Avatar" might have tied "The Hurt Locker" for most Oscar nominations last week (with nine apiece), but the sci-fi epic is winning in at least one category: The film once again was the most-pirated movie on the Internet last week. A DVD screener of the James Cameron pic leaked onto file-sharing networks just as the film was nominated for nine Oscars.

Oscar buzz also seems to have compelled pirates to check out "Locker," which jumped to the fourth most-pirated film last week. In our look at Oscar film piracy, we missed an interesting fact about the movie: "Locker" first leaked onto the Internet more than five months before its U.S. release date.

Here's the entire Top 10 list of most-pirated movies on BitTorrent, according to TorrentFreak:

1. Avatar
2. Sherlock Holmes 
3. Daybreakers 
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Zombieland
6. The Men Who Stare at Goats 
7. Couples Retreat 
8. Nine 
9. The Book of Eli 
10. The Informant