We live in a time where piracy of movies, music, and various other forms of entertainment is oft-occurring problem. But how much does it really affect the success of those it victimizes?

It’s been officially declared that Avatar, director James Cameron‘s epic movie about humans trying to extract valuable elements from an alien planet inhabited a species known as the Na’vi, is the most pirated movie of 2010. The movie has been downloaded an astonishing 16,580,000 times…on BitTorrent alone. The previous record for downloads was 2009’s Star Trek at 10.9 million, if that tells you anything.

What might be even more shocking about this number is the lack of impact it seemed to have on the movie’s box office run. With an estimated budget of around $300 million, it was feared — though it sounds silly now — that the movie might be destined to flop, but it wasn’t long before Avatar was shattering records. Domestically, the movie brought in $760,507,625 (destroying Cameron’s other seemingly untouchable Titanic, which long sat at over $600 million), while overseas box office delivered $2,019,044,242, putting it very close to hitting $3 billion worldwide.

Any sports fan or fan of sports video games has likely heard of the feared Madden Curse. The “curse” comes from the belief that any National Football League athlete who appears on the cover of a Madden NFL video game would be struck with some form of injury or debilitative setback. This hasn’t happened every single year, but it has happened often enough to cause many to become true believers.

Now The Wrap is reporting that the company behind the Madden franchise, Electronic Arts, is taking this phenomena to a new place with the development of a new feature comedy. EA Sports has never believed the curse to be true, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take advantage of its existence in popular culture.

In a world permeated by social media and mobile communication, it seems impossible to ignore the persistent thoughts inside your own head long enough to really focus on a concept like gift giving — a single act of generosity tailored to a specific person for the sole purpose of making them ridiculously, tear-inducingly happy.

I’d like to believe most people would enjoy being able to come up with a gift of that caliber on an annual basis for every single person in their lives. Realistically, only those closest to you will be afforded thoughtful presents while the bulk of others will get something for the sake of giving them something. Giving a thoughtful gift to someone you don’t know very well can prove to be a difficult task.

That is, unless you are one of the more than 17,000 Reddit users in 90 different countries who participated in the site’s second Secret Santa gift exchange, which generated over $600,000 (and counting) in purchases and set a new world record, according to a post by Hueypriest on the Reddit blog.

Now that the 6-episode first season of AMC’s The Walking Dead has come and gone, we’re in for a long wait with word that a second season won’t hit until some time next fall.

Season 2 will run 13 episodes this time around, which is quite exciting to think about. To help make the wait just a little more bearable, AMC has released a new video with cast and crew talking about their first-season run and where they hope to go in the future.

Among those who speak, you’ll find writer, director, and producer Frank Darabont, comic book creator Robert Kirkman, producers Gale Anne Hurd and Denise Huth, and stars Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies.

You can see the video by clicking on over to the other side now!

Where are all these awesome geek parents and uncles and aunts coming from? Honestly, I never had anyone make something this cool for me: a TARDIS bookcase cupboard. Seriously, how amazing is this concept?

Over at Instructables, user caitlinsdad has put up step-by-step documentation on how he made this incredible TARDIS bookcase, based on the time machine used by everyone’s favorite time lord in Doctor Who. It is a Christmas gift he is preparing for his nephews, so the article is an ongoing development, but you can see the final product over there.

Caitlinsdad made the basis of the TARDIS bookcase from a cheap $20 bookcase, which is pretty amazing. I mean, my carpentry skills are on par with Homer Simpson — when I look at a bookshelf in a store, my first thought is, “Crap, will I have to assemble this?” Clearly, caitlinsdad, and many of the other fine folks over at Instructables, look at these items and immediately see artistic goals.