See kids, this is why internet piracy never pays off. Not only does watching a show via a dodgy online stream result in the producers of your beloved programme being given a smaller budget to work with in ensuing seasons (which means less dragons for you and me), but it’s also totally illegal.
However, if you do ever plan on pulling a fast one on the all-seeing, all-powerful, Three-Eyed-Raven of a television network that is HBO, you’d better make sure you cover your tracks. Game of Thrones is, after all, the most pirated television show of all time.
Four men who weren’t able to maintain anonymity were Bhaskar Joshi, Alok Sharma, Abhishek Ghadiyal, and Mohamad Suhail – the four Mumbai residents who were arrested this Monday for allegedly leaking episode four of the show’s latest season.
An internal investigation made by Star India – the company that found itself in hot water with HBO due to the leaked footage rather blatantly having the channel’s watermark on it – discovered that the employees had leaked the episode online without permission.
According to the Hindustan Times, Sharma, Joshi, and Ghadiyal were all employed by the firm and had access to the video, whilst it was Suhail, a former employee, who eventually leaked it online. The group are being detained until August 21st, having been booked under section 408, 34 of IPC for a breach of trust with common intention and sections 43 and 66 of the IT Act for penalty and compensation for damage to computer and computer-related offences.
Despite this fairly substantial punishment, and the likelihood of even further discipline, hackers have continued to be a nuisance to HBO. In fact, unaired episodes of HBO favourites Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ballers were leaked over this past weekend. So while HBO might be a vast and impressive ship of a network, it certainly seems to have amassed quite a few holes in its hull.
