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Game of Thrones Pirates Being Monitored By HBO, Warnings On The Way (torrentfreak.com)

HBO is leaving no stones unturned in keeping Game of Thrones' piracy under control. The company is monitoring various popular torrent swarms and sending thousands of warnings targeted at internet subscribers whose connections are used to share the season 7 premiere of the popular TV series, reports TorrentFreak: Soon after the first episode of the new season appeared online Sunday evening, the company's anti-piracy partner IP Echelon started sending warnings targeted at torrenting pirates. The warnings in question include the IP-addresses of alleged BitTorrent users and ask the associated ISPs to alert their subscribers, in order to prevent further infringements. "We have information leading us to believe that the IP address xx.xxx.xxx.xx was used to download or share Game of Thrones without authorization," the notification begins. "HBO owns the copyright or exclusive rights to Game of Thrones, and the unauthorized download or distribution constitutes copyright infringement. Downloading unauthorized or unknown content is also a security risk for computers, devices, and networks." Under US copyright law, ISPs are not obligated to forward these emails, which are sent as a DMCA notification. However, many do as a courtesy to the affected rightsholders. The warnings are not targeted at a single swarm but cover a wide variety of torrents. TorrentFreak has already seen takedown notices for the following files, but it's likely that many more are being tracked.

2 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yard Arms by sheramil · · Score: 4, Funny

    British criminals were often Transported for crimes as small as stealing a loaf of bread, but I already live in Australia. Where are they going to send me?

    "Mega-Australia? Ultra-Australia?... Maximum Over-Australia?" - Tien

  2. Re:Meanwhile... by Powercntrl · · Score: 3, Funny

    Its a corruption of the market.

    No, if you don't want to pay: don't watch it. We're not talking about some movie Disney made a million years ago and everyone who worked on it is retired or dead - this is a show which is in current production. They have every right to earn money on something they've just invested money in bringing to the screen.

    Perhaps in 20 years you'd be right to bitch if they're still being copyright nazis about something they've long since abandoned, ya know?

    --

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    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.