The first four episodes of Game of Thrones Season five have been leaked online a day before its official release. The copies were spotted on illegal download sites including IPTorrents, The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents.

Greg Spence, the producer in charge of post-production for Game of Thrones said last week he was worried about potential leaks. In an interview he commented: “The cast is looping all over the world, sending files back and forth. Artists are working in special-effects houses all over the world. The files are watermarked, and editors have to confirm in writing that they’ve deleted them.”

Game of Thrones has been the most pirated show on the Internet for three years in a row. This time the most downloads came in the UK with one in ten of the one million downloads per episode (by Monday morning) being to UK IP addresses according to TorrentFreak.

According to reports the episodes appear to come from ripped press preview DVDs and the digital watermarks have been blurred.

Categories: Articles, Content, Piracy