LOS ANGELES, March 4 ― Less than 24 hours after premiering on Netflix, the third season of “House of Cards” had already been illegally downloaded 680,000 times worldwide, according to the piracy tracker Excipio.

On February 27, Netflix introduced the highly anticipated third season of its political drama starring Kevin Spacey. But the platform's subscribers weren't the only ones eager to see the new episodes, which were illegally downloaded 681,889 times worldwide in the 24 hours following the premiere.

This impressive figure suggests that piracy of the series has more than doubled since last year. In 2014, the second season was pirated 320,927 times during the day after its release on the platform.

China leads the pirating trend

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As the site of 60,000 illegal downloads, China was the top territory for piracy of the third season of “House of Cards.” In the country, where Netflix is not available, some 20 million internet users have installed a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to gain access to the American platform by hiding their location.

Next in the ranking was the US with 50,008 illegal downloads, followed by India (47,106), Australia (40,557), Poland (37,552), the UK (32,703), Canada (27,584), France (27,151), Greece (20,551) and the Netherlands (20,402). Interestingly, Netflix is already available in five of these top ten countries for piracy (Canada, France, the Netherlands, the US and the UK). The service is set to launch Down Under on March 24. ― AFP-Relaxnews