Here in Germany, the entire television system is somewhat different from the US. Most people do not have what we call "pay TV", but consume only free-TV and DVD

Here in Germany, the entire television system is somewhat different from the US. Most people do not have what we call "pay TV", but consume only free-TV and DVDs/Blurays. There is no usable streaming service (usable in the sense that it has more than two (!) non-ancient TV series on it). No Hulu, no Netflix. Now with Game of Thrones, what happened is this: The pay-TV group Sky got the rights for it and is showing it with a rather short delay compared to the US date. However, you can't just buy the channel that has GoT, but you have to buy a whole package of channels. That package is rather expensive, since Sky owns several very costly sports transmission licenses. Needless to say, I don't know anybody with a Sky subscription who is not a very devoted sports fan. So for most GoT fans, it is as if you were paying your whole "cable bill" just for that one series. If you decide against that (how could you!), you can of course buy the DVD. The DVD for the third season will be available in March 2014. Yes. One year later. So essentially, you are locked out of the conversation about GoT that is going on on the internet if you want to remain legal without footing the enormous Sky bill. I wonder if there is a firefox extension out there that filters your on-screen text for GoT mentions, since it is absolutely impossible to be one year behind on GoT and spoiler-free. Does anybody still wonder, why GoT was the most torrented thing out there for 2013?