Items tagged with Game of Thrones
The eighth and final season of HBO's popular Game of Thrones series is nearly upon us, which means that winter is finally coming. That also means an invasion of malware. Not from HBO, mind you, but through the sometimes sordid torrent community where illegal downloads flourish. As it were, Game of Thrones is the top TV show torrent used to cover up malware, according to data by Kaspersky. Kaspersky's full report includes plenty of interesting data. To start with, it found that the total number of users who encountered malware piggybacking on TV show torrents in 2018 was 126,340. That's actually a 33 percent decrease from 2017, though still a relatively large number. Game of Thrones topped The...
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Several years ago, HBO took the news in stride that its hugely popular Game of Thrones had broken a BitTorrent piracy record. HBO's programming president took it as a "compliment of sorts," further noting that the "demand is there" and that record breaking piracy numbers "certainly didn't impact the DVD sales." It was a refreshing viewpoint for an executive to take, but now more than four years later, HBO is growing tired of the rampant piracy. So much, in fact, that it is putting pirates on notice. HBO is now actively monitoring torrent activity and sending out warning letters to Internet service providers (ISPs) whose subscribers are using their connections to illegally download Game of Thrones,...
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HBO's wildly popular Game of Thrones just recently concluded its fifth season, which ranks as the most popular in the series to date in terms of viewership, both through official channels and via piracy. Speaking of the latter, the season finale set a new record in piracy with 1.5 million downloads in just eight hours. That number is expected to balloon to 10 million in the coming days. It's not really a surprise that the finale of attracted so many illegal downloads -- while this represents more than any previous seasons, breaking unsavory records like this one is nothing unusual when it comes to Game of Thrones. The series has built up a rabid fan base in its five seasons, and piracy is something...
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When it comes to American mega-businesses, Comcast doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation. Its reputation is quite the opposite in fact, twice earning the top honors in The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America competition. You can blame poor customer service, a lack of humor, and wasting $32 million of its own money on the failed Time Warner Cable acquisition for Comcast’s typically “grinchy” behavior. The behavior also extended to allowing third-party streaming services to piggyback on its Internet connections. While HBO Go has been available for quite some time for the Amazon Fire TV, customers that have Comcast Internet have been unable to access the service. That changes today, as we...
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HBO has in the past taken a rather nonchalant approach to piracy, even at times taking the surprisingly refreshing viewpoint that millions of illegal downloads can be viewed as a "compliment of sorts" and that it comes with the territory of "having a wildly successful show on a subscription network." The thing is, if you poke the bear too many times, it's going to react, so nobody should be shocked that HBO is sending out DMCA notices to Game of Thrones pirates. On the surface, it appears HBO is fed up with all the illegal downloads. Season 5 of Game of Thrones saw its first episode downloaded more than 100,000 times in just three hours, which ballooned to over a million within 18 hours....
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Cord-cutting HBO fans are about to get their wish. Time Warner’s premium cable service is poised to offer HBO Now as a standalone, online service. Multiple reports confirm that it will launch in advance of the fifth season of Game of Thrones, which is slated to begin April 12. (Source: HBO) HBO Now is expected to be priced at $15 per month, making it one of the more pricey online video services. It will likely work with a variety of services and devices, including Apple TV, Google-backed streaming devices, and Roku streamers. HBO hopes that HBO Now will attract subscribers who don’t already subscribe to cable, many of whom have been clamoring (and even petitioning) for a standalone...
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HBO's hit series Game of Thrones has the double-edged distinction of being the most pirated TV show in all of 2014. This is the third year in a row that Game of Thrones has been downloaded more times than any other TV show, with its latest season finale attracting more than 8 million downloads on BitTorrent alone. That's higher than the number of people who actually tuned in to watch the finale. We say it's a "double-edged distinction" because on one hand, if you're HBO, you wish that at least a portion of those record numbers would subscribe to your service and watch the show legally. There's certainly some lost revenue there, though at the same time, HBO's programming president Michael...
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CBS and Time Warner have been engaged in a public battle over network access fees and the result has been a blackout in key markets that's left TWC customers unable to access certain CBS properties, including Showtime. These sorts of battles are ill-received by a public that's generally sick of paying an average of $84 a month to watch a handful of channels and now, thanks to a license dispute, finds itself unable to consume content that's been legally paid for. The predictable result? Skyrocketing piracy rates. According to data gathered by TorrentFreak, people in the affected markets of Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Pittsburgh, accounted for...
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Pirates flocked to BitTorrent in record numbers to download the season premiere of HBO's Game of Thrones. Within an hour of the first torrent being uploaded, there were 163,088 people sharing the single file, breaking the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. That's according to TorrentFreak, which notes that the previous record was held by the season premier of Heroes with 144,663 peers. Game of Thrones blew past that mark, and if you count all the different releases, it's estimated that the season opener has been downloaded over a million times already. Despite all this, HBO doesn't seem too ticked off. Just the opposite, actually. "I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it...
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