Game of Thrones has emerged as the most-pirated TV show over the internet this year, according to news site Torrentfreak's latest annual survey.

 

It said one episode of the series had racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads - slightly more than its estimated US television audience.

 

The site said that overall there had been a "small increase" in the amount of illegal sharing.

 

That was despite a "levelling out" of the activity the previous two years.

 

The rise also followed increased efforts to shut down or block websites providing access to copyright infringing² material.

 

Investigations³ by the US, Mexican and Ukrainian authorities led to two of the best known file-sharing services disappearing earlier this year - digital locker⁴ service Megaupload and Bit Torrent¹ link site Demonoid.

 

The administrators⁵ of Newzbin2 - a site which aggregated⁶ links to illegally copied material sourced from Usenet forums⁷ - also abandoned the operation after the UK courts forced internet service providers (ISPs) to block access.

 

In addition, UK-based Surfthechannel went offline after its owner went on trial for "facilitating" copyright infringement⁸（侵犯，违反） - a crime which resulted in him receiving a four year prison sentence.

 

Several countries ISPs have also been ordered to block The Pirate Bay, although political activists⁹ at Europe's Pirate Parties continue to offer proxy-based workarounds（工作区，变通方法）.

 

Despite all the closures, one episode of of Game of Thrones racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads, according to Torrentfreak. That was slightly more than its estimated US television audience.

 

The level of piracy¹⁰ may be linked to the fact that the TV company behind it - HBO - does not allow Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or other US streaming services access to its programs. It instead restricts them to its own HBO Go online product, which is only available to its cable subscribers.

 

Outside the US, Torrentfreak noted¹¹ that Australia was responsible for a disproportionate amount of illegal copies of Game of Thrones and suggested this may have been because episodes were broadcast locally a week later than in the US.

 

Torrentfreak's editor acknowledged that, despite his findings, HBO might still want to keep its current model.

 

"Not all of the people who pirate do it because it's free - availability is also a big factor," Ernesto Van Der Sar told the BBC.

 

"Most of the titles in the top 10 list are behind paywalls and are not distributed very widely. If TV companies offered them online to a broader audience, piracy would be lower than it is now.

 

"But I'm not sure that would be best for their revenues as they rely on expensive subscriptions¹² which they still sell a lot of. If they allowed people to download individual episodes from Netflix, for example, they might not make as much money."

 

Most pirated TV shows of 2012

 

1. Game of Thrones

 

2. Dexter

 

3. The Big Bang Theory

 

4. How I Met Your Mother

 

5. Breaking Bad

 

6. The Walking Dead

 

7. Homeland

 

8. House

 

9. Fringe

 

10. Revolution

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