According to piracy analysis company MUSO, the first episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones has been illegally viewed over 90 million times across the globe.
That beats legal viewing by six times – official figures say 16.1 million people in the US and 2.83 million people in the UK watched the episode, either on TV or by streaming it on NowTV or Sky Go.
GOT was streamed 77.9 million times, torrented on public trackers 8.3 million times, downloaded 4.9 million times and torrented on private trackers 500,000 times, according to MYSO.
Most illegal views came from the US (15.1 million), followed by the UK (6.2 million), Germany (4.9 million), India (4.3 million), with Indonesia (4.3 million).
TorrentFreak reports that HBO’s anti-piracy partner IP Echelon started sending warnings targeted at torrenting pirates.
The warnings in question include the IP-addresses of alleged BitTorrent users and ask the associated ISPs to alert their subscribers, in order to prevent further infringements.
“We have information leading us to believe that the IP address xx.xxx.xxx.xx was used to download or share Game of Thrones without authorization,” the notification begins.
“HBO owns the copyright or exclusive rights to Game of Thrones, and the unauthorized download or distribution constitutes copyright infringement. Downloading unauthorized or unknown content is also a security risk for computers, devices, and networks.”
