LONDON: It is illegal on the part of the pirates to download leaked episodes of the much-anticipated new season of Game of Thrones, just hours ahead of its official global release.
But before you convince yourself there’s safety in numbers and give into your “FOMO” (fear of missing out), take some time to consider the growing list of reasons to do the right thing this time around.
- You could get sued
The game has changed considerably for Australian pirates since last week’s landmark federal court decision that saw Dallas Buyers Club LLC win the right to obtain the names and addresses of nearly 5000 alleged Australian pirates of the film Dallas Buyers Club, for the purposes of suing them for copyright infringement.
Rights holders are cracking down on piracy Down Under and that potentially includes taking you to court to sue for damages.
While those damages are unlikely to be large, anyone successfully sued could also end up being liable for thousands of dollars in court costs.
- No more excuses
One of the most frequent excuses from piracy defenders is that Australians get a raw deal when it comes to accessing affordable and timely content when compared to other countries.
Well, this time HBO did its very best to remove that hurdle, simulating the fifth Game of Thrones season in several countries, including here in Australia on Foxtel at 11am on Monday.
A full Foxtel subscription is expensive (at least $660 plus installation on a 12-month plan if you want HD HBO content), but if you’re only after Game of Thrones you can get it on the Foxtel Play streaming service, albeit at a lower resolution. For the next three months Foxtel has dropped its monthly fee so you can get Foxtel Play’s basic pack plus the Drama add-on which includes Game of Thrones for $30 per month (it’s usually $45).
- Its poor quality
The pirated episodes of Game of Thrones have apparently been pulled from a DVD and so are displayed in 480p, and are reportedly at a fairly low bitrates. They also have a blurred watermark and other artefacts.
Part of what people love about the series is the spectacular attention to detail that goes into the sets, locations, costumes and cinematography, so why would you want to miss all the good stuff just to avoid paying a few bucks?
Watching Game of Thrones on a full Foxtel subscription or by sneaking into the US HBO Now service (see below) will deliver the show in full 1080p HD as it was intended (and ditto if you can wait a few months for the Blu-Rays or on-demand streaming services like Quickflix). Watching on the more cost-effective Foxtel Play knocks the quality down to “SD” (it’s unclear what the resolution of Foxtel Play’s stream actually is, but SD generally refers to less than 720p).
“We have plans to bring HD to [Foxtel Play], but don’t have an ETA at the moment”, said a Foxtel spokesperson.
- There’s a threat your internet could be shut off or slowed down
Last week a representative of Voltage Studios, the parent studio that produced Dallas Buyers Club, suggested non-monetary compensation may be another avenue for punishing copyright infringers.
The studio suggested shutting down the internet connections of pirates who repeat infringe as one such avenue.
Other stakeholders – including ones who have opposed fining or shutting down pirates’ connections – have instead mooted “throttling”, or slowing down, infringers’ internet connections.
But in a win for consumers, these measures haven’t made their way into the anti-piracy code submitted last week by the Australian internet industry and rights holders to the communications regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Whether an Australian judge would ever actually allow such extreme measures outside of the code via an injunction remains to be seen.
- It might soon attract a criminal record
Copyright infringement for personal use in Australia is currently a civil wrong rather than criminal, meaning while it is not technically illegal, infringers are still liable to be sued by rights holders.
In countries like the US, however, it is considered a criminal offence and can land you in jail.
Questions have been raised over whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership, currently being negotiated between Australia, the US and other countries, would create new criminal sanctions for Aussie pirates.
