Now please stop blaming BitTorrent alone for all digital piracies. Despite huge efforts to curb digital piracies, the availability of direct download continues to fuel the most online piracy. So, BitTorrent alone is not the villain in cyber world. The study comes from MarkMonitor, an online company focused on “brand protection” for enterprise clients. The company researched three of the most popular online sites known for illegal video distribution.

Their report is really shocking. Based on data collected throughout 2010, the top three Websites classified as ‘digital piracy’ sites – rapidshare.com, megavideo.com, and megaupload.com – collectively generate more than 21 billion visits per year. The traffic numbers for the 48 sites selling counterfeit goods were sky-high as well, reaching a combined total of more than 240,000 visits per day on average.

Seventy-three percent of the sites labeled counterfeit were hosted in North America or Western Europe. Eastern Europe was home to another 14 percent of the sites, while nine percent were hosted in Asia. Sixty-seven percent of those classified as digital piracy sites were hosted in North America and Western Europe.

One of the sites highlighted by the study, RapidShare, has come under scrutiny from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which blames the Swiss-based file-hosting firm for carrying huge amounts of pirated content.

The study was put together following requests from the US Chamber of Commerce to identify trends and rogue sites. The study also highlighted how much more prevalent digital piracy is compared to physical product counterfeiting. Websites that are known to sell fake drugs and luxury goods only clock in about 36 million visits per year, more than 90% less than digital piracy sites.

The study only used a small sample of sites suggesting that the problem could be in fact much bigger. So, I think it is the need of the hour to do something as this cyber world doesn’t have any boundaries. So, at least be alert.

Via eweek