As one of its ‘hottest’ properties, HBO has become very protective of Game of Thrones.
As one of its ‘hottest’ properties, HBO has become very protective of Game of Thrones. In recent weeks thousands of pirates have received warnings in their mailboxes, and the company is also fervently trying to take down links to pirated copies of the show, with some success.
Besides targeting full copies of episodes, HBO also appears to have an eye on unauthorized compilations that focus on scenes without costumes, which are quite a common occurrence.
Sites such as Pornhub list thousands of clips of Khaleesi, Margaery Tyrell, Melisandre and others, fully uncovered. While this isn’t a new trend HBO now says that it’s taking action in response.
“HBO is aware of the issue and is in the process of getting material taken down from Pornhub,” the company said in a statement.
A quick search revealed that a lot of compromising material is still readily available, but some videos have indeed been removed. This includes the Daenerys Targaryen compilation video below.
Since the videos are uploaded by Pornhub users the site itself enjoys safe harbor protection. This means that there’s little else HBO can do other than issue regular takedown requests to protect their assets.
That said, Pornhub is well-aware of the interest in Game of Thrones. In an ‘insights‘ article last month the site analized various trends. Among other things it reported a massive spike in GoT searches before this year’s season premiere.
Popular search terms include “sex scene,” “khaleesi,” “boobs,” “nude” and “parody” while further analysis revealed that Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi) was also by far the most popular Game of Thrones actress on the porn site.
Of course HBO has the right to remove the infringing footage, but the company has reportedly targeted various porn parodies as well. These can in theory be contested, but thus far we haven’t seen any signs of this.
Interestingly, HBO is not the only company that’s worried about having their brand on prominent display at the porn site. A few days ago several users reported that Blizzard began cracking down on Overwatch inspired porn on Pornhub as well.
Whether HBO’s actions will be good enough to keep GoT nude videos from spreading has yet to be seen. Once something’s on the Internet, it’s generally pretty hard to take down, and highlighting the problem may even have an adverse effect.
