According to a recently concluded study, one-fourth of global web traffic finds its origin in illegal downloading or uploading of copyrighted material such as movies, music, and TV.

Content downloaded illegally from sites utilizing BitTorrent technology makes up over 11 percent of global Internet traffic, as per the research.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Cyberlockers and video-streaming sites are responsible for around 5 percent and 1.4 percent of that traffic, respectively.

“There’s a lot of demand out there for free, pirated content,” said David Price, head of piracy intelligence at Envisional.

“On the positive side, it tells you there’s an enormous demand for content on the Internet. There’s enormous opportunity for the legitimate means of content and it should go hand in hand [with the demand for content] to reduce illegitimate file-sharing,” he added.

This is not the first time BitTorrent has encountered ongoing complaints about the free file sharing. Last week Google started blocking ‘torrent’ from appearing in its search box.

The report said it excluded pornographic content, which typically comprises a large percentage of pirated works on the Internet, because its infringing status was ‘difficult to discern’.

However, Price noted that the percentage of global and U.S. Internet traffic that contains infringed content would be a lot higher if pornography was included.

The research was conducted by British anti-piracy consultants Envisional and commissioned by NBC Universal.

According to a recently concluded study, online giving grew 14 percent in 2009. It was disclosed by the study that nonprofits reported more gifts and were able to grow their email files.

Volume of traffic to a nonprofit’s website is responsible for 38 percent of its success in building large email files.

From Philanthropyjournal.org:

Overall, 69 percent of 499 nonprofits studied raised more online in 2009 than 2008, while 31 percent saw online fundraising decline, says the Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study.

Among nonprofits that grew their online fundraising in 2009, 92 percent generated more online gifts, while just 43 percent saw an increase in the average gift amount.

Online giving to small nonprofits grew fastest, with online revenue growing 26 percent and online gifts growing 32 percent for nonprofits with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file, says the study, which analyzed data compiled from nonprofits with at least 24 months of data.

It was also revealed that web traffic grew only 6 percent when compared to double-digit growth in previous years despite the fact that 60 percent of nonprofits grew their website traffic from 2008 to 2009.