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  ===Copyright infringement===
  ''Game of Thrones'' has been widely pirated, primarily outside the US. According to the file-sharing news website TorrentFreak, ''Game of Thrones'' has been the most pirated television series since 2012, which means it has held the record for six years in a row. Illegal downloads increased to about seven million in the first quarter of 2015, up 45 percent from 2014. An unnamed episode was downloaded about 4,280,000 times through public BitTorrent trackers in 2012, roughly equal to its number of broadcast viewers. Piracy rates were particularly high in Australia, and US Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich issued a statement condemning Australian piracy of the series in 2013.
  Delays in availability apart from HBO and its affiliates before 2015 and the cost of subscriptions to these services have been cited as causes of the series' illegal distribution. According to ''TorrentFreak'', a subscription to a service for ''Game of Thrones'' would cost up to $25 per month in the United States, up to £26 per episode in the UK and up to $52 per episode in Australia.
  For "combating piracy", HBO said in 2013 that it intended to make its content more widely available within a week of the US premiere (including HBO Go). In 2015, the fifth season was simulcast to 170 countries and to HBO Now users. On April 11, the day before the season premiere, screener copies of the first four episodes of the fifth season leaked to a number of file-sharing websites. Within a day of the leak, the files were downloaded over 800,000 times; in one week the illegal downloads reached 32million, with the season-five premiere alone ("The Wars to Come") pirated 13million times. The season-five finale ("Mother's Mercy") was the most simultaneously shared file in the history of the BitTorrent filesharing protocol, with over 250,000 simultaneous sharers and over 1.5million downloads in eight hours. For the sixth season, HBO did not send screeners to the press, to prevent the spread of unlicensed copies and spoilers.
  Observers, including series director David Petrarca and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, said that illegal downloads did not hurt the series' prospects; it benefited from "buzz" and social commentary, and the high piracy rate did not significantly translate to lost subscriptions. According to ''Polygon'', HBO's relaxed attitude towards piracy and the sharing of login credentials amounted to a premium-television "free-to-play" model. At a 2015 Oxford Union debate, series co-creator David Benioff said that he was just glad that people watched the series; illegally downloaded episodes sometimes interested viewers enough to buy a copy, especially in countries where ''Game of Thrones'' was not televised. Co-creator D. B. Weiss had mixed feelings, saying that the series was expensive to produce and "if it doesn't make the money back, then it ceases to exist". However, he was pleased that so many people "enjoy the show so much they can't wait to get their hands on it." In 2015, ''Guinness World Records'' called ''Game of Thrones'' the most pirated television program.