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It seems amazing that the biggest TV show in the world at the moment is a fantasy epic featuring dragons, dark magic and giants, but that's clearly the case, whether you're looking at official watches, or pirated downloads. This season of Game of Thrones, much like the ones before it, saw new records for torrent popularity online, with some 32 million people pirating the show's various episodes over the week following the airing of the first of season 5.
Part of this explosion is likely to do with the first four episodes being leaked rather than just the one after it was shown, but that's still a pretty staggering number. Most pirates are said to come from the US, France and Brazil, though the UK and Australia also featured in the top 10 pirate list. Despite the numbers being highest with our friends across the pond however, its overall per centage of pirates was much lower at just eight per cent. In comparison, over 30 per cent of the viewers in Australia, where content is notoriously difficult to come by, were pirates.
Smuggling is pretty frowned upon in Westeros. How do you think they feel about piracy?
Here in Great Britain, piracy rates were around 22 per cent, which you have to speculate is thanks to the fact that the show is only available on Sky and airs nearly 24 hours after the show does in the US.
TorrentFreak also took notice of the quality of the episodes people are downloading. While traditionally the SD sources have been the most popular due to bandwidth restrictions, the 720P version has become the most popular this year, with 43.5 per cent of all downloads. While the 480P stream pulled in a respectable 35.1 per cent too, the 1080P copies are seeing a boost in popularity, with over 21 per cent willing to sit and wait for the much larger file to finish downloading.
KitGuru Says: For those of you that pirate the show, what is it that makes you not want to get it legitimately? Is it the cost? The wait? Let us know.
I pirate because, i don’t want to wait couple month to watch it on TV, where it isn’t 1080p and you can’t choose time when you watch it. So i just pirate it. That’s how bad it is in my country.
It airs at an inconvenient time for myself, (i do pay for sky,and record it to watch later) however, i do like watching them at work during lunch after getting a copy from an american user.
I download because I think that paying a cable tv to have just a couple of channels to watch is not fair. If the companies had a another way for the customer to choose the channels he would like instead of a close option which you pay for a lot of bullshit while you just want some specific channels I think it would be fair to pay.
The service is quite expensive in my country, I’m Brazilian, this is why I download to watch later.
It’s either pay $70+ a month with directv or get hbo streaming which is what.. 25 or so a month? If they priced hbo go fairly then maybe they would have more subscribers. The old days of paying premium for TV is over and many people are cutting the cord. Sooner or later TV companies will have to significantly cut their prices to even sustain their income. Before anyone says 20 to 25 a month is nothing.. look at it this way.. at 50 or so you’d get a decent amount of hogwash channels on most providers. But for hbo it’s half that price for what.. a handful of channels and one good show? Lol no.
I am from Greece, and the GOT doesn’t air here at all….
Its’ like overclocking…free power…free tv…
➯➯➯➯➯I RECEIVED FIRST DRAFT OF $13000!@ak10:
➨➨➨➨https://FreeQuickerAdvices.com/meet/suitcase…
How about reliably offer a full 1080P version of the show everywhere globally?
It’s all convenience for me really. And I rather don’t settle for anything less than 1080p either. Most official streams show the video on 720p. It’s too much of a hassle watching it officially anyway… :3
And here I am, not even going to start watching it. All I ever hear about is GoT this GoT that. I’m already tired of watching it mentioned everywhere.
Its being pirated because before the first episode of this season premièred the first 4 episodes were released lol
In the old days you payed for your cable and got all the shows.
These days you need like 8 diffrent subscriptions to watch your favorite footbal team and tv shows totaling a stagering 150 euro+ a month.
I watched Formula 1 races for nearly 20 years and footbal even longer but if you are a simple carpenter you have a choice to pay your bills and watch 45 minutes per hour commercials on tv or pay 2/10 of your wage to tv subscriptions.
Lucky we have internet were the common folks can still watch their favorite tv shows and sports otherwise we can keep working till we break our back see our pensions stolen by banks and criminals in suits before we die.
Seriously tough its getting out of hand with all the diffrent shit a man got to pay for.
Wage of a carpenter is around 1800 euro
1000 euro for gas / electricity / rent
120 euro healthcare
150/180 euro tv crap and internet / telephone
100 euro gasoline
if you have 3 kids like me then you are happy to reach the end of the month with a positive saldo.
and then people wonder why so many games and shows and sport stuff gets downloaded 😛
that’s how bad most countries are.
my country doesn’t even air Game of Thrones (and a lot of other good tv series), outside the close cable tv market. where I live I don’t even have access to cable tv (only way to get it is buying a shitty satellite package), but I do have an internet connection. you do the math. 🙂
probably all shows I’ve watched was from online sources (torrenting & streaming services), you can choose when to watch them, how many episodes you want to watch, and it’s an overall more pleasant experience opposed to regular tv (30 min publicity ads kill anyone’s mood while watching a tv show)…
Look at all these people trying to justify pirating. Breaking the law is breaking the law.
im sure most people pirate cuz no way to get hbo or just to costly
The channel doesn’t air in my country.
I so far haven’t read a single comment here that tries to justify pirating.. giving a reason why you pirate something isn’t the same as saying it’s okay to do so…
none of these people here are saying they are in the right whilst pirating they’re just saying “although pirating is against the law, there are more benefits for me to pirate this then to get it legitimately (where possible)”
Keep reading. Plenty of people trying to make it look like It’s okay or because of my conditions I can justify me pirating. That’s called justification. Whatever helps them sleep at night I suppose. I mean they don’t flat out say It’s okay like you said but lets get serious here. They are trying to justify it in their minds.
Examples:
“The channel doesn’t air in my country.”
“I download because I think that paying a cable TV to have just a couple of channels to watch is not fair.”
“It airs at an inconvenient time”
okay I’ll give you the “paying a cable TV to have a couple of channels” and the “it airs at a inconvenient time” does sounds justifying..
however if I wanna watch something that isn’t available to me through legal means.. I’ll get it through illigal means… doesn’t mean I’m not in the wrong here myself, but if the possibility arises where I can get it through legal means I will… (I’m not justifying my action just giving a reason as to why my actions are currently not in compliance with the law)
Let me pay for the channels I want, which accounts for literally 4 of the 100+ channels I have to pay for to be able to watch GoT, and I wouldn’t do it.
But I am not going to pay over 100$ a month for 99% bullshit, and 1% what I want to watch.
I watch it on the go on my phone, and considering the only way to watch it legally for me is by a subscription to HBO Nordic, which is expensive as fuck. Even worse, as far as I know, you can’t download a DRM free version to put on your phone and watch it without an internet connection. You go figure how I watch it…
I haven’t started watching the latest season, as I prefer watching it in high quality whenever I can, meaning I wait till the whole season is aired and then I watch it all. Perhaps I’ll try paying for a month once it’s done and see how good the subscription to HBO Nordic is. Then I can watch some other shows legally as well during that month, and then end it afterwards 🙂