My issue to first address is that I am paying for cable due to it being a cheaper deal (and twc with a monopoly on my region in the east coast). I have hbo and hbo go which allows me to watch Game Of Thrones. Now incase anyone is not aware Game of Thrones is only on hbo/hbo go service , it is not on netflix or hulu . Which is a pretty big reason why Game of Thrones is getting so heavily pirated.
My question (that might sound simple and stupid) is say I was to download episodes of Game of Thrones off of some illegal torrent site , would it still be technically illegal? I am still paying for it like they want me to. A reason to pirate is the faster download speed and offline capability , that HBO Go cannot give me.
Depends on where you live. Some countries will say yes thats illegal, a couple will say no. The real thing you should ask is how you feel about it. Does it feel dirty to you?
Not when I have already payed for it :p
i was just curious how it is, as opposed to how I feel about it.
Considering that as of now I have never faced any consequences for pirating I wouldn't worry about it. I feel like it is more of a personal moral thing than a legal issue since most of the time they do not care. I feel like, If I have paid for it, I can pirate it.
There are a whole lot of things that I admittedly still download from pirates even though I own them. And the reason why is because I want a digital copy on my server, so I can stream it to any of my devices, whenever I want. Second reason is because I don't have a bluray drive on my computer (in fact there is only one dvd drive in the entire house, and it's an external), and some of these pirates make admittedly very good bluray and dvd rips, with insane bitrate and resolution while keeping the file sizes pretty darn small with insane compression (way better on network traffic and takes less space on my drives). Not only that, but I can download a well-seeded HD show/movie faster than I can rip the darn thing.
Now, I never got into GoT, so I don't know if it is something I would enjoy or not. However, if I was paying for hbo, and did not have hbo go, and I really liked it, I would still obtain a copy from the pirates across the internet.
Where I am it is considered a "grey area". If caught, I would prove that I already own a physical copy, and there's a 50/50 chance I would be fined.
Yes, HBO would still consider that illegal, no matter what services you are paying for. Mainly becasue once you download that pirated digital copy, they run under the assumption you will be far less likely to buy it later if you wish to watch it on your own time. Such as going to the store to buy it on Blu-ray or DVD, or a digital copy.
Plus, the way copyright works, is you you pay for the privilege of viewing the content, you never have any rights to it. So you pay for HBO and HBO Go, you are paying for the privilege to view that content via those services, and no others.
In many cases, at least here in the US, there is a lot of grey area. Still, that wont stop HBO from going after to you if you get caught. Often they will contact your ISP saying you're pirating their content, and you will be asked to stop and remove it. In some cases, especially if you don't comply or get caught multiple times, they can suspend or drop your internet service. Even if you can prove you own physical copies.
I understand the need for intellectual property and copyright, but not to the point of excessive greed you see in much of the entertainment industry. =/