Those who pirate the show have several reasons for doing so. In some countries there is simply no legal option available, however, the price tag that comes with many of the legal services is almost as big of a hurdle.

So what does it cost to access Game of Thrones legally in the countries where the show is most frequently pirated? We decided to take a look based on the list of countries that had the most Game of Thrones file-sharers last week.

Below is a selection of the options people have in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands.

Australia

In Australia, Game of Thrones fans need a Foxtel subscription. When we look at the packages offered on the website the cheapest option appears to be the movie and drama combo, which costs $74 AUD (~ 70 USD) per month.

However, the minimum subscription term is six months, which with the added costs adds up to $520 AUD (~ 490 USD).

Assuming that someone’s only interested in watching Game of Thrones, an Australian fan will have to pay $52 AUD (~ 49 USD) per episode, which is rather expensive.

While it’s not advertised as any of the standard options, there’s also the Foxtel Play subscription. This allows people to watch Game of Thrones on demand on a variety of devices. The regular cost of this plan is $50 AUD (~ 50 USD) per month, and there’s currently an offer to get the first three months for $35 AUD (~ 33 USD). The Foxtel website notes that there is no long contract, which makes this option considerably cheaper.

The United States

In the United States there are several options available, which vary per cable provider. The cost of most HBO subscriptions are between $15 and $25 per month, depending on where you live and what your current plan is.

The downside, in addition to being locked in for several months sometimes, is that the HBO deals require a cable/Internet subscription. This makes the total package considerably more expensive, more than $100 per month in some cases.

But then again, pirates need an Internet subscription anyway.

The United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom Game of Thrones is available via Sky Atlantic. The costs are £21.50 (36 USD) a month, but with a minimum contract period of 12 months. This means that for those who are only interested in Game of Thrones, there’s a price tag of £25.80 per episode.

The good news is that UK viewers can watch the episodes simultaneously with the US broadcast, which 9,000 people did this past Sunday.

Update: Sky also offers an online “Now TV” entertainment pass without a contract. Now TV is currently available at an introductory rate of £4.99 per month.

Canada

In Canada, Game of Thrones comes in a package of The Movie Network. The price is roughly $20 CAD (~ 18 USD) per month on both Bell and Rogers. This also requires a digital or satellite TV subscription, which drives the price up to over $60 CAD per month for those who don’t have one.

Again, as with the previous examples, some plans require a several-months-long contract which makes it less interesting for those who only want to watch Game of Thrones.

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands HBO can be ordered as an add-on to most standard cable TV subscriptions. The standard price is roughly 15 euros (~ 21 USD) per month, and several providers allow subscribers to cancel after a month.

The cheapest cable subscriptions in the Netherlands average around 10 euros, which brings the total package to roughly 25 euros (~ 35 USD) per month.

Interestingly, HBO NL offers the first episode of season 4 for free, on YouTube. Of course, this is only available to people from the Netherlands.

Conclusion

The above shows that Game of Thrones certainly doesn’t come cheap, especially not for the true cable-cutters who have no interest in the other content it’s bundled with.

While most people will agree that paying for content is the right thing to do, it’s not always an intuitive choice when a single episode is twice as expensive as a box office ticket for the average Hollywood blockbuster.

So do all these pirates have a point or not?

According to Bruce Meagher, corporate director of “$52 AUD per episode” Foxtel, they do not.

“What we are left with is an argument at the margins about a few dollars. Yet some people still feel that they should be entitled to take this show for free without the consent of its creators rather than pay a reasonable price for an extraordinary product,” he says.

“The Lannisters may not be a pleasant lot, but they, at least, always pay their debts,” he adds.

So what do you think?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

These days XBMC is available on a range of platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, jailbroken iPhone /iPad and Apple TV. There is also an Android version available which means that it can be installed on one of these babies and simply plugged into a TV – no computer required. Crucially, for cord-cutting types, XBMC isn’t limited to playing local video and audio anymore either.

Out of the box XBMC doesn’t deliver much content at all but that functionality is available via the use of third party plugins for mainstream services such as YouTube, Spotify, Justin.tv and even GrooveShark. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Flicking through XBMC’s menus offers up a mind boggling array of live TV, recorded TV, movies of every kind, live sporting events, radio…the list goes on and on. In fact with the correct configuration XBMC pulls huge amounts of content from around the web in a way that no other piece of software can match. In the past discovering and installing the third party plugins took quite a bit of effort on the user’s part, but not any more.

XMBC Hub, the official site for third-party XBMC addons, have just released what they call their ‘Wizard’ installer. We’ve tested it on PC (Mac version here) and it couldn’t be any more simple to use. Install the latest version of XBMC, run it and close it at least once, then run the XBMC Hub Wizard. Done.

Once complete, all the user has to do is run XBMC again and the whole experience is set up and ready to go. Addons for 1Channel, Project Free TV, Icefilms, TV Links, and Tube Plus are all right there, and it looks pretty good too.

The purpose of this article isn’t really to review XBMC (people can experiment with its media functions for themselves) but to take a peek at how it’s being used by so-called “cord-cutters” – people who dump their cable TV provider and use the Internet to obtain their media instead.

Is it really possible to do that efficiently with XBMC? Well it appears so. For example users can search through genres, say comedy TV shows, and the screenshot below shows the kind of results they can expect from the tools provided by the Wizard installer alone. Start adding more sources inside XBMC (it will help you find them) and results go through the roof.

The list of TV shows goes on forever and there’s very little that can’t be found, in many instances going back several series on hundreds of shows from all around the world. None of the content is hosted by XBMC or indexed by its creators (it all comes via the optional third party plugins) but how much of it is legal is up for debate. The plugins pull content from official as well as unofficial sources but there is absolutely no indication from within the app which is which.

For example, Alki David’s FilmOn have just released an XBMC plugin that provides access to a wide range of live UK TV channels, as does the plugin for TVCatchup. There are also YouTube, Vimeo, NASA, Khan and other similar indexes just a couple of clicks away.

Assessing the legal status on other content listed by the plugins isn’t an easy task either. For example, XMBC will pull in live sporting events through sources including Rojadirecta, the site that the DoJ seized but then gave back 18 months later. Through this resource anyone can watch NBA, MLB, NFL, NPB and IPL matches for free, for example.

Despite the gray areas, some content is almost certainly unauthorized, as illustrated by the screenshot below. However, unlike with BitTorrent no sharing takes place, so there are currently no legal repercussions for accessing unauthorized content.

For users looking for an exciting media player that goes the extra mile XBMC certainly fits the bill, but people who have traditionally obtained their content via BitTorrent might feel a certain reluctance to try a new software package. That said, XBMC is free, open source, and its media playing functions are superb in their own right so there’s no problem in using the two side by side.

“XBMC is the future of television, it changes lives,” XBMC Hub’s Adam told TorrentFreak. “It gives you access to every movie and television show ever made, free of charge. So easy, even your grandmother can use it.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

But lately, all that rhetoric about cord cutting has been sounding awfully familiar, and I started to wonder: Where had I heard that before? And then it hit me: Cord cutting is the new file-sharing.

Of course, I don’t mean to say that all cord cutters are pirates. Sure, a subset of them are definitely getting their TV show fix from BitTorrent sites and cyberlockers after ditching cable, especially in countries where no legal alternatives exist. But in the U.S., many people instead turn to Hulu, Netflix and even free over-the-air TV once they cut the cable cord.

Still, cord cutting and file-sharing have a lot in common. On the surface, both are about paying less for movies and TV shows. But take a closer look, and you’ll realize that money is only part of the equation. What really unites cord cutters and file-sharers is that they want to take their media consumption into their own hands.

Cord cutters don’t just want to watch what’s on TV at any given time anymore, and they don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars a year on channels they don’t need, or don’t agree with. Instead, they want to have access to the media they want, when they want it, on the devices of their choice.

The same is true for file-sharing. Sure, one of the reasons that people download torrents is that they’re free. But more often than not, free is the only price point that TV shows or movies are available at to begin with. It can take months before U.S. TV shows become available in Europe or elsewhere, and broadcasters in countries like Germany still think that their audience would rather listen to horrible dubbing as opposed to the English original. In many cases, the only way to get that new TV show episode everyone is talking about on Twitter and Facebook is BitTorrent.

Finally, both file-sharing and cord cutting are driving innovation, often against established industries that would rather keep things the way they are. If it wasn’t for file-sharing, Spotify & Co. wouldn’t exist. And if it wasn’t for people looking for alternatives to traditional cable, Netflix would still just be a DVD rental service.

But this potential for disruption doesn’t bode well with everyone. Movie studios and record companies have been waging a legal war against file-sharing ever since the days of Napster. These days, they’ve found another target: Cord cutting innovators like the New York-based startup Aereo that makes broadcast TV streams available over the web.

Chances are, broadcasters and Hollywood studios will win at least some of these battles, and cable companies will use their market power to keep their online competition in check. But just as file-sharers have done before them, cord cutters will prove their smarts and show us that some things just can’t be stopped.

Follow @jank0

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.