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Comment by akjainaj | Hacker News Reader

This is not about the government "suppresing part of a film that is considered obscene" or "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable".

This is about you wanting to download movies or series without paying money to the people who made them. Movies or series that are completely legal to watch and sell in Australia, as long as you pay the people who worked to make them.

Too many people masquerade their freeloading as political activism to feel superior. Sticking it to the man, eh?

And once again I respect the right to download or upload whatever you want, but making it look like you're fighting the big brother censorship when you just want to watch game of thrones, a show that is completely legal to watch in Australia, without paying for it is... childish

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> This is not about the government ... "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable".

That's actually part of the problem. The government should close down illegal establishments, and not just be blocking access to them.

The other part of the problem: Once the gov can tell the ISPs what to block (a) the block list must be secret and (b) the process can be very easily abused, with 'overblocking' being the standard excuse.

Your government can't close down illegal websites in other countries, that's why they're blocking them.

There are no "illegal websites", only some illegal activity on legal websites. Just like there's some illegal activity on legal roadways, but we don't block the roads do we?

Roads are used for a legal purpose by >99% of their users, and even though you could upload Creative Commons content to The Pirate Bay, most of it is illegally shared software/entertainment.

The same they would not block Telegram nation-wide just because some users are using it to upload movies to public gruops (yes, it happens) because most of the users just use it to talk to their friends.

> "most of it is illegally shared software/entertainment"

I prefer to think of it as "conveniently shared". Here in Australia we have a problem with lack of convenience around legal avenues of digital entertainment, so there's not exactly an equivalent legal alternative to something as easy as downloading. It's a fragmented mess of services if you choose to play by the rules.

Regional restrictions, lock-in contracts, and free-to-air "rights" to particular programs exclusively means every platform plays a tug-of-war with viewers, trying to get their subscription dollar or eyeballs on advertising.

People will find the path of least resistance when the commercial interests around them close in with deals and promotions and hype we can't possible keep up with or remain in tune with. So we turn to the internet.

Not everyone is "illegal" all the time. I buy blu-rays of shows I really liked that I previously downloaded. Exposure to content otherwise never discovered has a value we are not seeing factored in to these arguments.

They could tell local authorities; this usually gets things done.

Unless, of cource, $activity isn't even illegal in that other country.

I get what you're saying, but blocking websites via the courts is a clumsy and expensive workaround which obviously has minimal impact and probably zero revenue benefit to the people who make those TV shows.

Further more, to watch shows in Australia we must first find who has that show. It might be Foxtel, so you must sign up to Foxtel to watch that one show. That is not practical.

iTunes is better because you can buy one single episode for $3.50, but it's a shame that it's iTunes and not simply the people who made the show, able to offer it directly to consumers without needing to go through Murdoch's "sign up for our entertainment package" or Apple's "we only take 30%" bullshit.

Bottom line: I don't want to pay Apple or Murdoch in order to pay the TV production company who made the show. That just means the price will always be inflated, and I don't use those services enough to justify that cost.

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