The number of users trying to access copyrighted content through piracy sites reached 432 million during January 2013, according to a report from NetNames.
About 82.6% of all internet users come from North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific and consume 95.1% of total Internet bandwidth and 24% of total bandwidth used for infringed content.
Despite efforts to stop users from accessing infringed content, the amount of bandwidth used for copyright infringement in the regions has grown nearly 160% from 2010 to 2012, accounting for 24% of total Internet bandwidth.
"Despite some discrete instances of success in limiting infringement, the piracy universe not only persists in attracting more users year on year but hungrily consumes increasing amounts of bandwidth," the report added.
In January, close to 14 billion page views were recorded on websites focused on piracy, while another 327 million users searched for ways to access the content, representing 25.9% of total internet users.
There were also about 432 million unique internet users worldwide who explicitly sought access to content.
The report revealed that bittorrent is the most popular peer-to-peer file distribution system across the globe, with 7.4 billionviews and accounting for 178.7 million internet users in the three regions during January 2013.
