Each year, Australia is crowned the pirate capital of the world in response to our insatiable appetite for Game Of Thrones torrents. A recent study by Finder found a whopping 32 per cent of Aussie ‘GoT’ fans plan to pirate season 7.
We’re not sure this is such a good idea. Following the passing of anti-piracy legislation in Australia, where do you now stand on pirating the show?
With a new season of Game of Thrones less than two weeks away, Australians seems set to become the world’s most prolific pirates of the show for another year running. As we have pointed out in the past, this analysis is usually deeply flawed – but it can’t be denied that many Aussies will be accessing new episodes of the show illegally come July 17.
Over the past 12 months, anti-piracy efforts have been stepped up significantly in Australia, with rights holders and the government working in tandem to combat illegal downloaders. You can rest assured that the online activity of Game Of Thrones pirates will be monitored with keen interest – and a VPN isn’t always a fail-safe solution.
On the flip side, legally accessing Game Of Thrones is now cheaper than ever before. As we have shown, it’s possible to watch the entire series at the same time as the US for as little as $15. (Caveat: you have to give that 15 bucks to Foxtel.)
With all that in mind, what are your plans for the show this year? Will you be risking illegal streams or downloads again, or joining the straight and narrow? Let us know in the (completely anonymous) poll below:
Comments
25 responses to “Are You Planning To Pirate Game Of Thrones This Year?”
I don’t pirate anything. My home server does it all automatically! #blamethemachines
Fucking Skynet, man.
That 3 months free deal takes away the excuse now. I’m cancelling at the end of it and not handing over a single red-cent to Foxtel. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned.
3 months free? I missed that one.
I was planning to sign up to the Foxtel Pop pack deal ($15/month for two months). I think that it’s hard to justify piracy at that price.
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/06/dealhacker-watch-game-of-thrones-season-7-for-free/
Perhaps you should read the links you post. You would have noticed this update buddy.
Ah. I got the link from a Kotaku article only published today so I assumed it was still going. I’d actually used the original article link myself a few weeks back and it was fine for me.
Tested last night with walking dead and the delivery is going to be way after the US to streaming so the choice is watch with ads, download and watch or wait and stream via fox. I have kids which impact in two ways for us, one they didn’t go to sleep on time for the start of walking dead and two, the stream was not available until hours later which means to utilise fox we need to wait until 48+ hours after the US release. While this is indeed a first world problem it is a problem for anyone living in the real world. Fox should just put it straight up to stream I mean, I’m f$@king paying them already so why force me to wait??
Anyway, due to the delay imposed by fox, I may not be able to adhere to my plan to not pirate.
also, while watching some live tv last night, it repeatedly buffered which was a shit.
I don’t know. I have no other way to get it in HD, so I might need to resort to that, maybe while paying for it via Foxtel.
lol nice little scare-piece there, Chris. The odds of being caught and litigated are just as low today as they ever were: Close to zero – but that’s beside the point. If Hollywood doesn’t want to provide us a cheap, flexible solution to watch it in the highest possible quality whenever we like, then you could easily argue that they deserve it. This corporate pandering bullshit is not only ineffective, but highly patronising.
If we want to end piracy, provide reasonable alternatives and thus remove incentive. It’s not rocket science.
Is free reasonable? https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/06/dealhacker-watch-game-of-thrones-season-7-for-free/
There’s no need. The previous “argument”, that GoT wasn’t available without an expensive Foxtel contract and hardware, doesn’t apply now.
As already noted, it will be possible to stream the entire season (and all previous ones too) for free during a trial.
What if your download speed is less than 3Mbps recommended by Foxtel Now? It would seem that downloading is the only option which doesn’t require waiting for DVD.
I don’t want to Chromecast it or watch it on my PC or Laptop, so guess what
Yes. And then when it is released on blu-ray I will buy that and put it on my shelf next to all my other Game of Thrones blu-rays.
I too will time shift a HD copy from the future. Content watched and paid for appropriately.
I have to say that the moderation of new commenters is quite a brutal wait to get cleared. If previous comments are an indication, I’m really not expecting this or my earlier comment here, to be cleared until tomorrow. By then, what was the point of commenting in the first place?
I stream all my movies/shows these days. So technically not sharing, so not illegal…
Depends. If my HBO Go account gets shut down then yes i will pirate it.
I’m ready to get Foxtel Now, but since it is not yet on AppleTV, I would need to buy a Chromecast to watch it on a TV, which seems pointless at this point, considering I have a device that can do the same job already!
Watching on a computer screen is not, in my opinion, a good way to watch a show like GOT.
Gotta give credit to Foxtel for improving their product though, it’s almost ready for mass acceptance!
It wont be anywhere near mass acceptance as long as they insist on their “Packages” system.
Yep, of course it’s just not enough for some people. Unless someone hand delivers a blu-ray a day before air, people will find a reason why legal options aren’t good enough. Scrap that, if it was delivered on blu-ray. People would complain they don’t have a blu-ray player and that is why they pirate.
It will be interesting to see if Foxtel makes a move on piracy. They’re the ones using the courts to shut down sites and now the government has our web histories. There’s a lot of motivation for Foxtel to start pushing that for GOT because it’ll be a while before they have another show which is so high profile and torrented so much.
Won’t pirate it because I got bored of it. Easy.
My parents have fetchTV and it has netflix,stan,sbsondemand,abc iview,9now,10play etc etc
and premium catchup apps from natgeo,disney,food network etc
they could easily spend hours opening each app and browsing content, or if they are looking for a specific show end up asking me to google which service its on as its quicker
There needs to be an app or service that acts as the hub for all streaming apps.
so you open the app, load in your services i.e stan,netflix,catchup apps etc
and it presents it to you as one giant searchable library.
Its the only way i can see piracy getting curbed, because no one wants to have multiple subscriptions with some only being for 1 or 2 shows, and every streaming service is fighting tooth and nail to gain exclusive rights to new shows