A show like Game of Thrones can't even be seen on Australian TV (R can't be shown and GOT has far too much R material to simply make an alt cut). That means I have to wait several months for other countries to see it before we might get a DVD copy.
I'm pretty sure GOT is on Foxtel, but even 'fast-tracked' Foxtel content can be behind anywhere from a day to a week.
And because you can't be expected to be patient, that justifies theft? Again, this is like saying "
Well, I started to pre order the DVD at the store, but then I decided that stealing it from someone else who already has it would be quicker...."
Although you may not find it "
fair" that a movie or TV show isn't available in your territory, but that's not actually a legitimate excuse for theft.
It's not like that at all, for the simple reason that you don't pay for TV. The minimal monthly amount you pay for subscription television changes based on the channels you get, not the shows you watch, and free to air TV is, well, free.
It's more like saying 'A friend of mine was having a viewing party of this episode movie in a month, but another friend is having a small get together and watching it tomorrow, so I'm going to go to that instead'.
A lot of television 'piracy' at least here is simply streaming episodes of shows earlier than their Australian release, rather than completely downloading an episode. The loss of profit there is equivocal to any loss of profit from free online viewing sites such as iView, or loss of profit of someone watching an episode on television versus on a DVD they may have bought.
Who can say what the affect is on DVD sales.
Of course the argument could be made that if enough people stream the episode, there's loss of profit because of lower likelihood to sell to the territory, but it doesn't seem to be having that catastrophic an effect at the moment.
As well, the reality is if enough people feel that not having it available in their country is 'not fair' enough to decide to pirate it, then won't we get better results from creating solutions that monetise their piracy, or at least start to cater to their needs and monetise that?
If one person speeds down a road and kills someone, they get sent to jail. If 2,000 speed down the same road and all kill people, then the powers that be start looking at ways to better the road itself so it's not so dangerous.
Of course, as a screen practitioner, I don't want my livelihood jeopardised by piracy, but at the same time I can understand to an extent some of the motive behind it, and in a lot of cases, I fail to see as catastrophic a loss of profit as it's always made out to be.
