Piracy in Australia.

15 Dec 2016

The Federal Court has just brought down a decision regarding Foxtel and Village Roadshow’s application to block five popular torrent and streaming sites, including Torrentz.eu and the ever-living Pirate Bay, giving ISPs just 15 days to comply with the decision that these sites must be blocked.

I want to make the case that this is a very poor decision on behalf of the Federal Court.

I do agree that there is a huge problem with piracy in Australia. Take the season 4 premiere of Game of Thrones, for instance; Australians led the piracy race, with a total of 11.6% of the total downloads coming from Australian IP addresses¹. The Breaking Bad finale, too, had Australia making up for 18% of the downloads. Over the last year, the number of 12-17 year olds pirating media has doubled.

However, the decision to completely block these sites is only addressing a symptom, not the cause.

One of the main problems for Australian media enthusiasts has always been access. Foxtel is in a particularly interesting position here, as households who choose not to subscribe to their costly plan are stuck watching standard definition free-to-air channels, which may not be able to afford the licensing fees for particular TV shows or movies, or which may not be able to get past exclusivity agreements from the big players.

As of the 5th of September 2016², it costs AU$26 per month to subscribe to their basic “Entertainment” plan, which includes a selection of music and news channels, with 8 channels dedicated to TV shows, 3 to interest programming (Lifestyle, Discovery, National Geographic), and 3 to children’s programming. If you want to watch sport, that’s an extra $25/mo. If you want to watch movies sometimes? Another $20. If you want to subscribe to HD channels (and let’s face it, in this modern age that should be a given) that’s $10 extra.

And so on. For a reasonably-sized family with reasonable family-type viewing needs, it could easily cost $100 per month or more, at which point you may as well pay $135 per month for all the channels on offer.

But wait, what if I want to watch world movies, too? Or what if I’m a completely legitimate citizen who doesn’t want to pirate their pornography online? These and other services aren’t included in that $135. And this is just a monthly cost, remember.

There’s no choice but to pay this exorbitant amount, however: up until the release of Australian Netflix, Foxtel had a monopoly on the home entertainment market. I will admit that the number of shows that are broadcasted in a “timely” fashion (same-day broadcasting) has increased in recent years, however there are still a great deal of more obscure markets to which the Australian media just doesn’t cater.

When any given person in Australia can watch anything they choose to watch in an affordable, timely manner, then it’s time to start thinking about shutting down other access. And not a moment before.

Notes