The fifth episode of Game of Thrones season 6, The Door, leaked just ahead of its official premiere on Sunday, 22 May. The leak came from HBO Nordic, where the show was made available a day earlier by accident.

The details about the leak, which include a synopsis of the episode, came from the Reddit website from a user called Ozires. The 'Redditor' says HBO Nordic inadvertently made the episode available on its website.

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Although the episode has now been pulled down from the official site, links to torrents of pirated copies have already started circulating through torrent sites.

"Checked it again after having woken up and they've taken it down from the official website now, so clearly it was a mistake for them to put it up," noted the Redditor.

TorrentFreak – a news website covered the peer-to-peer industry and community – has confirmed the legitimacy of the leak. The site originally reported that the leaked videos were of a low quality, but that a 1080p version of the episode is now available.

In 2015, Game of Thrones held its record for being the most pirated show of the year, for the fourth consecutive year. The season 5 finale of the series was illegally downloaded 14.4 million times via torrents, beating the Walking Dead, at 6.9 million downloads, and The Big Bang Theory, at 4.4 million downloads.

The British Office of Intellectual Property wants to go ahead with a crackdown on online piracy. As part of this, the British government is planning to increase the maximum sentence for online pirates to 10 years from two years.

Game of Thrones episode 5 leaks
Game of Thrones season 6 episode 5, The Door, has leaked leaked online Reuters