14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, TorrentFreak used data from the various BitTorrent trackers to determine that the Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2013 so far. The data also reveals that more people have downloaded the show than ever before, some 5.2 million per episode.
HBO isn't a fan of pirates, but piracy is a fact of life. Believe it or not, but the show, and HBO by extension, actually benefits from the illegal downloads. But there was another company that was even more upset about the piracy records than HBO, BitTorrent itself.
The company spawned from the people who created the peer-to-peer technology and is the maker of the most popular BitTorrent clients out there, uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline, a rebranded uTorrent.
But it's trying to distance itself from piracy as much as possible. In fact, it was quite critical of the reports that crowned Game of Thrones the king of BitTorrent piracy.
"The idea of a 'BitTorrent Piracy Record' is a complete fabrication. Because there’s actually no such thing as a 'BitTorrent piracy record.' Because piracy happens outside the BitTorrent ecosystem," BitTorrent's Matt Mason wrote in a blog post.
He goes on to say that BitTorrent, the company, doesn't host any infringing content and that it has nothing to do with the whole thing, which is, of course, true. No one is arguing that BitTorrent, the company, has anything to do with piracy.
But to claim that piracy happens "outside" of the BitTorrent ecosystem is to use a very peculiar definition of the "BitTorrent ecosystem." As TorrentFreak points out in its rebuttal of BitTorrent's claims that the record isn't legitimate, pirates are very much integral to this ecosystem.
For one, obviously, pirates use the BitTorrent protocol. Second, most pirates and pirate sites use the very same trackers that the company uses, OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent. Even when the trackers aren't involved, downloads rely on BitTorrent's own DHT technology to connect peers.
Finally, most pirates use BitTorrent's own client, uTorrent, to grab their favorite shows, including Game of Thrones. So, if the trackers, DHT, the client, and the protocol aren't part of the "BitTorrent ecosystem," what is?
Still, TorrentFreak agreed with BitTorrent on one thing, namely that the company shares no responsibility over what people use the products it creates for.
"We wholeheartedly agree that the technology isn't the problem, just like one can't blame a browser for cyberlocker downloads, BitTorrent Inc. has no say in what their users share and has never condoned piracy," TorrentFreak wrote.
"But let’s try to keep in touch with reality. Lashing out against the media and branding our well documented BitTorrent swarm record as a complete fabrication is not going to help," it added.