The new season of Game of Thrones has set BitTorrent alight, with the first episode sparking over 160,000 simultaneous shares - but HBO isn't worried.
The network's co-president, Michael Lombardo, told Entertainment Weekly that he's more concerned that pirates aren't getting the best version of the show.
When talking about Game Of Thrones season two's dubious honour of being the most downloaded TV series in 2012, he said, "I probably shouldn't be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts. The demand is there."
Not very dire-wolf
"And it certainly didn't negatively impact the DVD sales," he added, echoing yet more recent research that showed that music piracy doesn't hurt download sales.
"[Piracy is] something comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network."
"One of my worries is about the copies [downloaders are] seeing. The production values of this show are so incredible. SO I'm hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts the the show is holding up."
Let's hope that good feeling towards piracy continues given that the premiere of the show's third season broke Bit Torrent records left right and centre over the weekend: TorrentFreak reports that there has never been so many simultaneous torrents of a file with more than 163,088 people sharing one single torrent.
Of course, HBO isn't exactly pro-piracy - and although it won't be sending out "the Game of Thrones police", as Lombardo puts it, the network does "try to stop piracy when we see it happen" with its beef mainly staying with people who sell pirated versions of its shows.
