‘Lost’ watchers found breaking records on BitTorrent

Around one million ‘Lost' fans downloaded the season finale of the cult TV show in less than a day, achieving the "questionable honor" of breaking all previous download records on BitTorrent.

BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak reported the news on May 25 as more than 100,000 people located across the globe shared the one single torrent.

In an attempt to reduce the number of illegal downloads broadcasters in 59 countries aired the season finale either simultaneously or within 48 hours of the US broadcast. According to BitTorrent, one of the main reasons consumers download shows through BitTorrent clients is because the show "airs significantly later in their home country."

Despite these attempts users rushed to their computers to download the show immediately after it had aired in the US.

"In the first 20 hours after they appeared on BitTorrent, the final two episodes were downloaded a little over 900,000 times, an amount expected to increase to four or five million by the and of the week. As far as we know, this is a new download record for BitTorrent in such a short time frame," wrote TorrentFreak's Founder and Editor-in-Chief "Ernesto" on the company's blog.

The majority of ‘Lost' downloaders originated from countries outside of the US. Australians proved to be some of the worst offenders making up 15 percent of the "illegal file sharers" downloading the ‘Lost' finale.

TV show ‘Heroes' held the previous record of more than 6 million downloads for one single episode.

Around 13.5 million Americans watched the last two episodes of 'Lost' on the American TV network ABC.