THE top US official in Australia has taken the extraordinary step of pleading with us to stop pirating Game of Thrones.

Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich - who confesses to being a fan of the 'great epic' - says he is troubled with news we're one of the world's biggest pirates of the HBO fantasy series.

"Unfortunately, nearly as epic and devious as the drama, is its unprecedented theft by online viewers around the world," Mr Bleich wrote in a Facebook post.

"As the Ambassador here in Australia, it was especially troubling to find out that Australian fans were some of the worst offenders with among the highest piracy rates of Game of Thrones in the world."

He added that Australians can no longer use the excuse of the time delay between the series broadcast in the US and Australia to steal episodes.

"While some people here used to claim that they used pirate sites only because of a delay in getting new episodes here, the show is now available from legitimate sources within hours of its broadcast in the United States," Mr Bleich wrote.

Parents of young fans who refuse to pay for a subscription, or issues with copyright law are not valid excuses either, he said. "None of those reasons is an excuse - stealing is stealing."

Downloading content illegally is not a victimless crime, he said, as artists like the Game of Thrones crew can only do their work if they can be paid for it.

If the four million people who watch Game of Thrones legally had been illegal downloaders, Mr Bleich writes, the latest hit season would never have been made.

"Buying a book in store costs more and takes longer than stealing it from your neighbour's house, but we all know it is the right thing to do and allows authors to make a living and write more books," Mr Bleich argued.

The series is understood to be one of the most expensive currently broadcast on television, with E! reporting the series costs around $6 million per episode.

One episode was illegally downloaded over four million times in 2012 according to BitTorrent trackers. That's the same number as the amount of people who watched it on TV.

Episodes are filmed on location in countries such as Malta, Iceland, Croatia and Morocco.

More than one million viewers illegally downloaded the debut episode of the third season, which went to air in the US on March 31 this year.

Ambassador Bleich was appointed US Ambassador to Australia by President Obama in November 2009.

Contact this reporter: Daniel.Piotrowski@news.com.au | @drpiotrowski

