Over 200,000 people are actively sharing the first episode of season six of the hit HBO show "Game of Thrones", and in the day since it first aired it has been downloaded over a million times via BitTorrent, according to Torrentfreak.
And, once again, Australia is leading the charge, making up 12.5 percent of all downloads, an increase of nearly 1 percent since 2014. Those numbers are no mean feat, with Australia's comparatively tiny audience. Australia's piracy is usually attributed to the low number of options locals have for watching shows legitimately.
Australian pay TV service Foxtel is the only way Australians can legally watch Game of Thrones with the rest of the world. For the three-month period for which Game of Thrones runs, this would cost subscribers AU$90 (around $70 or £50). Foxtel did not immediately reply to request for comment.
Last year, the Game of Thrones season 5 finale broke piracy records, with nearly 260,000 people actively sharing a torrent of the episode. In an interview in 2013, HBO programming lead Michael Lombardo called the show's record-breaking piracy rate "a compliment of sorts."