Given that not everyone subscribes to HBO, it is astounding how many fans of Game of Thrones are out there. However considering that the series is one of the most pirated series of all time, it makes a lot of sense, but HBO is certainly not taking too kindly to this. A report from TorrentFreak reveals that HBO is keeping a close eye on pirates.According to the report, just hours after the launch of the Season 7 premiere, HBO’s anti-piracy monitoring partner IP Echelon had started to send thousands of warning letters to those caught pirating the show through torrents. The warning letters are pretty standard in terms of their content, which reads (in part), “We have information leading us to believe that the IP address xx.xxx.xxx.xx was used to download or share Game of Thrones without authorization.”
However it seems that due to copyright law, ISPs are not obligated to forward these emails to their users, although there are many who do out of courtesy to these rightsholders. Whether or not legal action will be taken remains to be seen, especially since the number of pirates spread out across various torrent websites and networks is probably too many to try and take to court at once.
Not to mention they would not know who is actually the pirate, since they can only track the IP address which could be shared by multiple users at home. However this doesn’t make it right, but we reckon that HBO has an obligation to try and curb as much of it as possible.
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