HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is the most downloaded show on television for the second year in a row. An estimated 5.9 million people downloaded the show using BitTorrent in 2013. While conventional wisdom in the industry is that this is a problem, it does not seem to be according to executives responsible for “Game of Thrones”. When the show took the title in 2012, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said that it was “a compliment of sorts” and Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner (parent company of HBO) said that being the most pirated show is “better than an Emmy” and leads to increased subscriptions.

Obviously the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and some producers are holding firm to the position that piracy is universally a negative thing, that position is being challenged more now that piracy is in decline. “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan, like the “Game of Thrones” executives, believes that piracy actually helped his show to be more successful. Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman at Freakonomics have called into question the numbers put forward by the MPAA and other industry groups.

In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”

Antony Leather of Forbes, who states categorically the he opposes piracy, still believes that there are important lessons in it that television and movie executives might be missing.

Online piracy has been rife for nearly 15 years and broadband speeds fast enough to deal with the large files video file piracy involves for nearly as long. TV series piracy has been some of the more prevalent too. People in Europe have long stayed awake to wait for download links to appear on bit-torrent sharing sites, following an episode airing in the US the same evening. As such I’m possibly less optimistic than Mr [Kevin] Spacey. However we do agree on an issue that’s infuriated me for years. While most definitely wrong, online piracy has certainly taught many companies and corporations some valuable lessons about the need to adapt and understand their customers.

Streaming services such as Netflix have reduced online piracy by an estimated 50 per cent from its peak, however it is unlikely that it will ever go away completely. While they may never love piracy, it appears that at least some executives are learning to live with and learn from file sharing.

The other shows on the top 10 most downloaded list, in addition to “Game of Thrones”, were “Breaking Bad”, “the Walking Dead”, “the Big Bang Theory”, “Dexter”, “How I Met Your Mother”, “Suits”, “Homeland”, “Vikings” and “Arrow”.