The Torrent Freak website has said that if every (illegal) download on BitTorrent counted as a vote, District 9 would be crowned the winner with 12,639,000 downloads, closely followed by Avatar with 11,326,000 copies.
The least popular films, according to the BitTorrent public, are The Blind Side with 1,845,000 downloads and An Education with ‘only’ 683,000 downloads. Torrent Freak notes: “We have to note that comparing the downloads of each of the nominees is not really fair since some films have been available online for more than a year already, while others only leaked a few weeks ago. Avatar became available in DVD-quality a month ago, while District 9 was already widely available last September.”
Torrent Freak calculated the facts and figures from all the Oscar nominated movies to compile the list. The data for this list come from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. All release formats, including cammed versions, are counted. Afterwards, the data was carefully checked and possible inaccuracies were systematically corrected. For more research on illegal downloads, see the Torrent Freak website.