The television adaptation of Game of Thrones isn’t just a success for its parent channel, HBO; it also holds the dubious honor of being the most pirated television show of last year on TorrentFreak and other public bittorrent trackers, something that one of the show’s directors, David Petrarca, didn’t seem to mind … at least until his comments on piracy at a recent panel discussion attracted widespread internet attention.
Talking during an appearance at the Perth Writers Festival last weekend, Petrarca reportedly told his audience that he believed that illegal downloading didn’t matter because of the “cultural buzz” and commentary generated by those watching. He went on to say that HBO’s sizable subscriber base — 26 million in the U.S. alone, and 60 million worldwide — meant that the channel was able to afford to create high-quality programming despite those downloading and watching the show illegally.
According to TorrentFreak, a single episode of the show saw around 4,280,000 downloads last year — roughly the same number of people who watch the show on HBO in the U.S. — with more than 80 percent of the downloads occurring outside of the United States. Australia is said to be responsible for 10 percent of each episode’s downloads, a statistic that led to Petrarca’s comment in Perth.
Almost as soon as Petrarca had spoken, his words were widely disseminated and discussed across the Internet, leading to a retraction from the director. “I am 100 percent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier today. “Nobody wins by illegally downloading content.”
What he originally meant, Petrarca explained, was that the high level of illegal downloads merely proved that the strength of the show’s fanbase and buzz, not that the downloads contributed to said buzz. “A buzz is created by the fact that so many people want it,” Petrarca explained, adding that he hopes that there will one day be a legal way for international fans to watch the show online. “It is my hope that technology will find a way to take care of the piracy issue,” he said. “I think most people would be willing to pay for a show they love.”
When contacted for comment on this story, HBO released a statement to Wired that “Game of Thrones is sold worldwide, available legally on a large variety of viewing platforms and is one of HBO’s most popular series. With that kind of success comes a great amount of social media chatter, so can’t say we see an upside to illegal downloads.”
Despite HBO’s comment about the show being available legally “on a large variety of viewing platforms,” there remains an ongoing discussion about online access for HBO’s content. Outside of HBO’s proprietary HBOGo service — a streaming service which requires a paid subscription to the HBO cable channel — and individual episodes or seasons for sale on iTunes and Amazon, the show is not legally available online in the United States; HBO rejected offers from the likes of Netflix for streaming rights to its shows in an attempt to maintain as much control over its content as possible.
Last year a fan-led campaign called Take My Money, HBO! tried to convince the cable channel that there was a willing — and paying — audience for a standalone HBO streaming service. “We pirate Game of Thrones, we use our friend’s HBOGo login to watch True Blood,” the campaign admitted. “Please HBO, offer a standalone HBOGo streaming service and Take My Money!” In response, HBO tweeted that it “love[d] the love for HBO,” but directed everyone to a TechCrunch article that suggested that such a decision wouldn’t make financial sense for the channel. With such a high level of piracy, however, the channel may soon have to reconsider the question of whether or not streaming distribution via third party aggregators will end up being the lesser of two evils.
<em>Game of Thrones</em> Director: Online Piracy Doesn't Matter — Wait, It Does
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<em>Game of Thrones</em> Director: Online Piracy Doesn't Matter — Wait, It Does
