The fifth instalment in the Fast and the Furious film series was downloaded 9.2 million times, figures have shown.

In second place was The Hangover II with 8.8 million downloads followed by Thor, thriller Source Code and I Am Number Four was in fifth place.

James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar was last year's top-pirated film, downloaded 16.6 million times.

Cameron had previously suggested that making movies in 3D would help put people off from downloading films illegally.

Only two of this year's top ten, Thor and Harry Potter, were released in 3D - which could be attributed as much to a decline in the popularity of the format as to the difficulty in pirating the material.
Figures for the entire top 10 this year have dropped in comparison with last year.

Torrent Freak said this might be explained by an increase in file sharing and streaming sites - which don't count towards download figures.

Thor, based on the comic book character of the same name, was downloaded 8.3 million times and Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, 7.9 million times.

Sucker Punch was at number six, followed by 127 Hours and Rango at number 7 and 8 respectively.

Top grossing Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Transformers: Dark of the Moon did not feature on the pirated film list.

And The King's Speech and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 were both hugely popular at the box office, but their downloading figures remained fairly modest, appearing in ninth and tenth place on the list.

The data for the list is collected from several sources, including reports from thousands of BitTorrent trackers.

bbc.com