HBO Tries To Defeat Game Of Thrones Torrent Pirate Army

Short Bytes: HBO is sending DMCA notices to various ISPs as an effort to reduce piracy of the TV show Game of Thrones. The notices require ISPs to contact the subscribers who allegedly downloaded illegal copies of GOT episodes and ask them to refrain from such acts in the future.

HBO renewed their popular TV show last week for Season 7 and we aren’t much surprised to see the pirate world’s quickness in trying to grab a free copy of their favorite TV show.

The first episode of the Game of Thrones Season 7 was uploaded to various platforms on the web on Sunday, the same day the episode was premiered. And the pirates across the globe spent no time in downloading the episode. But HBO isn’t blind; it can very well see all of the illegal stuff going right under its nose.

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Similar to what happened last year, HBO’s anti-piracy partner IP Echelon has started sending DMCA notices to the ISPs of the alleged pirates in question who are then asked to notify the concerned pirates. TorrentFreak notes in their report that according to the US copyright law, it isn’t obligatory for the ISPs to forward the messages to their subscribers but they might do so out of courtesy.

These messages are currently issued as warnings to the internet subscribers with an expectation to stop indulging themselves in the acts of piracy.

The warning messages mostly target the users who downloaded Game of Thrones episode(s) via the BitTorrent network. The message includes the IP address of the user name, date and time, torrent file name, etc.

“We have information leading us to believe that the IP address xx.xxx.xxx.xxx was used to download or share Game of Thrones without authorization,” reads a redacted copy of a notice.

“As the owner of the IP address, HBO requests that xxx Communications immediately contact the subscriber who was assigned the IP address at the date and time below with the details of this notice, and take the proper steps to prevent further downloading or sharing of unauthorized content and additional infringement notices.”

The notice also asks ISPs to inform users about various online and offline ways to watch the episodes of Games Thrones legally.

All that said, we can only hope that HBO would be able to reduce, if not completely stop, the number of people of pirating Game of Thrones. Other than the fact that pirated copies of the episodes are ‘free,’ various technical issues experienced by many broadcasters, might have been the motivation behind piracy.

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