Oscars 2015: American Sniper and Birdman top illegal downloads since nomination

According to a recent study, Oscar nominees American Sniper and Birdman have seen a surge in online piracy rates since nomination.

The report was carried out by Irdeto, a Netherlands-based company that sells piracy controls to the pay-TV sector.

It used “crawler” software to monitor downloads via Bittorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing services around the world and says its figures represent the minimum number of illegal downloads.

As part of the study, the company compared the amount of piracy in the week before nominations with the week after.

Selma, Wild, American Sniper, Still Alice and Birdman saw some of the biggest swings in popularity, and each accounted for more than 100,000 downloads.

By contrast, two other films that had been tipped for the awards but failed to secure nominations in the major categories did not experience similar demand: Mr. Turner has been downloaded 9,086 times since January 15, and Inherent Vice has been downloaded 53,008 times, according to the study.