The chance appears to have increased that prior to HBO's scheduled broadcast of "Game of Thrones" Season 6 episodes 9 and 10, torrent and free streaming fans will see them in advance just like what happened with GoT S06 E08. The episode leaked out hours before airing and as in previous cases, HBO is to blame.
As reported by TorrentFreak, pirates got hold of "No One" ahead of everyone else. "Several hours before the official premiere, Episode 8 of Game of Thrones' latest season was already being shared online by tens of thousands of people," the report said.
Essentially, No One was being downloaded by the hundreds of thousands and streamed free and HBO was helpless in stopping the leakage.
And as if to taunt HBO's ongoing crackdown on leaked GoT episodes and spoilers, the uploader of the torrent decided to label the file 'Exclusive', which somehow highlights the fact that keeping a tight lid on Game of Thrones will not be entirely successful. "A high quality copy with the scene release group tag "EXCLUSiVE" quickly spread to various torrent sites, giving pirates the exclusive indeed," TorrentFreak said.
Unsurprisingly, The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and similar sites only obliged to the treat and made the leaked files readily available to the public. The contents provided also included HBO's two other creations - Veep and Silicon Valley.
The leaked No One episode was supposedly sourced from HBO as the report noted that the GoT video bears the show producer's signature. "The episode carries the regular HBO watermark and the WEB release tag shows that the video was ripped from an online service, likely HBO Go," the report said.
The latest leak seems to suggest that HBO's war against piracy is being undermined from the inside and for GoT fans, the incident only foretells of similar seepages to come. And attempts will surely be made to secure advanced copies of "Battle of the Bastards" and "The Winds of Winter" as HBO already billed the episodes packed with epic battle between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton, deaths of major characters and a season finale that will be the longest Game of Thrones episode at 69 minutes of running time.
As it stands now, the door is wide open for the last two episodes of Game of Thrones Season 6 to leak out anew though BGR has one solid advice to prevent such an incident: "If HBO really wants to crack down on piracy, maybe it should start at home."