The first episode of Game of Thrones Season 3 has become the most pirated TV show ever, according to TorrentFreak.

According to the blog, the episode has been shared and downloaded on BitTorrents a million times in less than a day.

There were also more than 160,000 simultaneous peers sharing one file of the episode.

The first episode of Game of Thrones Season 3 has become the most pirated TV show ever

The previous record was for the series three premiere of Heroes which had 144,663 peers in 2008.

Data compiled by TorrentFreak shows that Australia had the highest piracy rate according to population size of popular download destinations, while London topped the list of pirate cities.

Reasons for the high piracy rate include staggered international release of Game of Thrones and the programme being shown on subscription channels.

In America the show airs on HBO while in the UK it is shown on Sky Atlantic.

Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV show over the internet in 2012.

One episode of Game of Thrones racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads, according to Torrentfreak. That was slightly more than its estimated US television audience.

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