Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why?

One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it’s hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead.

And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode).

But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn’t help either. This explains why hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. prefer to use BitTorrent.

The same is true for Canada and the United Kingdom, placed third and fourth in the list of pirate kings. If we look at the ranking of cities, London takes the lead followed by Sydney, Melbourne and Amsterdam.

To a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for Game of Throne’s success on BitTorrent. They want to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered.

Whether this is the best decision in terms of revenue is hard to tell, but it’s clear that HBO prefers more exclusiveness over less piracy. And who knows, maybe they even sell HBO subscriptions to BitTorrent downloaders in the long run.

The reasons above are not exhaustive of course, there are many more reasons why people turn to BitTorrent. For some it’s become a matter of habit that will be hard to break, no matter where they live and how good the legal alternative is.

If there are any Game of Thrones pirates reading this, let us know what drives you in the comments.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Ok, so the last sentence isn’t true, but nevertheless that appears to be the current assessment of events according to some BitTorrent users. Worryingly, the interpretation from others is even more wide of the mark.

The problem stems back to a new document which details a set of standards TV show release groups such as LOL and MOMENTUM will have to live up to in order to comply with so-called ‘Scene rules’. Not complying with the format means that a release group’s work risks being ‘nuked’ – a term which means something has been rated second-class by their pirating peers.

The document – ‘The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012′ – is extremely detailed and covers all sorts of technical issues, but the main controversy stems from the adoption of the x264 codec.

“x264 has become the most advanced video codec over the past few years. Compared to Xvid, it is able to provide higher quality and compression at greater SD resolutions,” the rule document begins.

“This standard aims to bring quality control back to SD releases. There are many standalone players/streamers such as TviX, Popcorn Hour, WDTV HD Media Player, Boxee, Xtreamer, PS3, XBOX 360, iPad, & HDTVs that can playback H264 and AAC encapsulated in MP4,” the doc adds.

From February 22nd and earlier in some cases, release groups including ASAP, BAJSKORV, C4TV, D2V, DiVERGE, FTP, KYR, LMAO, LOL, MOMENTUM, SYS, TLA and YesTV began releasing TV shows in the new format. Out went Xvid and avi, in came x264 and MP4.

However, while the release groups want to move with the times, there are many people consuming their content who either don’t or can’t. In the main, people seem disappointed because their standalone Xvid compatible DVD players won’t play the new releases.

Some of the reactions are polite enough, but show a misunderstanding of how the system works.

“LOL, why are all your new uploads MP4 format? How do we get hold of you? We need the AVI format back, really frustrating as most DVD players don’t play MP4 format which means we are back to converting format to AVI – how 3rd world LOL,” begins one user on popular torrent site EZTV.

“Hi there, I agree too please can you revert back to AVI as most DVD players cannot recognize MP4 format and this means I need to do conversion to AVI all the time for my grand mother and its quite painful,” says another.

At worst, some of the comments show an embarrassing sense of entitlement and an attitude that those downloading for free are actually “customers” of these release groups and as such deserve to be treated better.

“F@#k LOL and their mp4′s,” is just one example of the aggression directed towards them.

But there are another set of users who don’t understand where the releases come from at all and are instead directing their anger at the torrent sites – the equivalent of blaming Google for not listing the pictures people had hoped for in their image search.

“MP4 SUCKS AND IS A BULL SHIT FORMAT. AVI WILL ALWAYS BE KING. MORE TROUBLE THAN IS WORTH. TIME TO GET MY DOWNLOADS FROM A BETTER SITE THAT OFFERS AVI AND I KNOW A MAJORITY OF THE DOWN LOADERS WILL DO THE SAME,” shouts an EZTV user.

“SO I THINK EZTV HAS A LIMITED LIFE SPAN LEFT IF THEY DO NOT TELL DOWN LOADERS TO GO BACK TO AVI IT IS PROBABLY ALL OVER FOR THIS SITE.”

First off, these release groups aren’t deliberately releasing TV shows to please the masses. They do it for their own entertainment and it’s only when they leak out do the wider world get access to them. They are certainly not being put online to satisfy the needs of ALL CAPS MAN. Second, the torrent sites index other people’s content, they tend not to be the originators of it.

Sure, some of the more friendly but bewildered comments of upset downloaders are pretty amusing to read, but the more aggressive ones highlight a more worrying trend.

Somewhere along the line a consumer appeared who not only wants everything super quickly and for free, but also believes that the same should be offered with Class A service. Should these things not be delivered, he feels it is his right to take his “business” elsewhere. Could this become the new consumer standard for service on the Internet?

At the moment this toughest breed of consumer appears to be in the minority but thanks to the law of supply and demand, even he will find his needs served. Already people are ‘pirating’ the MP4 releases and re-uploading them in the Xvid format to satisfy his needs.

In the meantime, no doubt LOL and LMAO will be doing what their acronyms suggest.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Due to the site’s growing popularity, FMT started to hit problems in early 2009 – specifically those relating to capacity. According to staff on the site, every day there was a 5% increase in pageviews and registrations. More and more users meant the site consumed more and more bandwidth, which affected both the server performance and stability. This was a problem since the site was already running on a server labeled as “a piece of old junk” by staff.

In February 2009, it all started to get too much. The site needed funds to continue. Staff explained that if every visitor to the site on a single day donated $1, the site could survive for another 6 months. In the end the site raised less than half of this money, raising the possibility that another donation drive would be needed sooner rather than later, if the site was to survive.

Then last week the site completely disappeared. The DNS for the domain was updated on May 12th and no longer points to the old IP address. However, the old IP address is currently still functional and shows this message;

It’s over. We’ve received several take down requests, and have decided not to test the extents of the law. We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and for the fun times we’ve had.

That message seems fairly final, which is quite a shame. However, BitTorrent fans looking for an RSS fix still have plenty of other options, some of which are outlined in our earlier article, Top 10 BitTorrent and RSS tips.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Buffy is among movies and TV shows AOL hopes to peddle for between $10 and $20 each through its new video site.

“The offerings also mark the latest experiments in online distribution as studios and TV networks try everything from showing programs for free on their Web sites to selling already-aired episodes for $1.99 each through Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store, Google Inc.’s video store and others.” says the Associated Press.

“Although users will own the titles, meaning viewing won’t be automatically disabled after a day or two, the movies can be played on only a limited number of Windows-based personal computers or portable devices that support Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player technology,” says AP.

“Limits vary, but they are about four devices for movies and 10 for television shows,” and, “For now, movies may not be burned onto DVDs, a restriction that so far has limited the appeal of movie downloads,” says AP.

p2pnet

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.