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Brazil is #1 country downloading Game of Thrones, Australia is #7.

Research data across a 2 month period indicates we are not the worst for stealing the world's biggest TV show.

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Australia is not the biggest downloader of Game of Thrones -at least it wasn’t during a two month period in data revealed by research company Irdeto.

That claim falls to Brazil, with nearly four times the amount of downloads as Australia. France was second and the USA third.

Australia landed in seventh place.

Between February 5 and April 5 this year, episodes from the first four seasons of Game of Thrones were illegally accessed through the file-sharing website BitTorrent more than 7 million times in total.

Aussies downloaded GoT 260,841 times, while Brazil was 935,990. Granted the list would be tallied differently if it were per capita, or if it was during the period when the show was on air.

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Rory O’Connor, vice president, services, Irdeto said, Piracy is a tidal wave that cannot be controlled, only managed. There is a culture of ‘free’ where many people believe that it is acceptable to pirate these TV shows if they don’t have access to them through legal means.

“If we want to continue to have great TV shows like Game of Thrones, business models need to be protected. That’s why we are passionate about this mission and are investing in technologies and services to help content and rights holders monitor and fight piracy across all distribution formats and release windows.”

To address piracy HBO will be airing GoT in 170 countries simultaneously on Monday, at 11am AEST Monday in Australia. Foxtel has also offered a discounted 3 month subscription for its movies package, which includes the Showcase channel.

In second position as most downloaded show was The Walking Dead, with 5.7 million downloads, and in third was Breaking Bad (3.8 million) followed by Vikings and House of Cards.

8 Responses

  1. It’s kind of funny that Irdeto’s “automated crawlers” can get data like this, but governments aren’t willing to use their stronger powers to find pirates’ IP addresses.

    “File-sharing website” isn’t really the best description of what BitTorrent is. It’s not Audiogalaxy.

    Also, Irdeto is much less a “research company” than it is a pay TV encryption company.

  2. This won’t stop piracy if the content is not available for everyone legally. In New Zealand, the streaming service Neon will be offering it at the same time as it is broadcast on tv. I don’t think there is any such option in Australia.

  3. I’ll be setting my Foxtel box next Monday, so it will be waiting for me when I get home.

    What needs to change is networks buying the rights then sitting on some shows for months, in some cases airing them long after the show has flopped and ended in the US.

    1. And there are plenty of shows that aren’t flops and still running but are delayed on either Foxtel or FTA:
      – Chicago PD
      – Hawaii Five-0
      – The Following
      – The Americans
      – Arrow
      – The Blacklist
      – Marval’s Agents of Shield
      etc etc ec

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