The finale of the fourth season of the popular TV series, Game of Thrones, was aired in the US yesterday night and very soon after pirated copies were flooding the web. Hundreds of thousands of users began to download the pirated copy, most of them using just a single torrent file. The torrent file reached a peak of 241,094 users – 179,004 seeders and 62,090 leechers. The previous swarming record was set only a week earlier by the previous episode which had just over 208,000 users sharing episode nine. In fact, swarming records were broken four times by different episodes of Game of Thrones season 4. This particular file has seen over half a million complete downloads (in under 24 hours!) and there are multiple copies of the season 4 finale uploaded across the web.
It comes as no surprise that the swarming record has been broken numerous times by Game of Thrones as it has quickly gained both popularity and success across the world. However, large torrent swarms being seen even today whilst many ISPs and governments have cracked down to peer-to-peer file sharing shows that the public is not yet ready to give up the free internet.