Game of Thrones: HBO ban Brooklyn bar from live-screening show

HBO begins to crack down on more than just online piracy

A nice young boy: Jack Gleeson as King Joffrey in HBO's Game of Thrones (Rex Features)

HBO are really starting to crack down on people illegally sharing Game of Thrones.

The US cable network has written to Brooklyn based bar Videology warning its owners to stop live-screening episodes.

“As a pay subscription service, HBO should not be made available in public establishments,” HBO is reported to have written in a cease-and-desist letter to the bar.

"It's hard for us not to show it, because our fans love it," bar co-owner James Leet told The Village Voice. "And there are probably a dozen bars within a three-block radius of us that will be showing it. For them to single us out and tell us that we can't show it is very disappointing."

"We're sorry that our fans will not be able to see it in the future here," Leet says. "We know they really enjoyed it, and we're sorry we can't do that for them anymore."

The bar also shows AMC's Mad Men, and has not yet been prohibited from doing so (AP)

HBO has already been hit with a number of piracy problems this year. Hours before season five was set to premier, the first four episodes were leaked online by an unknown source.

This lead to HBO issuing infringement notices around the world to people who had illegally downloaded the episodes as well as issuing takedown notices to Periscope users live-streaming the show.

Game of Thrones is already the most pirated show of 2015 according to anti-piracy company Irdeto, which claims that the show has been downloaded over 7 million times already this year.

HBO launched its on demand service HBO Now last month in a bid to crack down on piracy, allowing viewers in the US to catch up with the latest episodes of Game of Thrones legally.

Read more: Game of Thrones is illegally downloaded 116,000 times a day