House of Cards may be a show all about American politics, but it's extremely popular outside of the United States too. Unfortunately for international viewers, not every country currently has access to Netflix, leading a lot of fans to illegally download the season.
According to Variety, the recent season premiere of Netflix's series House of Cards lead to a large number of illegal downloads across the world. Within the first 24 hours of the show's premiere it had been downloaded by nearly 700,000 people. That's over twice the number of people who pirated House of Cards' second season over the same period of time, about 320,000.
For many of the countries where this illegal downloading was most prevalent, Netflix is not available at all. Those countries are China, India, Australia, Poland and Greece, with China holding the most number of downloads at 60,000. However, half of the countries that topped the list do have access to Netflix, and the United States came in at number two with 50,000 downloads. Also on the list were the U.K., Canada, France and the Netherlands, all countries where Netflix can be purchased.
It's hard to blame consumers too much in countries where the show isn't available. A number of these viewers probably would pay Netflix if given the option, but piracy is the only way to see the show. That's a massive loss of revenue for Netflix, which plans to expand to 200 countries by 2017, according to Variety. Right now, Netflix is only available in 50 countries.
Piracy isn't the only problem, either. Many consumers are also making use of virtual private network services, which allow users to essentially trick their computer into thinking it's located in a different country. In China, more than 20 million people accessed House of Cards season 3 that way. Expanding Netflix to China might not be so easy though, as Netflix first needs to get a service license from the Chinese government.
All things considered, 700,000 downloads isn't that historic of an amount. Just last year Game of Thrones, the most pirated show in the world, was downloaded 8 million times, as we previously reported. But at least HBO is harder to get access to, in 2014 only being available through a cable subscription package which can get up to $100 a month. But Netflix costs $7.99 a month, meaning users could just pay $8, watch the whole season of House of Cards and then cancel before the next payment. Despite that, 50,000 people still downloaded the show illegally.
House of Cards season 3 is now available for streaming on Netflix.
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