The first episode of Game of Thrones Season 7 aired early this morning, and was quickly uploaded to various torrent websites.

Torrent sites listing the new episode included The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and, 1337X.

Episode 1 aired internationally at 03:00 SAST, and began appearing on piracy websites half an hour later.

This means a pirated version of the episode was uploaded before the episode had finished broadcasting on TV.

Game of Thrones has historically been one of the most popular downloads on piracy websites.

HBO has attempted to combat illegal downloads of the show, including sending takedown requests and appealing to ISPs to take action against piracy.