HBO execs are frantically trying to stop this YouTuber from leaking plots in Game of Thrones

YouTuber Spanish Spoiler is spending his free time uploading videos that explain the next episode of Game of Thrones before they come out.

In each video, according to Business Insider, the mysterious spoiler merchant has managed to predict what each episode contained with alarming accuracy.

Naturally, that’s left HBO pretty pissed – especially after season five was leaked online before the first episode aired last year.

So the company has been taking down the videos and leaving a place holder to explain that HBO was responsible for the disappearance.

However, the internet being the internet, someone has been diligently copying the summaries and uploading them onto Reddit.

While the two Game of Thrones subReddits are against piracy, over on Free Folk, they’re actively trying to encourage it.

So much so, they invited the mysterious YouTuber to an AMA session, and he duly obliged.

But while this appears a classic case of copyright infringement, each video does not contain any footage or stills of the upcoming episode, and is just someone speaking about it.

This raises a fundamental question about how well equipped The Digital Millennium Copyright Act – America’s go to law when it comes to online copyright infringement – is when it comes to issues such as this.

The law outlines that it is a criminal offence to produce and disseminate technology, devices or services that are owned by someone else under copyright.

However, it isn’t illegal to release spoilers online. Last year, Philadelphia police said it should be illegal to post spoilers to the latest Star Wars movie, but its prayers have yet to be answered.

Although moderators on Reddit have often taken matters into their own hands when it comes to dishing out justice to plot leakers.

Still, the point still stands that this is a murky area. If someone can turn Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey into a series of more than 500 gifs without running into trouble, might we be in need of a more nuanced approach to all of this?