One-in-four broadband users have illegally downloaded a movie

Until now the brunt of on-line copyright theft has fallen onto the music industry, which has seen revenue fall as fans take advantage of peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa to swap and download music for free.

The survey of 3,600 broadband internet users by research firm OTX also found that over half of those who have downloaded a film illegally plan to do so again, after canvassing the views of users in the UK, US, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Korea.

Twenty percent of users in the UK and 10% of those in Japan admitted downloading films illegally. South Korea had the worst record, with over 50% of respondents admitting that they had watched pirated movies.

According to the survey, of those who had downloaded movies, 17% were not going to the cinema as often, while 26% were buying fewer DVDs.

"It's not hard to imagine as other countries become increasingly broadband-based we'll see more of this happen," Matthew Grossman, a spokesman for the MPAA, told CNET News.com.

Another survey, due to be published today by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), backs up the findings. According to the Washington Post, the survey shows that the illegal file-sharing of music over the internet has been overtaken by the swapping of films and other non-music files for the first time.

Twenty-seven percent of files downloaded were video, rather than music – up from 25.2% last year, says the Washington Post. Most swaps, however, relate to neither music nor video files, but 'other files' – such as pornographic images and software, according to the newspaper's web site.