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Woeful groans over Game of Thrones' spill on piracy sites

Turn us away, and we will burn you first

The first four episodes of the latest series of Game of Thrones has been leaked online – with fans reportedly downloading 550,000 illegal copies of the saucy, bloody fantasy drama in just 12 hours.

Season 5 of GoT is set to air in the US tonight on HBO, while Blighty fans won't be able to view it over on Sky Atlantic until tomorrow evening.

But it would seem that plenty of folk are unwilling to wait for the eps of the epic drama to be drip-fed weekly on the tellybox.

According to entertainment bible Variety, which cited data from piracy-tracking outfit Excipio, dodgy copies of Game of Thrones had been downloaded nearly 800,000 times since first appearing online overnight.

It's been reported that the legit copies of GoT, which have popped up on the BitTorrent sites, orginated from advance DVDs of the drama that had been dished out to the press ahead of its broadcast.

Seems fair to say that hacks at the Sunday Times were not the culprits, however, seeing as they didn't get to preview the show. Ouch.

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