Once again, Australia sets new Game of Thrones piracy record

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blog It probably won’t come as a surprise to those who have followed Game of Thrones piracy news over the past several years (an important genre in technology journalism in its own right), but Australia appears to have set a new record in terms of copyright infringement of the flagship HBO series. TorrentFreak tells us (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“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.

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.”

This news should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. Australia was at the top of the Game of Thrones piracy tables in May 2012, and again in April 2013. One suspects that in the wake of Foxtel’s announcement in February that it had gained absolutely exclusive rights to the series, many Australians have taken up the blatant offer by BitTorrent-based TV content distribution group EZTV that same month to furnish Australians with copies of the show. Ah well, at least HBO doesn’t see the problem as too big of an issue, even if local distributors, the US Ambassador to Australia and Australia’s own Attorney-General George Brandis certainly do.

Image credit: Still from Game of Thrones

15 COMMENTS

  1. It seems tht Torrents are the *only* medium being monitored…

    interestingly myopic stance to take.

      • One system has a (generally speaking) single source origin (one to many) the other has hundreds of sources of origin (many to many).

        If we conduct a thought experiment, which one do you think, particularly from a litigious stand point, is going to offer a better return?

        Note that index sites have been targeted in the past (being an aggregation point I guess, makes them a viable target) so there are always exceptions to any rule.

  2. I bought the last season on iTunes (and it had encoding jitter problems) but there’s no way I’m signing up to Foxtel just for GoT.
    HBO only have themselves to blame.

  3. To be honest, HBO knows that it will fuel demand; if the show sees a lot of discussion and viewer numbers then that’ll drive further episodes; if that means some viewers won’t be paying for the experience, they probably don’t care if it means the show can keep going.

    People will likely buy the box sets, regardless of when or where it might screen here. They’ll make their investment back in spades. That and they have a sweet deal from Foxtel anyway.

    Our market is also puny compared to Europe and US.

  4. i think HBO is using the same thought process as a game developer that make a free to play game, on F2P most users dont pay but the ones that do subsidised the cost of all the player base.
    HBO must have enough revenue coming in that it can float the losses. so next time you by the box set think of it like a micro transaction all be it a big one.

  5. Sticking it to the man!

    We can pirate even without your fancy schmancy magic carrying fibres.

  6. I seen over 60,000 seeds and 98,000 leechers the other day on an unnamed site. Did the deal with fooxteel and the cutting of itunez deal increase the piracy…

  7. We achieve this despite our shitty internet infrastructure! It makes me wonder when the Coalition will start advocating against the NBN on the grounds that it will promote piracy…

  8. Meh, HBO likely got more money from Foxtel exclusivity than the itunes sales so they probably earned more anyway, even with increased piracy.

    Piracy is not an issue worth dealing with for HBO, as HBO have said themselves in candid quotes. The people complaining about piracy are the increasingly redundant distributors, in this case Foxtel, absolute exclusivity can no longer be assured in our modern connected world, and companies like Foxtel will just have to deal with it and develop more competitive distribution systems.

  9. I got it via uncle torrence twice, the hd rip and then (because of my piss poor adsl) the 1080 version a day or 2 later, i.e got my hit quick and then for the future i have a 1080 rip saved for when i want to watch it again.

    Thanks uncle!! Go to hell Foxtel!

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