It’s unsurprising to hear that Game of Thrones is one of the most-pirated shows currently on the air today – if Thrones is the only HBO show you watch, then why bother paying for HBO? Or even HBO GO? Free things >>>> not free things…unless you are HBO.
Seeing as how illegal pirating basically equates to HBO being forced to watch millions of dollars get flushed down the toilet, it makes sense that the network is now trying to actively curb the amount of downloads its shows receive. According to TorrentFreak:
Since the start of the new season the company’s anti-piracy partner IP Echelon has sent thousands of warnings to ISPs, urging them to take action against alleged pirates.
The warning mails in question include the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users who were caught sharing recent episodes of Game of Thrones, and the notifications HBO asks the ISPs to alert the associated subscribers to prevent further infringements.
“As the owner of the IP address, HBO requests that [ISP] immediately contact the subscriber who was assigned the IP address at the date and time below with the details of this notice, and take the proper steps to prevent further downloading or sharing of unauthorized content and additional infringement notices.”
An excerpt from one such letter can be read below:
TorrentFreak notes that these letters are “pretty common,” however their strategy of pointing pirates towards legal options to obtain media is something that they “haven’t seen in the past”:
Knowing that people tend to ignore these requests and take further action to hide their identity from their ISPs, HBO has also reportedly begun targeting torrent sites with takedown requests. Most ignore said requests, however “search engines such as KickassTorrents and Torrentz have removed links to hundreds of torrents.” Some links are even removed only minutes after being uploaded, which according to TorrentFreak is “much quicker than average.”
But will this be enough to deter people from downloading Game of Thrones? Doubtful, at best.
[H/T TorrentFreak]