Everyone in Australia is still pirating 'Game of Thrones' like mad

Media outlets spent the past day or so trying to avoid broadcasting Game of Thrones spoilers after the first episode of Season 6 debuted Sunday in the U.S., but it looks like we needn't have bothered. You've all already watched it.

In what's become a time honoured tradition, TorrentFreak reported that yet again, Australians were among the most prolific pirates of the show's first episode using BitTorrent. Aussies made up 12.5 percent of those illegally torrenting the episode, it said, compared to 9.7 percent in India and 8.5 percent in the U.S. 

According to the outlet, more than 1 million people downloaded the episode through illicit channels in half a day, although it admitted numbers could be off because of the differences in time zones.

BitTorrent, the company, sought to distinguish between the BitTorrent protocol and piracy sites, and said it did not host nor promote pirated content. "Piracy sites are exploiting the BitTorrent protocol as part of a stack of technology they are exploiting for piracy, including HTTP, Google, iTunes, and the Internet itself," a spokesperson told Mashable Australia.

The show is legally available in Australia via Foxtel at the same time as in the U.S., as well as on the media company's subscription streaming service, Foxtel Play. Episode 1 was watched by a total audience of 727,000, the company said in an emailed statement, a number 31 percent great than Season 5.

"It doesn't yet include all of the catch-up viewing from the Foxtel iQ, which will count when we calculate the cumulative audience for the week," Foxtel's executive director of television, Brian Walsh, added. "When you include those figures, as well as encores across the week, we're forecasting the first episode will absolutely top over 1 million viewers, a phenomenal result by any measure!"

Nevertheless, in the venn diagram of Game of Thrones fans and enthusiastic torrenters, there must be a healthy amount of overlap. If this trend continues, the show could be on track to take out the crown for most pirated show of the year. Yet again.

UPDATE: April 27, 2016, 12:14 p.m. AEST Foxtel statement added.

UPDATE: April 28, 2016, 12:10 p.m. AEST Clarified BitTorrent's position that it does not host nor promote pirated content.

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