TorrentFreak's Journal
 
[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View]

Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

    Time Event
    8:11a
    How Game of Thrones Made Piracy History

    Traditionally, the Game of Thrones season finale is among the most viewed episodes, also on pirate sites.

    When the entire series comes to an end, interest is only heightened.

    This is what happened indeed. While many people have been rather critical about the story-line of the final season, millions of people ‘tuned’ in, both through authorized and unofficial channels.

    The official ratings shot through the roof, with 13.6 million US viewers during the official airing, which is also a new all-time record for an HBO show. On pirate sites, there was plenty of interest as well.

    Millions of people pirated a copy. At the height, yesterday afternoon, more than 200,000 people were actively sharing the three most popular torrents, with the most popular one being good for 130,000 sharers alone.

    While this is a massive number, it’s nowhere near the all-time record. That dates back to 2015, when over a quarter million people were simultaneously sharing a single file. This drop is in part because the piracy ecosystem has evolved.

    Torrent sites used to be the main distribution platforms for pirated TV shows, but unauthorized streaming sites are much more popular today. These sites don’t make any viewing numbers public but are good for millions of ‘pirate’ views as well.

    With this in mind, it is likely that the record of the largest BitTorrent swarm in history will never be broken.

    The end of Game of Thrones wraps up one of the biggest continuing stories in file-sharing history. The HBO show was as crowned the “most pirated” TV-series for several years, and is likely to scoop up this title again in 2019, to secure its place in history.

    Aside from the impressive numbers, Game of Thrones was also at the center of other piracy-related news and discussions, much of which we have discussed in detail here.

    One key theme that reappeared year after year were the numerous leaks. The most prominent one dates back to 2015 when the first four episodes leaked from a promotional screener.

    In 2017 a Game of Thrones episode leaked with a “Star India” watermark. This eventually led to the arrests of four people. Keeping up with this trend, several episodes came out early this year as well, and even before the final, the plot was already out.

    The fact that pirates were often able to see GoT episodes before regular viewers only increased the piracy figures. This was also confirmed by academic research which found that these leaks bred pirates while hurting official viewing numbers.

    Other major factors that played a role in the high piracy rates are ‘availability’ and pricing.

    During the early seasons, Game of Thrones wasn’t as widely available as it is today. And even if it was, there were often significant release delays, up to several weeks. That drove many people, especially the bigger fans, to pirate sites.

    Over the years the availability problem was addressed in many countries, but for many a pricing hurdle remained. Watching Game of Thrones legally, could in many cases cost hundreds of dollars per season, while the pirate alternative was free.

    Ironically, even those who had eventually signed up for a legal subscription would sometimes continue to pirate, just out of habit. In Australia,  for example, 20% of the Foxtel subscribers who had already paid for Game of Thrones still chose to pirate the show instead.

    In Australia, Game of Thrones piracy has been a hot topic for years. Due to early release delays and relatively high pricing, many chose the piracy route. This frustrated rightsholders and even the U.S. Ambassador, with the latter stating that there is no excuse for ‘stealing.’

    Amidst all the controversy, HBO remained fairly calm. Yes, the company issued thousands of takedown notices and even warned some individual file-sharers, but that was about it. Some people did receive settlement demands in 2016, but that was the work of scammers.

    Some people connected more directly to Game of Thrones also recognized the upside of piracy.  Director David Petrarca, for example, previously admitted that piracy generated much-needed “cultural buzz” around the series.

    Similarly, Jeff Bewkes, in 2013 the CEO of HBO’s parent company Time Warner, noted that piracy resulted in more subscriptions for his company and that receiving the title of “most-pirated” TV-show was actually “better than an Emmy.

    That’s a worthy statement to end with.

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    6:41p
    Game of Thrones Piracy in Russia: 180,000 Takedowns, Mirror Wars & Capitulation

    There have been many stories published about Game of Thrones, mostly due to its massive viewing figures.

    However, the now-concluded show wasn’t always viewed on legitimate platforms, something which made it the most-pirated show in TV history.

    While breaking records on all platforms is something that many shows will settle for, behind the scenes there’s a constant battle against piracy. Over in Russia, that task has fallen to anti-piracy company Group-IB.

    After working on behalf of streaming service Amediateka, which has held the exclusive distribution rights to Game of Thrones in Russia since April 2015, Group-IB has today revealed some of the facts and stats from its four-year campaign.

    The headline figure is that since the launch of Season Five, Group-IB has carried out successful takedowns against 180,000 links to illicit copies of the show on websites, forums, and social media.

    As the infographic below shows, enforcement was something of a crescendo, growing rapidly as the seasons progressed (bars represent takedowns during the seasons’ airings).

    During Season 8, Group-IB’s team took down more than 43,700 links to pirated versions of the show in Russian.

    While that’s a large number of takedowns in itself, those were spread far and wide, spanning 1,098 different websites. More than 90 of those sites were designed specifically to spread pirated copies of the show.

    Like all takedown campaigns, Group-IB also placed an emphasis on removing links to pirated copies of the show from search engines. Yandex is Russia’s most popular portal so it’s no surprise it chose to focus there.

    The company reports that more than 30,000 links were removed from the search engine. Group-IB informs TF that they were all links to streaming websites but also of interest was the pirates’ response to those takedowns.

    According to the anti-piracy company, the operators of the sites were unprepared for their links to be removed from Yandex, so began taking counter-measures by duplicating their platforms to ensure a new search engine listing.

    Amediateka, home of HBO in Russia

    “In response to the blocking, online pirates struck back by creating mirrors on a daily basis – copies of their websites with new but very similar domain names. For instance, one of the pirates created more than 20 mirrors on their subdomains,” Group-IB reports.

    “However, according to the pirates’ forum posts, the owners of pirate websites were not ready for the ‘attack’ on them: ‘Looks like somebody just wiped the links out. Some of the pages disappeared… some of them do not appear in search results’,” Group-IB reports, citing the operators’ comments.

    The anti-piracy campaign also targeted social media and by default VK.com, Russia’s largest social networking site. Interestingly, after filing numerous complaints with VK, some of the groups on the platform reportedly decided to go straight, converting from places to host pirated videos to become Game of Thrones fan pages.

    “Group-IB Anti-Piracy team filed many takedowns through VK moderators who forced the groups’ owners to remove infringing content,” the company informs TF.

    “The groups which kept publishing pirated content despite the warnings from VK were banned. Others, which removed the infringing content, turned into fan pages so as not to lose traffic that can be converted to advertising revenues.”

    Finally, some thoughts from Andrey Busargin, Director of Anti-Piracy and Brand Protection at Group-IB.

    “For us the battle against online pirates, trying to profit off the illegal distribution of the Game of Thrones in Russian, was as fierce as for George R.R. Martin’s characters,” Busargin says.

    “I would also like to highlight Amediateka’s commitment to counter online piracy in Russia: they brought in Group-IB Anti-Piracy team ahead of time and have been making continuous efforts to popularize legal viewership of the Game of Thrones making it available on its website, in movie theaters all over the country and even on the stadium.”

    While there will always be historic GoT links to clean up, Group-IB also protects other titles, including True Detective, Billions, The Good Wife, and Westworld. Game of Thrones may be over, but the takedown work will persist for years to come.

    Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

    << Previous Day 2019/05/21
    [Calendar]
    Next Day >>

TorrentFreak   About LJ.Rossia.org