China tops for illicit downloads of House of Cards season 3

China was tops in downloading pirated copies of season three of the popular political drama House of Cards in the first 24 hours after it was released in the US on Friday, Variety magazine reported.

US piracy tracking company Excipio told Variety that 681,889 unique devices had downloaded House of Cards within 24 hours after the new season hit torrent services, among which 60,538 were from China.

The number is more than twice as many as in season two, which had 320,927 downloads within 24 hours of being pirated in February 2014, Excipio said.

The top five countries for House of Cards season three piracy were China (60,538), followed by the US (50,008), India (47,106), Australia (40,557) and Poland (37,552).

Sohu, a major Chinese online video platform, purchased the rights to stream House of Cards for the life of the series on mobile devices and PCs, said a Sohu manager surnamed Jiang.

But a time for Sohu to stream the show has not been set, and Sohu has contacted Netflix asking it to try to tamp down on illegal downloads, said Jiang.

Jiang told the Global Times that the series is popular among well educated people with high income, a key demographic for advertisers.

According to research firm GlobalWebIndex, aside from illicit downloads, more than 20 million Chinese people used virtual private network services to access Netflix for streaming, which is not available in China.

House of Cards is produced by online streaming video provider Netflix and made history by garnering 14 nominations in the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2013.

The TV series, which describes how the shrewd politician Francis Underwood climbs the ladder of power to the White House, has sparked discussion over whether it authentically portrays US politics on Chinese social media.

According to news portal huxiu.com, Sohu plans to submit the series to the national broadcasting authorities for evaluation this month under new regulations requiring that all overseas-made TV dramas must be reviewed in full with subtitles before they are shown in China.