Game of Thrones Season 5 leak causes HBO to target illegal downloaders

Over three-quarters of a million downloads of stolen episodes, and counting

Following the reported leak of early episodes of Game of Thrones Season 5 last week, HBO has decided to crack down on those found to be in possession of the content, which has now apparently been downloaded by 778,985 people round the world - and counting - according to piracy-tracking experts at Excipio.

With the leaks now thought to have originated from preview DVDs sent to press reviewers ahead of official television air dates (with the traditional watermarks blurred out on the released torrent shares), Tripwire analyst Ken Westin's assertions last week seem to have been substantiated - this was "not a traditional hack" and it serves a serious reminder to firms that perhaps the largest security risk into today's IT industry remains the carelessness or unreliability of people, rather than insecure IT systems.

But as the horse has already bolted from the HBO stable, the media company is now forced to mop up the damage by going straight to ISPs asking them to notify their customers that downloading the content is illegal, and thousands of letters have already been sent. HBO calls these letters "standard practice", but this is clearly swift retribution worthy of any of Game of Thrones' more ambitious characters.

It's not just home users that are the focus of HBO's wrath, either. The Village Voice reports that a Brooklyn bar has also been served an order to stop showing Game of Thrones every Sunday night - as it had been doing for two years before the story of the latest major leak broke.

The letter to ISPs from HBO advises them to "contact the subscriber who has engaged in the conduct described above and take steps to prevent the subscriber from further downloading or uploading HBO content without authorisation".

The letter also advises ISPs to "take appropriate action against the account holder" under abuse polices and terms of service agreements.