The Pirate Bay or torrent downloads and free content streaming dominate the digital media consumption habits of most millennials in North America, a new report said, highlighting the fact that even when legal options are readily available many will still go for pirated contents.

In a Launchleap survey picked up by TorrentFreak, majority of media consumers from the age group of 18 to 35 said they are willing to pay for online streaming as up to 70 percent indicated they use legal streaming services like Spotify for music, Netflix for movies and HBO GO for television shows. But the good news for content producers also came with a troubling reality - that five out of 10 of the respondents admitted to using illegal streaming platforms.

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The same report also showed that for many millennials, the nearly default choice when consuming digital content is torrent downloads that can be accessed through popular file-sharing sites such as The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent. And many more don't see illegal streaming as wrong.

The survey said that 61 percent of those queried deem unauthorized movie and music streaming as okay. In fact, up to 53 percent of the millennials that participated in the study declared illegal streaming is more preferred even when cinema, television and Blu-ray are in the menu of choices.

It appears too that the underlying reason for the trend is money. The study showed that online users picking between legal and illegal platforms, the choice is easy and they will go for free contents unmindful of likely consequences.

"The findings suggest that there's still a long way to go before piracy becomes a non-issue, even in North America where legal platforms are readily available," TorrentFreak said on its report.

An earlier report also indicated that torrenting and content streaming remain prevalent despite efforts from authorities and anti-piracy agencies to clamp down on the illegal operations. Torrent sites, for example, draw most of their millions of daily traffic from European countries.

On the other side of the Atlantic and specifically in the U.S., millions subscribe to free streaming sites with the belief that they don't pose serious legal problems in the same way that torrenting or free download services do.