These lists give insight into recent trends, and in 2013 Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker and iPhone 5s were the top trending searches on Google.

But what about torrent search engines? With billions of searches every year it’s worth taking a look at the most-entered keywords on the dominant file-sharing network.

There is no central database of searches available, but Kickass.to, one of the top three torrent sites in terms of visitors, was kind enough to share the most popular search terms of 2013 with us. This list is based on millions of searches and gives an indication of what people were looking for on BitTorrent networks during the last 12 months.

Topping the lists this year is YIFY, which refers to the popular movie release group. The group has millions of dedicated followers who use the ‘YIFY’ tag to find its recent releases. The movies World War Z and Iron Man 3 complete the top three.

The top 10 contains three other movie title related searches: Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness and Now You See Me. The search term 2013, often used to find recent movies, is listed in sixth place.

Traditionally, TV-shows are much sought after on BitTorrent as well, and it’s no different this year. Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and Dexter made it into the top 10, followed by The Walking Dead and Suits further down the list.

Adult related searches are surprisingly absent among the popular search terms, and the same is true for music and game searches. The only non-video search in the top 50 is Windows 8 in 40th place.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that ITA, a term used to find Italian content and the most searched for keyword in 2011, dropped out of the top 50 entirely. This can be explained by the fact that KickassTorrent was blocked by all Italian Internet providers last year.

Below is the full list of the 50 most-entered search phrases on Kickass.to (minus site specific searches). This list will be different for each torrent site, but we assume that the top searches will be popular on other indexes as well.

—

1. yify
2. world war z
3. iron man 3
4. breaking bad
5. man of steel
6. 2013
7. game of thrones
8. Star Trek Into Darkness
9. now you see me
10. dexter
11. pacific rim
12. the lord of the rings appendices
13. despicable me 2
14. this is the end
15. french
16. jack reacher
17. the walking dead
18. oblivion
19. a good day to die hard
20. elysium
22. suits
22. fast and furious 6
23. arrow
24. true blood
25. the conjuring
26. after earth
27. White House Down
28. Django Unchained
29. percy jackson sea of monsters
30. 2 guns
31. gangster squad
32. olympus has fallen
33. under the dome
34. jack the giant slayer
35. warm bodies
36. life of pi
37. pain and gain
38. Hansel and Gretel 2013
39. spartacus
40. windows 8
41. grown ups 2
42. 1080p
43. hindi
44. red 2
45. skyfall
46. the hobbit
47. movie 43
48. argo
49. how i met your mother
50. telugu

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

With 5.9 million downloads via BitTorrent, the 2013 season finale has beat the competition by a landslide.

More than half of the downloads occurred in the first week after the show aired and the total exceeds the number of traditional viewers in the US. Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead complete the top three with and estimated 4.2 and 3.6 million downloads respectively.

Game of Thrones’ win comes as no surprise since the show has broken two piracy records already this year, with over 170,000 people sharing a copy of an episode simultaneously.

There are a wide variety of reasons why people download TV-shows, but to a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for the massive piracy of Game of Thrones. The network prefers to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered.

Interestingly enough, we also learned this year that the huge number of unauthorized downloads don’t bother the show’s makers all that much, quite the contrary. Game of Thrones director David Petrarca previously admitted that piracy generated much-needed “cultural buzz” around his show.

Jeff Bewkes, CEO of HBO’s parent company Time Warner, went even further, stating that piracy resulted in more subscriptions for his company and that receiving the title of “most-pirated” was “better than an Emmy.”

On the other end of the spectrum we have Gale Anne Hurd, executive producer of The Walking Dead, who told Variety last week that unauthorized downloads are not necessarily the blessing others claim they are.

“There’s a mistaken belief by many of my peers that piracy is somehow good, that viewers will develop a habit to pay for it. I’m not sure they really understand other than anecdotal evidence that their ratings go up that the people who pirate are not then going to choose legal downloads or legal viewing in the future,” Hurd said.

Hurd has a point, as it’s not always that easy for existing pirates to give up their habit, not even if the legal options are widely available and free. For example, The Walking Dead premiere this year was downloaded en masse in the US, despite the fact that AMC streamed the show for free.

This debate about whether TV-show piracy is a good or bad thing will most likely continue throughout the coming year, and beyond.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows worldwide ( per single episode) for 2013, together with the viewer average for TV in the US. The data are estimated by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.

It is worth nothing that online streaming and cyberlocker downloads are not included since there are no public sources to draw data from. The total piracy numbers will therefore be significantly higher.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Update: Top 2014 Torrent sites

Traditionally BitTorrent users are very loyal, which is reflected in the top 10 where most sites have had a consistent listing for more than half a decade. This year there are a few movers and shakers, as well as several newcomers.

The most notable absentees this year are BTJunkie and Demonoid. Both sites have been featured in the top 10 since 2006, but went offline in 2012. BTJunkie permanently quit early last year and Demonoid’s future is also uncertain after it disappeared during the summer.

The first newcomer in tenth place is H33t, which has been growing steadily in recent years. The second newcomer is TorrentReactor, one of the oldest torrent sites around that makes its comeback after not making the list last year.

Then there is also a group of notable sites that didn’t make the cut, but deserve a mention. YIFY-torrents.com for example, which launched late 2011 and has grown exponentially since. Also worth mentioning are the Pirate Bay proxies, including Pirateproxy.net, which in itself almost deserves a spot in the top 10.

Below is the full list of the 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language sites are included. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa and U.S. Compete rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites.

Did we miss anything? Feel free to join the discussion below. People who want to increase their privacy may wants to use a proxy or VPN service.

1. The Pirate Bay

To many people The Pirate Bay is the equivalent to BitTorrent. The site was founded in 2003 and is still expanding, despite the various legal troubles and new blockades in the UK and the Netherlands. The Pirate Bay currently has well over a billion page views a month.

2. KickassTorrents

KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and has moved up in our top 10 year after year. Responding to increasing worries over domain seizures, the site moved from its kickasstorrents.com domain to kat.ph in 2012. This year the site continued to grow, despite being blocked by Italian Internet providers.

3. Torrentz

Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with the .eu being the most popular.

4. IsoHunt

Two years ago isoHunt became the first search engine forced to implement a keyword filter provided by the MPAA. Despite this setback, isoHunt continues to be listed among the world’s top torrent sites. isoHunt is currently trying to get rid of the filter through the Appeals Court.

5. ExtraTorrent

ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has moved up again in the top 10, now being the 5th most visited torrent site. This success didn’t go unnoticed to rightsholders groups such as the RIAA and MPAA who have called out ExtraTorrent as one of the top pirate sites recently.

6. 1337x

1337x focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they started 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” The site moved up from spot 10 last year to 6th in 2013.

7. EZTV

Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. It was one of the newcomers last year despite being around for more than 7 years, and is relatively popular among Australians. Because of its focus on TV-content EZTV’s traffic varies in line with the TV-seasons.

8. Bitsnoop

BitSnoop is one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, claiming to index a massive 19,091,736 torrent files at the time of writing. The site’s traffic continues to grow steadily, as do the DMCA notices that it receives.

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor is back in the top 10 after dropping off last year. A few months ago the site was blocked by a court order in Italy, but the site nonetheless continues to gain visitors.

10. H33t

H33T has been around for many years and has built a dedicated user base, mostly in Europe and Asia. Despite the wishes of the music industry, the site isn’t yet blocked by any court orders. The site made the news a few months ago when its owner took a stand against the avalanche of copyright takedown requests.

Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

But 2012 saw two major such events, in addition to many minor ones. There was the SOPA defeat on January 18, and there was the ACTA defeat on July 4. These were slightly different in nature.

The SOPA defeat in the USA was caused by a purely grassroots effort to put pressure on the US Congress from the outside. The ACTA defeat in Europe, meanwhile, could not have succeeded without two-pronged pressure: where the SOPA battle mainly played out online and in phone calls in one-directional pressure against Congress, the ACTA battle was fought in the streets, with huge coordinated protests in 200-plus European cities.

Still, that would not have been enough if there hadn’t been people on the inside of the European Parliament to explain to other Members of Parliament why European people were protesting – so the Pirate Party presence in the European Parliament was pivotal, being one of many ingredients not sufficient on their own, but absolutely necessary for the whole of the ultimate success in defeating ACTA.

Regardless, these events were game-changers in that politicians have learned that when the internet raises its voice and tells them in no uncertain terms to STFU & STFD, their knees tremble. They do not understand yet what it is they do not understand. They do not understand the fundamentally bad assumptions about the copyright monopoly that still shape policy (faulty assumptions like the monopoly being incentivizing creativity, or worse, being related to property rights and a component of free trade).

For as we recall, both SOPA and ACTA were practically done deals. They were seen as completely uncontroversial by the politicians and were mere formalities, until the internet spoke up.

The next step, of course, would be to learn that it isn’t “the Internet” speaking up, but a whole generation of citizens – voters – that demand something as basic as their civil liberties to apply just as much online as they do offline.

For who was it that wanted ACTA and SOPA so badly? It was the copyright industry, in their long-running quest to have their business interests take legal precedence over fundamental civil liberties.

The copyright industry has long been a proponent for increased surveillance, particularly of the warrantless kind, as privacy and freedom of speech is fundamentally incompatible with enforcement of the copyright monopoly.

At the same time, the administrations around the world are cherishing the liberating aspects of the net with one voice – but only when it happens to other countries. In their own country, it is a threat to the status quo – meaning, to themselves.

In Sweden, for example, the administration is wasting no time in applauding the importance of the net in freeing dictatorships from oppression, all while the Swedish so-called FRA law has changed the rules of privacy from being a fundamental right to the axiom “you are always wiretapped”, effectively negating any whistleblower protections and other freedoms of the press.

Other countries see similar patterns.

Overall, net liberty seems to consistently be near the top of the foreign policy agenda for every country, but never anywhere on the domestic policy agenda. This exact relation needs to reverse.

So what would be things to look out for in 2013?

Things should be quietening down somewhat in the European bureaucracy, as the election cycle comes to a close. Still, there are many bilateral so-called “free trade” agreements that try to lock in monopolies at the cost of civil liberties, and these happen in just as much secrecy as ACTA did.

Speaking of monopoly agreements, the TPP – Trans-Pacific Partnership – should be a major cause for concern.

But if all of these are causes for concern – and they are, as laws are still being made the wrong way – I’m still very optimistic.

While the laws being made on net liberty and monopolies are still bad – we have not managed as activists to cause any good things to happen, merely managed to prevent some bad things from happening – understanding of net liberty principles are rapidly increasing, and may be hitting a tipping point.

More and more people realize, against the tenacious deceptive talking points of the copyright industry, that the copyright monopoly is not related to property rights at all but is a governmentally-sanctioned private monopoly that limits property rights and free trade.

So what do I predict for 2013?

I predict that more politicians will realize the shameless abyss of lies coming from the copyright industry, and that civil liberties should be as readily defended online as offline – that there should be no legal or practical difference in civil liberties whether you communicate with an analog letter or a digital one.

I predict that there will be at least one game-changing event which could not have been predicted beforehand, which shifts the playing field heavily against the copyright industry and in favor of civil liberties.

I predict that the laws being made will continue to be bad, and that surveillance will continue to increase, but that more people will start to question that – perhaps approaching, but not yet arriving at a tipping point where good policy starts being made instead.

Above all, I predict that we have much hard work still ahead of us, but that it will all be worth our while in the end.

So for 2013, remember two soundbites on making good policy:

Sharing is caring, and prosperity begins at a hundred megabit.

Happy new year!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.