HBO's curious strategy to try to lessen the piracy of 'Game of Thrones'

[Len]

What to do to reduce piracy in the most pirated series of recent years? HBO bets on awareness.

The first episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones , shown last Sunday (16), retained an ungrateful title of the series: the most pirated of the last years. Thousands of people worldwide illegally downloaded the episode on their devices or watched it on pirated streaming sites. In response, HBO is trying to make pirates aware that the legality path is more advantageous

According to the site Torrent Freak , the first episode of the seventh season was the most shared on the sites of pirated torrents. After the episode was shown, over 130,000 people were actively sharing one of the three most popular torrents with the full episode. 

The volume, however, is less than the record 250 million, detected in June 2015 in the last episode of the fifth season of Game of Thrones . But that does not mean that piracy has declined. What happens is that the method is changing.

Pirated streaming sites, such as those derived from Popcorn Time, are proliferating. Because they are easier to use than torrent files, they can have a wider reach. According to a Torrent Freak source, episodes of popular series on one of these sites come to have a million views. The first of the seventh season of Game of Thrones was with an average of 20 thousand exhibitions per hour.

HBO Response

Piracy impacts HBO's revenue. After all, it's a paid television channel. To get access to your award-winning series, you must sign it with a package that includes other channels available at the carriers. HBO also has its own streaming service for the transmission of its content that is disconnected from pay-TV operators, HBO Now. In Brazil, however, it is not yet available.

To try to convert some of those viewers who do not pay for content, HBO is monitoring pirated streaming sites and torrent services and sending emails to access providers used by them.

Torrent Freak has access to the message that the channel sends. She says: "HBO owns the exclusive and copyrights of Game of Thrones and unauthorized download or distribution constitutes copyright infringement. Downloading unauthorized or unknown content is also a security risk to computers, devices, and networks. "

The message then asks Internet service providers to direct customers that there are other legalized ways to access HBO content. Providers are under no obligation to forward the message to customers, but HBO hopes to sensitize them.

Regardless of whether it is successful, the channel will have to strengthen the streaming infrastructure. On the day of the series' new season premiere, paying HBO customers have complained about failures in the streaming service.



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