Pirates Love Zombies: ‘Walking Dead’ Premier Downloaded 500K Times Within 16 Hours of Airing on AMC

No, I'm not talking about the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. (Get it? A film about undead pirates?) I'm talking about video pirates—a group of evildoers that, in all likelihood, includes you, dear reader—and how they went absolutely bonkers for the Season 3 premier of The Walking Dead.

How much did they love it, you ask? Well, according to TorrentFreak, the episode was downloaded a whopping 500,000 times in the first 16 hours after it aired on AMC this past Sunday. And this is despite the fact that a whopping 16.1 million people actually watched it live, which was a 50% increase over last year.

Of course, AMC and distributors Fox International Channels took a lot of measures to cut down on piracy of the season opener. AMC has the show available for free streaming in the U.S. for another four weeks, and Fox debuted the season in 125 other countries within 24 hours of it's debut stateside. But the pirates still went nuts, and the largest chunk of them (15%) were Americans.

USA! USA!

Seriously, though, guys. It's obvious why people download stuff instead of watching it live or on your stupid websites: you can download hours of television content while you sleep, then watch it the next day commercial free on your TV, computer, phone, or tablet. The only way you're going to beat that is Netflix. Or at least, that's what Netflix is banking on.