If you've been too cheap to get HBO and instead spent the last two and a half months illegally downloading episodes of Game of Thrones, you are not alone.

According to TorrentFreak, the show's recently concluded second season was the most illegally downloaded show of the 2011-2012 TV season, averaging 3.9 million downloads per episode. That's nearly identical to the number of people who actually watched the show on HBO Sundays at 9pm.

Following Game of Thrones were sitcoms How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, each averaging more than 2.5 million downloads per episode.

The Top 10 list also features House, Mad Men, Modern Family, Revenge, Desperate Housewives, Family Guy and Supernatural. I can't decide if it's good news or bad news for NBC that it's the only major network without a show on this list.

Perhaps the most interesting show on that list is the CW's Supernatural because, like Game of Thrones, the number of illegal downloads (1.54 million per episode) is nearly identical to the show's actual rating. So not only is Supernatural one of the biggest shows in terms of percentage gain from DVR users, but it also scores big with illegal downloads.

It's also somewhat surprising that the list only includes two cable shows. I would think that cable series, especially pay cable shows on HBO and Showtime, would get a lot more downloads than major network shows. But perhaps that proves that the tech-savvy TV pirates prefer more sci-fi, geek-loving fare, which doesn't really go with shows like Homeland, The Borgias or Boardwalk Empire.

So if you're illegally downloading TV shows, what you're doing is wrong. But at least you're not alone.


(Image courtesy of HBO)