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"According to Forbes, HBO\u2019s Game of Thrones Season 2 is going to be the most pirated show this year. Not exactly a title any show wants.\n\u201CWith its popularity swelling and no easy way for viewers without cable to watch, HBO\u2019s hit series Game of Thrones is inspiring massive levels of piracy, according to numbers from the BitTorrent-tracking and analysis firm Big Champagne,\u201D writes Forbes. \u201CBy the firm\u2019s rough estimate, the second season of the show has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th\u2019s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day.\u201D\nJohn Robinson, a senior media analyst for Big Champagne, says it\u2019s too early to tell, but the popularity rankings on the\u00A0download site Pirate Bay mean Game Of Thrones is a favorite. \u201CThe fact that it\u2019s consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay\u2019s top one hundred TV show chart seems like an in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared,\u201D he said.\nLast year, piracy of Game of Thrones came in second only to Showtime\u2019s Dexter, but this year they consistently have the lead. Forbes makes sure to note the sites it looked at aren\u2019t the only illegal download spots, and many are tougher to track.\n\u201CWhile Game of Thrones filesharing rates are probably driven in part by its appeal to the young, geeky male demographic that\u2019s most prone to using torrent sites, HBO hasn\u2019t helped the problem by making the show tough to watch online for the young and cable-less,\u201D writes Forbes. \u201CThe show isn\u2019t available through Hulu or Netflix, iTunes offers only Season 1, and using HBO\u2019s own streaming site HBO Go requires a cable subscription.\u201D\n\u201CThis is absolutely a reaction to the show\u2019s not being available elsewhere online,\u201D said Robinson. \u201CIt\u2019s a very tricky game trying to create this kind of scarcity.\u201D\nWould it be nice if HBO came up with a legal online viewing option for its network\u2019s properties? Something you didn\u2019t actually have to have cable for but could pay to watch elsewhere? Yes. Should we be blaming HBO for people stealing its content? No. People pirating is just that. People making the decision not to wait for the show to come to DVD or pay for the privilege to have it in their home. We\u2019ve heard a lot of people have been dropping cable in favor of services such as Hulu, but just because you choose not to access what\u2019s available to you doesn\u2019t make stealing ok.\nIt\u2019s interesting to hear the types of reasoning people have for this type of behavior too. Forbes pointed to a Game of Thrones reddit thread where users who have pirated the show, discussed why they did it. A good number of people said they never would have gotten into the show if they hadn\u2019t pirated it first, but actually wound up purchasing the DVD after the fact. There\u2019s also some who just want the episode available digitally on their computers but still pay for HBO and buy the discs, and international users who have different issues altogether.\nI think one of the biggest issues with piracy of this kind is people want the content immediately. Yes, they could simply wait for the DVD to be released, but they don\u2019t because they want it while everyone else is watching it. If they can\u2019t get it instantly by legal means, they\u2019ll get it instantly by illegal means. It honestly makes me concerned for a show like Game of Thrones, because its survival depends on HBO subscriptions.\nWhat are your thoughts?\n[via Blastr]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/05/12/game-of-thrones-pirated/>