
Last week, torrentfreak.com reported that the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics had been downloaded by more than a million people – but that number has doubled over the past week, according to an article that appeared on the website. There appears to be, however, less interest in the other Olympic events, as most of these are downloaded less than 20,000 times, according to torrentfreak.com.
The availability of torrents has increased significantly since the 2004 games, and the greatest demand for Olympic torrents is from the Chinese – as much as 65% of the people who downloaded the Opening Ceremony came from China, according to torrentfreak.com.
The International Olympic Committee, however, is not happy to see the broadcasts on BitTorrent sites, according to the article. Earlier this week, the IOC sent a letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice that urged her to work on taking down The Pirate Bay torrent site, according to torrentfreak.com.
There is no clear reason why the IOC is pointing fingers at Pirate Bay, and not any other BitTorrent website, the article reports. The IOC is also concerned that the Closing Ceremonies of the Games, set for August 24, will end up on BitTorrent ‘immediately after the fireworks’, according to torrentfreak.com.
