Game of Thrones Premiere Triggers Piracy Craze

[Ernesto]

Yesterday evening saw a massive demand for the premiere of Game of Thrones’ fourth season, both on legal and less-authorized channels.

The unprecedented demand caused trouble for the HBO Go service, which crashed and was unreachable for several hours on end.

This outage probably motivated some to look for unauthorized copies, which were widely available through dozens of torrent sites soon after the episode finished. Unlike HBO Go, downloads via BitTorrent actually benefit from the increased interest, which usually means that downloads finish faster.

And indeed, there has been plenty of interest in unauthorized copies of the Game of Thrones season premiere.

Data gathered by TorrentFreak reveals that half a day after the first episode appeared online over a million people have already grabbed a copy via a torrent site. Earlier this morning, more than 300,000 people were actively sharing one of the three most-popular torrents.

The number of downloads is roughly the same as last year, but the season premiere didn’t set a record for the largest BitTorrent swarm, most likely because there were multiple popular copies available. The most shared torrent file had around 140,000 people sharing at once at its height this morning.

Game of Thrones sharers

During the days to come the number of downloads is expected to grow by several millions. Last year Game of Thrones became the most pirated TV-show for the second time, and with today’s numbers it is well on its way to securing the title for another year.

In addition to the downloads, we also looked at the countries people were sharing from. A sample of 18,333 IP-addresses collected over the day shows that Australia takes the crown with 11.6% of the total. The United States is a good second with 9.3%, followed by the United Kingdom with 5.8%.

The number one spot for Australia is all the more impressive since it has a population of just over 22 million people, relatively small compared to the other two countries. Looking at the city level we see that most downloads come from Melbourne, before Athens and Sydney.

So, why are all these people pirating Game of Thrones?

As always, there are many reasons why people may choose torrents or other pirate sources. In some cases there is simply no legal alternative, because of licensing issues for example, or due to technical troubles such as those suffered yesterday by HBO Go. In other cases the legal options are too limited, restrictive, or expensive.

The reasons above are not exhaustive of course, there are many more reasons why people turn to BitTorrent. For some it’s become a habit that will be hard to break, no matter where they live and how good the legal alternatives are.

If there are any Game of Thrones pirates reading this, let us know what drives you in the comments.


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


Originally Published: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:16:43 +0000
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[joew771]

This whole problem would be solved if people realized that Game of Thrones was shit, which it is. There are so many other more worthwhile series to watch in the history of television. I don't see what the fascination with this mediocre series is anyway.

Edit - I am an avid scifi/fantasy fan and even read the first book of the Pork and Mice series or whatever that piece of crap was called, but that book was shit.

[ShadyJay]

I was lucky. while flipping through channels I stopped and watched 2 minuets of Games of thrones.
A whole 2 minutes of watching a 14 year old sucking on his mothers tit.
Something is wrong here! lol

[joew771]

May not be the right thread to talk about it, but I don't care.

GOT is a bad show. Plain and simple.

The network, HBO in this case, wanted a series that was similar in tone to LOTR, but with nudity, so they found this average series of books and thought, 'They could have some sex and nudity and even some risque bits with incest and other nonsense' and decided to make a show about it.

The masses fell for it, like they fall for so much other mass produced fluff, like twilight, and the masses were stuck in Westeros, Essos and Sothoryosor.

The story is pretty generic when you consider other fantasy novels; just a few families feuding, interbreeding, fighting, being retarded and some dragons (after a long enough time to make many people quit watching).

The whole thing isn't too different than the twilight nonsense. A series of lackluster books, (though I must admit the twilight books were much, much worse) made into a lackluster series of tv shows.

If you people want to watch unoriginal nonsense I can't stop you.

[hypno-potamous]

I was lucky. while flipping through channels I stopped and watched 2 minuets of Games of thrones.
A whole 2 minutes of watching a 14 year old sucking on his mothers tit.
Something is wrong here! lol

I know what you mean, but it was not actually the boys mom...so he got to suck a chick's tit..an older womans at that and was paid for it...

[Wildcard]

If you people want to watch unoriginal nonsense I can't stop you.

No, but apparently you can double post just to reinforce your point.

Thankfully this thread isn't about whether you like GOT or not. It is about the pirating of this series and the fact that for the last three years people have pirated this TV Show more than any other.

Try to keep that in mind if you decided to go for the triple post.

---

More to the point at hand, this is one of the few series that I haven't just waited the year out and grabbed all in one torrent. I generally do that so that I can consume the entire season in a smaller amount of time and get to enjoy it like one long movie.

With GOT it is different because even though I already know what will happen next, HBO has given faces to all the characters I read about and now I am as fond of the actors as the characters they play.

So yeah, I downloaded GOT s04e01 as soon as I could and seeded happily

[NIK]

It hadn't struck me until I read "...this is one of the few series that I haven't just waited the year out and grabbed all in one torrent." that it has been so many years since I've done that that I literally cannot even remember the last show I watched that way.

Nor, for that matter, can I remember the last time I even sat down to watch an episode of a specific show at a specified time of the network's choosing.

I'm a GoT fan (books as well as the show) but I'll not be watching it until they finish broadcasting. [It will be a season pack I download at that time.]

I cannot imagine ever going back to consuming shows the "old fashioned" way. [It isn't just the waiting between episodes its the ad breaks I really can't stomach.]

[SectorVector]

Read a news bit a few days back in the papers.

"THE guys behind Game of Thrones have gone to interesting lengths in their efforts to cast the right actors.
...
Meanwhile, at least six female characters on the show have been played by current or former porn stars."

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/...6877865387
http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/11/21-new-...e-thrones/

Might that explain it ?

Am yet to watch even a single episode !
But again, Oz, US and UK are among the 3 biggest English speaking countries. But going by stats, Aussies must be leading a really dull life. Hmmm. :-)

[cakemafia]

what are we discussing here??

[snilloc]

Game of Thrones.

Supply and demand, the public love it and "Pirates" can supply it in good quality and before the retail outlets.