Pirated HD-quality pilots for a number of upcoming 2015-16 season TV shows began showing up on torrent sites Monday, in what is being called a coordinated action by Variety.
The entertainment news outlet cites information obtained by antipiracy analytics firm Excipio, which reports clean authentic copies of Fox network’s “Minority Report” and “Lucifer,” along with copies of NBC’s “Blindspot” and “The Carmichael Show,” were first distributed on Internet piracy sites about 2 a.m. ET Monday, weeks ahead of their scheduled premieres.
Variety reports by noon ET Monday, just ten hours later, “Lucifer” had been downloaded or accessed by 141,498 separate worldwide torrent clients, while the pilot for “Minority Report” had been hit 111,269 times and “Blindspot” had 81,887 hits.
No figures for downloads of “The Carmichael Show” were available Monday.
While it remains to be seen how the copies of the season pilots were obtained, HBO announced in April, after four episodes of the show “Game of Thrones” hit torrent sites prior to the release of Season Five, it would no longer distribute DVD copies for review screeners.
The premium network now offers promotional materials through streaming only, as it is believed the pirated copies of “GoT” were ripped from DVD.
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