These are the 10 most pirated TV shows of 2016

Paying for stuff, eh? What a drag.

If you ignore the moral bankruptcy that comes with it, we're lucky to live in an era that makes avoiding paying for TV shows, movies and music so damn easy. We've reached a point now were between Netflix and illegal streaming and torrents, many of us are more likely to consume almost all of our entertainment through a laptop than through the television. Data released today by TorrentFreak has revealed which TV shows were the most popular amongst online pirates across 2016, and there's no prize for guessing which show came out on top. For the fifth year running, HBO's Game of Thrones was the most torrented show, followed by The Walking Dead. The rest of the top five was made up by Westworld, Arrow and The Flash — exhibiting a pretty clear correlation between torrents and non-Netflix shows. The rest of the top ten is made up of The Big Bang Theory, Vikings, Lucifer, Suits and The Grand Tour. TorrentFreak also noted the trend in torrents of a higher quality, pointing out that pirates now tend to download videos that are 720p or 1080p per frame. They've come a long way from parrots and peglegs, that's for sure.