The common perception regarding piracy is that it hurts the sales of the product, i.e. music, video games, television shows, movies, software and etc. On the flipside there are developers and artists who fully embrace piracy, claiming that this helps get their content across to people who might not have access due to lack of funds or unavailability in their region. Surprisingly HBO’s Game of Throne’s director, David Petrarca, seems to agree with this line of thinking despite Game of Throne’s being the most pirated TV-show of 2012 with 4.3 million downloads per episode.
According to Petrarca when shown the download statistics, he said that all these unauthorized downloads don’t really matter and that the show actually survives thanks to the “cultural buzz”, and benefits from the social commentary that it generates which can be seen in various memes around the internet, as well as YouTube videos in which many musicians attempt to make their own cover of the television show’s theme song. Petrarca goes on to state that he believes that shows such as Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and Mad Men owe a portion of their success to the fact that viewers could watch it in their own time, along with its “great writing and production”.