(This story originally appeared in on Apr 19, 2015)

Furious 7, replete with its tear-jerking tribute to the late star Paul Walker , broke all box-office records when it was released in India last week. But while many queued up to buy tickets, many more took to the internet to download the actionpacked flick. The film was downloaded 2.59 million times worldwide on torrent networks in five days, according to a report by piracy-tracking firm Excipio in Variety .India topped with 5,78,000 downloads while Pakistan was second with 3,21,000, followed by China with 2,89,000 peer-topeer torrent downloads. While these numbers were still rolling in, pirates found a bounty with four episodes of the latest season of popular TV show Game of Thrones, leaked a day before it was to premiere on HBO. Over two days, four leaked episodes of Game of Thrones became the most downloaded files globally , TorrentFreak reported. India was third in this race, behind only the UK and the US.Indians are usually made to wait for their favourite western shows and movies.For instance, until last year, India had to wait for a week before it could watch the latest episodes of GoT. But even though this has changed, the piracy habit hasn't. “For Season 5, fans can watch the latest episodes at the same time as the US premiere, ad-free.We believe the move to a simulcast airing of Go T in 170 countries is going to curb piracy ,“ says Monica Tata, managing director, HBO India.But many Indians weren't even aware of the simulcast on HBO Defined or chose not to fork out the premium cost for the channel (Rs 90 on an HD set-top HD set-top box of Tata Sky). “Ensuring timely and costeffective availability of content is an important measure in controlling piracy , along with monitoring pirate links,“ says Roger Harvey, director, Australia and New Zealand, Irdeto -an anti-piracy solutions company .It comes as no surprise that Indians were sixth in the world when it came to downloading Oscar-nominated movies, most of which were released here months after their US dates (see box).The GoT download frenzy wasn't a new trend though. Irdeto recently released global figures for the series which showed a 45% increase in piracy worldwide over 2014.More importantly , India registered a whopping 155% rise in the same period. “For me, it is about convenience. I downloaded all four seasons at the same time and watched them in my free time,“ says Ankita Sen, a 20-year-old college student in Kolkata.There is another reason for this significant rise in downloads in India -soaring internet speeds. “There's a tipping point observed at 10Mbps for every country . Once you have that kind of internet speed at your disposal, illegal downloads spike,“ says Harvey.Censorship is another factor that drives illegal downloads in India. “After 50 Shades of Grey was banned, it was clear that the mature audience for the film was going to find it online,“ says Nishant Shah, co-founder of the Centre for Internet and Society , Bangalore. This is also an obvious incentive to download uncut DVD rips of a series like GoT, which is filled with skull-crushing brutality and incestuous sex scenes. Tata, however, stresses that no more than a couple of minutes are edited from an episode of GoT for its India premiere.Shah points out another problem typical to Indians.“For a large population, the thinking is that they have paid for the copying because they have paid for the Internet connection,“ he says.