TL;DR – Staggered release dates, lack of competition, geoblocking and the Australia Tax, and lack of government want to fix.

At some point this week because of either John Wick 2 or Lego Batman there will inevitably be a news story about the high rate of piracy. It is something you hear about every year like clockwork when the next Game of Thrones season starts, or when film companies stagger release dates like they are doing here. However, why is Australia such an outlier when it comes to piracy? We are a prosperous country, with a good economy comparatively speaking, we have laws against it, and our internet is not even that good making piracy that little bit harder than it is in many other countries, but inevitably any conversation about piracy generally ends up focusing on Australia. So today we are going to look at the factors unique to Australia, or at least not as prevalent in other markets, that have led to this high statistic. Now of course just to be on the safe side and to make sure there is no confusion when we talk about piracy we are not talking about the boarding and stealing of naval vessels for commercial gain, we are talking about the acquiring of copies of digital media (movies, TV shows, music, and video games) without purchasing the product, usually through peer-to-peer torrent networks.