April 16, 2019
The first episode of Season 8 of Game of Thrones was released yesterday in Australia. The final season was one of the most anticipated seasons worldwide. Game of Thrones is also the most pirated show and Australians rank first in pirating the show.
However, if Australians are planning to download the show illegally then they might be in trouble. Australian film and TV industry have warned that they might have to pay a big price for the crime. According to 7news, HBO is actively trying to track down the pirates, but they did not explicitly explain the anti piracy efforts.
After the broadcast of the show last season, according to reports, season 7 was watched more than one billion times illegally worldwide, where 1.77 million Australians illegally downloaded the episodes. It resulted in introduction of new laws in 2017 which banned pirate websites. The law helped reduce the proportion of downloading once a month by Australians from 29% to 19%.
Figures released by HBO shows that the premier episode of season 8 grabbed 17.4 million viewers across all platforms (linear, HBOGO and HBO NOW) on Sunday night alone. The viewership will significantly rise as delayed viewership will be added to the total figure.
