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I don't think this will hurt Netflix too much, if anything it might lessen the load on their servers...

I would tend to agree with you, especially because the season is supposed to have more than 10 episodes (13 or so). Also, probably a very tiny fraction of people already paying for Netflix would choose to go the pirating route.

Not that I am necessarily disagreeing with your conclusion, but wouldn't Netflix be more concerned about failing to sign up non-customers who would have otherwise signed up, had it not been not for the leak?

I'm guessing the number of people who haven't yet signed up for Netflix _and_ who will download the pirate episodes _and_ were going to sign up were it not for the leak is rather small

Who would sign up just to watch the fifth season? If someone was swayed by the marketing he'd probably want to watch from season one.

We are left with a minority that has watched the first four seasons but left Netflix sometime in the last year and were planning to come before season 5 but with the leak would decide to pirate it instead.

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