These costs are pushing viewers<\/a> towards alternatives such as Stremio<\/a> \u2013 one of several media aggregation apps through which viewers can access pirated content.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s long piracy history<\/p>\n Australia has historically recorded some of the world\u2019s highest piracy rates<\/a> for film and TV.<\/p>\n In 2015, the ABC reported<\/a> 29% of Australians aged 18\u201364 illegally downloaded movies or TV shows \u2013 and 54% aged 18\u201324 did so regularly.<\/p>\n Much of this stemmed from frustrations with content access. Australian audiences have faced delayed release windows, geo-blocking and expensive pay-TV exclusivity deals. For many, piracy was a workaround for a distribution system that felt restrictive and outdated.<\/p>\n One example was when Foxtel secured exclusive Australian rights<\/a> to Game of Thrones, forcing viewers to subscribe to its services to access the show. It\u2019s no surprise that in 2015 Australia accounted<\/a> for 11.6% of global illegal sharing of the show\u2019s fourth season \u2013 with Melbourne being the top city globally (3.2%).<\/p>\n Back in 2015, I and other analysts argued<\/a> blocking websites and targeting users would be less effective than increasing affordability and access through legitimate channels.<\/p>\n Streaming reduced friction (initially)<\/p>\n Industry surveys from 2014\u201315 showed piracy rates beginning to decline after Netflix\u2019s launch. One study<\/a> found the share of Australians engaging in online piracy dropped by 4%.<\/p>\n Netflix was widely viewed as a \u201cgame-changer<\/a>\u201d in the fight against piracy. Rather than navigating unreliable websites and waiting for downloads, viewers could pay a relatively low monthly fee to access extensive libraries of content.<\/p>\n But the streaming landscape has since shifted dramatically. Libraries are now fragmented across competing services, with films and series jumping between platforms as licensing agreements change.<\/p>\n Viewers have to maintain several subscriptions to legally access a broad range of content. Many can\u2019t afford this. <\/p>\n Enter Stremio<\/p>\n This is the environment in which apps such as Stremio<\/a>, as well as Nuvio<\/a>, Kodi<\/a> and Plex<\/a>, have gained popularity. <\/p>\n Stremio was developed by Bulgarian company Smart Code OOD in the mid-2010s. Rather than hosting films or television shows itself, this free media aggregation platform lets users organise content from multiple services, both legal and illegal, through a single interface. <\/p>\n Apple, Foxtel, Google and many Smart TVs already offer similar aggregation services, allowing users to browse content across multiple streaming libraries through a single interface. Both Apple TV<\/a> and Foxtel\u2019s \u201cAll in One Place<\/a>\u201d approach are designed to simplify navigation across fragmented services, while still requiring users to hold the relevant subscriptions.<\/p>\n These systems are responding to consumers\u2019 growing frustration<\/a> with streaming fragmentation. But using them to access a wide variety of content still incurs high costs.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, content aggregator apps are generally free (or cheap). However, they also support third-party add-ons that can connect users to peer-to-peer torrent networks. This is where they enter legally and ethically complex territory.<\/p>\n The apps themselves are not inherently illegal. However, using them to access copyrighted content through torrent streams will generally constitute copyright infringement under Australian law.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s anti-piracy framework, particularly Section 115A<\/a> of the Copyright Act 1968<\/a>, allows copyright holders to seek Federal Court orders blocking websites primarily designed to infringe copyright.<\/p>\n But the legal responsibility surrounding platforms such as Stremio is complex, because multiple actors are involved. Stremio provides the interface. Third-party distributors supply the copyrighted material. And users access the content through add-ons. <\/p>\n In practice, copyright holders have typically targeted \u201cdistributors<\/a>\u201d and \u201caccess points\u201d, such as torrent sites like The Pirate Bay. <\/p>\n But Stremio is an aggregation interface \u2013 not a content host or distributor \u2013 so it does not fit neatly into these categories. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that while users accessing unauthorised streams may be breaching copyright law, enforcement against individual users remains relatively uncommon in Australia.<\/p>\n Piracy as a user-experience problem<\/p>\n Streaming services once reduced piracy by offering convenience, access and affordability. In other words, they provided a better experience than illegal torrenting. <\/p>\n But the streaming landscape has changed. With viewers facing growing costs and \u201csubscription fatigue\u201d, content aggregators apps will become increasingly attractive, regardless of whether the sources are legitimate. <\/p>\n This should raise concerns for the industry. <\/p>\n If streaming fragmentation continues at the current rate, piracy may no longer be seen as a fringe activity operating outside of mainstream media consumption. It may become the only practical response to a system that has become restrictive, expensive, and difficult to navigate.<!\u2013 Below is The Conversation\u2019s page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. \u2013> Marc C-Scott<\/a>, Associate Professor of Screen Media | Deputy Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching, Victoria University<\/a><\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a brief period, film and TV piracy in Australia seemed to be somewhat under control. When Netflix…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-686315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\u201dThe\"](\"\u201dhttps:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/281877\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic\u201d\")
<!\u2013 End of code. If you don\u2019t see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https:\/\/theconversation.com\/republishing-guidelines \u2013><\/p>\n