4 ms·

Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show in history. I remember when the first 4 episodes of season 5 were leaked at once. Christmas came early!

bootlooped 6y ago
But it was a devil's bargain: you would then have to wait multiple weeks for the 5th episode.
srg0 6y ago
Also in some markets the official local release was a year behind. Given that it's not possible to get an HBO subscription outside of the US, for many people pirating was the only way to watch it.
- dtech 6y ago
  Or in the Netherlands, where is was exclusive to 1 ISP
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    An ISP that provided cable internet exclusively; so if you had fibre at home it wouldn't even make sense to use them.
akerro 6y ago
Because it was great and it wasn't available legally in so many countries, or it was with forced reader and no native-English language versions in TV or 480p streaming online. It's most pirated because it was great quality product with low quality service and delivery.
- jankiehodgpodge 6y ago
  There's was also providers in the UK who's bad video compression made the picture so dark it was unwatchable.
  - vimslayer 6y ago
    Are you sure you weren't just tuning in to season 8, episode 3
    - thirdsun 6y ago
      That's probably the episode they're talking about but it doesn't render their complaint less valid. It just shows the limits of streaming technology in its current form.
necovek 6y ago
I have an HBO premium subscription (along with access to HBO Go), but I have downloaded a few of the episodes over torrent to ensure I can watch it where there was no internet or where it was unstable. While I have technically participated in copyright infringement (I haven't raided any ships, I promise, arrgh), I do not feel I have done anything morally wrong.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  If you're in USA or somewhere else with liberal Fair Use then you might not have infringed? I'm not sure there's any caselaw on downloading content you've paid for? Seems very close to format/time shifting to me. Possibly depends if you leeched or not.
  - necovek 6y ago
    Yeah, good point: I do not usually seed stuff that I believe is highly likely to result in C&D letters from my ISP. So yeah, fair use might apply.
  - hermitdev 6y ago
    I don't think that this argument would hold up in court as you're not just downloading for yourself (which you could argue you have a license to the content), but you're also providing (at least parts) of the content to others. I think this is where you'd definitely get into trouble.
    - freeflight 6y ago
      Yup, at least in Germany that's the legal situation: They send out cease&desist letters because torrent upload counts as "sharing the copyrighted work without a license", and because of bit-torrent high connectivity they just assume by default that you are doing it on the "scale of a business", stipulating absurd damage sums. I once torrented an episode of the show The Americans, my last option as my usual sources were weirdly all offline and it was the middle of a season, the show wasn't even legally distributed in Germany at the time. Turned out some German publisher picked up the distribution rights to the show and their first action wasn't to make it legally available in Germany, but trying to profit from Germans who followed the show trough piracy by sending out serial c&d letters demanding 800€ payments and stipulating damages in the range of 10k€ It's a pretty wide-spread and annoying situation to such a degree that using public torrent is a very quick way to get expensive mail as there's a whole lot of anti-piracy outfits in Germany that monitor public torrent trackers for German IPs downloading files named after copyrighted works to send out those c&d letters.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Yup. Entirely HBO's fault too. I don't know why they didn't offer HBO GO with a paid subscription. Missed out on so many sales.
- jki275 6y ago
  It was on HBO Now, which you could get with a paid subscription. It's how I watched it in Japan.

bootlooped 6y ago

But it was a devil's bargain: you would then have to wait multiple weeks for the 5th episode.

srg0 6y ago

Also in some markets the official local release was a year behind. Given that it's not possible to get an HBO subscription outside of the US, for many people pirating was the only way to watch it.

dtech 6y ago
Or in the Netherlands, where is was exclusive to 1 ISP
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  An ISP that provided cable internet exclusively; so if you had fibre at home it wouldn't even make sense to use them.

akerro 6y ago

Because it was great and it wasn't available legally in so many countries, or it was with forced reader and no native-English language versions in TV or 480p streaming online. It's most pirated because it was great quality product with low quality service and delivery.

jankiehodgpodge 6y ago
There's was also providers in the UK who's bad video compression made the picture so dark it was unwatchable.
- vimslayer 6y ago
  Are you sure you weren't just tuning in to season 8, episode 3
  - thirdsun 6y ago
    That's probably the episode they're talking about but it doesn't render their complaint less valid. It just shows the limits of streaming technology in its current form.

necovek 6y ago

I have an HBO premium subscription (along with access to HBO Go), but I have downloaded a few of the episodes over torrent to ensure I can watch it where there was no internet or where it was unstable. While I have technically participated in copyright infringement (I haven't raided any ships, I promise, arrgh), I do not feel I have done anything morally wrong.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
If you're in USA or somewhere else with liberal Fair Use then you might not have infringed? I'm not sure there's any caselaw on downloading content you've paid for? Seems very close to format/time shifting to me. Possibly depends if you leeched or not.
- necovek 6y ago
  Yeah, good point: I do not usually seed stuff that I believe is highly likely to result in C&D letters from my ISP. So yeah, fair use might apply.
- hermitdev 6y ago
  I don't think that this argument would hold up in court as you're not just downloading for yourself (which you could argue you have a license to the content), but you're also providing (at least parts) of the content to others. I think this is where you'd definitely get into trouble.
  - freeflight 6y ago
    Yup, at least in Germany that's the legal situation: They send out cease&desist letters because torrent upload counts as "sharing the copyrighted work without a license", and because of bit-torrent high connectivity they just assume by default that you are doing it on the "scale of a business", stipulating absurd damage sums. I once torrented an episode of the show The Americans, my last option as my usual sources were weirdly all offline and it was the middle of a season, the show wasn't even legally distributed in Germany at the time. Turned out some German publisher picked up the distribution rights to the show and their first action wasn't to make it legally available in Germany, but trying to profit from Germans who followed the show trough piracy by sending out serial c&d letters demanding 800€ payments and stipulating damages in the range of 10k€ It's a pretty wide-spread and annoying situation to such a degree that using public torrent is a very quick way to get expensive mail as there's a whole lot of anti-piracy outfits in Germany that monitor public torrent trackers for German IPs downloading files named after copyrighted works to send out those c&d letters.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Yup. Entirely HBO's fault too. I don't know why they didn't offer HBO GO with a paid subscription. Missed out on so many sales.

jki275 6y ago
It was on HBO Now, which you could get with a paid subscription. It's how I watched it in Japan.