TV Delays Driving AU Viewers To Piracy

Astat1ne writes in with a story in The Register about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing getting overseas-produced series and how this is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The problem is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website. Quoting: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series, Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first-run series first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months."

Comments

Why the delay?

[Weaselmancer]

Seriously, 17 months?

Why the delay? What exactly is it that could possibly take so long? You could almost put the DVDs in a hot air balloon and get them there quicker.

Especially considering that this is sales. Who waits that long to make money? Especially in that industry?

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically the older a show is the cheaper it is to buy. The Australian tv companies would have to pay a lot more to the American production companies if they wanted the rights to a show soon after it came out.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give 'em a break. They need time to translate the show into Australian.

Re:Why the delay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give 'em a break. They need time to translate the show into Australian. There's also a minor issue with standards conversion; although Australia uses PAL, like the UK, their programmes have to undergo further conversion to flip the image upside down (which, of course, looks the right way up in Australia). The reverse also applies; this is why Britain is a bit behind Australia when showing Neighbours.

You can take a British TV set to Australia (and vice versa), and even receive pictures, but the programmes will be the wrong way up.

It's true, I swear.

Re:Why the delay?

[krosov]

This is also the case in region 2, where I happen to live. There's a similar delay in episodes of all american shows, from Southpark to Oprah. I'm downloading Southpark and The Daily Show (of which only quotations make it to the region 2 television) solely because I'm not going to wait 18 months until the show is less fresh, therefor less funny, is and broadcasted with commercial interuptions for phone sex, at 23.30h at night when I really do need to sleep. I can get a sure weekly southpark fix from the local bittorrent dealer in a dark alley of an internet and watch it hours after it was broadcasted at prime time. With movies, the same issues occur. Whe have to wait at least 6 months, which made sense in the old days when the marketing machines would also arrive 6 months late. At least the release was in sync with the marketing peak. Now, we do see movie trailers, reviews, blogs, parodies, pleasant scandals and bloopers at the same time the Americans do, thus months before the movies enter our movietheatres. I'm not a film lover, but I can see why people download the movies. Since the advertising reaches us all the way here, the marketing boosts the filesharing! Most DVD players in .eu are region-free now (I 'hacked' mine), otherwise we can't watch the movies we legally order over the internet! There's no way you can be 100% legal!

If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can create a cloned copy of my Ferrari without damaging mine, then I'd have no problem with you doing so. Make two.

Re:If you can make a copy of my Ferrari

[Anonymous Coward]

and the engineers who spent years designing it wouldn't get their earned pay.

Newsflash! The engineers already got paid while they were designing it.

standard register article

[gEvil (beta)]

I find it humorous that the article talks about how the Australian TV networks are "unable or unwilling to change their programming policies", yet makes no mention about the actual core problem here--the licensing of the content. Yes, if a TV show is produced and owned by an American TV network, then the Australian TV network needs to license it from the American company. They can't just decide to air it whenever they feel like it (which is what this article seems to suggest). Whether the problem is the American company not offering up the content for licensing, or whether the Australian companies don't want to pay the fee until it's lowered needs to be mentioned in order for this article to be more than an uninformed gripe. Then again, it is the Register, so it comes as no surprise to me that it's actually missing the point...

Re:standard register article

[Mateito]

Many of the US shows last year (CSI and SVU spring to mind) had double episode end-of season finales. In the US, these were aired a week apart, so that the cliff-hanger was resolved in 7 days. Here in Australia, the local networks played half the finale around mid-November, then advertised that the second part would be shown in early February. This is an absolutely dispicable way to treat your loyal fans. So, yeah, I pulled down the second half via P2P. Stuff them.

And you know what? I discovered that could get an HD version with no commercials and with better sound. So, I kept doing it... just for one or two of my favourite shows. I can honestly say that if the local networks hadn't treated me (the viewer) with such contempt, I never would have bothered to look around the Net, never worked out which P2P client was the most efficient, and frankly would be watching them on local TV week to week.

Note that most of the current shows are aired only a few of months after the US. Heroes, NCIS, House and Grays Anatomy all fall into this catagory. We are about 3 or 4 episodes into the current season of each of these. I think in the US the episodes are up to the mid teens. The delay in airing doesn't bother me, but being forced to wait four months for the resolution of a double episode pushed me over the edge.

Re:standard register article

[grimJester]

I don't even know how far behind the shows I watch are in Finland anymore. There simply is no legal way to get them within a reasonable time. I've quit watching TV almost completely - all I watch nowadays is BBC News or found on the net.

I follow several "currently airing" series. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, SG Atlantis, Rome, The Simpsons, South Park to name a few. I'd be happy to pay, for example, $2/episode for subscriptions for these if I could get them to start downloading from a trusted source as soon as they're available. Heck, I'd be willing to develop the service for a pittance. Still, the content providers are more concerned with preventing the audience from viewing their product than making it possible for the audience to view said product.

The current state of copyright no longer serves the purpose of making as much art as possible available to as many as possible. It needs an overhaul. Badly.

Obvious...

[bigbigbison]

I know that as a Doctor Who fan in the states I'm not going to wait to see new episodes of Who. When I can download them and watch them less than 12 hours after they have been on in BBC, there really isn't any reason to wait until SciFi channel or whoever decides to air it. More and more it seems as if my favorite shows aren't aired on channels in the USA or if they are, they are shown months later.

Sure it may be copyright infringement to download them, but since there's no legal way for me to see a lot of these shows in the first place, I don't have a problem with it. I can't pay for them if I wanted to, I do pay for cable, and I'm not a Nielson Rating's house, so the arguments against downloading these shows seem pretty weak.

Re:Obvious...

[sokoban]

Also, Doctor Who on BBC-America looks like crap. I guess it is due to the PAL-NTSC conversion, but everything on that channel looks awful.

I do the same thing with Bleach, a Japanese anime show. I can either wait a few years for the dubbed english version, or get the subbed Japanese show the same day in really high quality DivX. I don't know what it will take to convince the networks that people really would like to download content and have it at home. I also don't understand why networks don't just release shows for free with targeted advertisements. It seems that if you had people sign up with some sort of basic survey about where they live, how old they are, their interests, etc. advertisers gladly pay to have commercials interjected into the programming people download. Free, but with advertising, television downloads would be a big hit, I imagine.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[unformed]

Who said it's about justifying piracy? It's not. It's still wrong, but it shows that there IS a market that is willing to pay for it ... if it was provided.

Piracy isn't justified, but if the consumers want to see a TV show, they will. The question now is, are you going to sell it to them, or are they going to have no choice but to steal it?

Piracy is bad

[bhalter80]

While piracy is bad, I think most people would agree, this study shows an interesting phenomenon of our shrinking world. With the increased availability of digital content the barriers to acquiring a product available in a region of the world that is not your own are almost non-existent. In the past you would have to fly to the region that had the product you sought out, buy it and fly back or have it imported via some other means. Now there is no technological reason you shouldn't be able to do the same, just some legal hurdles imposed by countries out to make a buck anywhere they can and media companies out to do the same. I don't know what the solution to the former is but in regards to the latter I would think this would be enough to show that there is a demand for the content and for them to find a way to distribute it.

Re:Piracy is bad

[frdmfghtr]

Now there is no technological reason you shouldn't be able to do the same, just some legal hurdles imposed by countries out to make a buck anywhere they can and media companies out to do the same. I don't know what the solution to the former is but in regards to the latter I would think this would be enough to show that there is a demand for the content and for them to find a way to distribute it.

I don't follow how you can say that the "countries" are out to make a buck...unless you are referring to government officials who will allow their influence to be, well, "influenced" by the industry that wants to make a buck then make another one without extra effort.

I would like an explanation from somebody in the industry as to why content is not made available to more viewers/listeners/etc. Demand is there; we see that in the amount of sales that come from online digital resources and transfers via other means such as BitTorrent. If there is demand for your product, you can do business and profit. If you don't do business, somebody else will.

People download from p2p nets because YOU (the content provider/copyright holder/whatever term you want to use) won't provide quality content and a reasonable price. Do that, and you will profit. Those who continue to use p2p weren't going to buy your product anyway, so you have lost nothing.

It all seems so simple, I must be missing something somewhere.

The real problem

[mdboyd]

Is the that the toilets in Australia flush counter-clockwise. This really messes with Ted Steven's tubes and prevents licensed content from quickly reaching the country.

You heard it here first folks...

Re:It's Still Wrong

[pnattress]

You can't afford a Ferrari. That doesn't mean it's not available to you, just that you don't have the means to get it. The issue here is that Australians don't have the means of legally acquiring this material. They can't even log on to the US iTunes and pay for it. That's the problem.

I love how Slashdot has become the only place to come for incorrect car analogies.

The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

TV in Australia sucks because of the constant barrage of overly loud advertisements for 3 minutes after every 5 minutes of TV show.

Cinema in Australia sucks because of long queue lines, high prices and poor quality movies, as well as the 20 mins of lead-up-to-the-main-feature advertisements.

DVD release in Australia suck because we have to wait and wait and wait for a DVD that gets superseded 1 month after arrival by the Gold Edition, then the Extra Gold Edition, then the SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster edition shortly after.

The whole experience of entertainment via TV/DVD or cinema is completely wrong. It lacks that all important component - ENTERTAINMENT.

Why bother? I can buy a bootleg copy of just about anything, download it if I can be bothered or borrow someone else's copy of whatever it may be. Either way, these three elements of access to entertainment guarantee I get my entertainment fix.

Yes - I am an Aussie.

Re:The whole 'entertainment' experience is wrong

[Overzeetop]

Let me just say that, as an American, I feel entirely superior in my media consumption, as I have the ability to watch 3 minutes after every 5 minutes of TV show, stand in long queue lines, pay high prices for seating and refreshments, all to watch 20 mins of lead-up-to-the-main-feature advertisements before I get to watch the poor quality movie, only to then wait several months before I can purchase the DVD, which rapidly gets superceded by the arrival by the Gold Edition, then the Extra Gold Directors Cut Edition, then the SuperMegaHypeUltraBlaster edition, up to a year or more before you get to get caught up in the whirlpool!

Quite honestly, I'd say you're in the perfect position. With global commerce, you can get the DVD, rip it to disc, and watch the whole thing before the theatrical release even get to Australia! Of course, that's 6 months after you could have downloaded it of oosnet-yay (the first rule of...) as a screener or cam-capture (they're getting better you know, thanks to the Canadians).

Of course, none of this makes up for the fact that we (and I mean "we" in the most generic, ugly American sense, not me personally) are churning out an amazing volume of absolute crap every year, which we so carefully delay in sending you.

Somehow, in the era before the internet and digital cinema, it made a certain amount of sense to have a staggered release. Given enough theaters with digital projection capabilities, it shouldn't really matter. I know that time is not here yet, but it's close enough that it could be. Maybe it's a little like HDTV in the US. If the FCC had had a backbone in the 90s, we could have all been happily watching 720p already. (And for you 1080i zealots - wouldn't it have been better to have 720p that actually worked than the spaghetti that is HDTV now?)

exuse me...NO, bartender, I'm just fine...in fact you can top me off if you would. Of course I won't be driving home...

No surprise

[Dan East]

I guess a bunch of execs are sitting around the board room table, still thinking it is 1970 and they have exclusive control over video distribution of their content. It will probably take an entire generation worth of executives to die off before some of these industries can reform. It really takes serious denial to think that consumers would prefer to wait for them to broadcast the content over their channels, when it can be obtained immediately, on-demand, in HD without commercials for free.

Dan East

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

I disagree with you here. Note, I've been modded flamebait and troll a lot for saying stuff against the partyline on copyright. The problem with piracy is that has the potential to harm producers because some people who would have paid won't (it's impossible that all copyright infringers absolutely never would have paid for the content). Thus, the producer is harmed by illegal downloading and it should not be condoned.

This situation different. If the material is not released in any pay format, the content producer cannot possibly suffer any negative consequences by banned groups' piracy.

The question is different when there is delay as in this case and there are more questions to be answered. For example, do all shows make it to Australia or just a few? Why exactly are the content producers delaying so long? Is it actually the AU media that is standing in the way of distribution?

Answers to these kinds of questions could sway my thinking (remember, it is based on the potential for lost sales, not any "moral" argument posed by either side). If it is simply a choice by the content producers not to sell to AU, then I don't really have a problem because they would never have made a dime of Australia. I would think the answer though is more complicated. Politics? Protectionism?

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

Chances are these people aren't stupid, but have looked at the numbers and concluded that people aren't willing to pay enough for them to make a profit.

How does that make sense? If they intend to never sell in AU, they've made the show with the presumption it will make a profit in other markets. If it turns out they can also sell in AU, then that's all pure bonus money. And how much exactly would it cost for them to get the show on iTunes? Doesn't apple actually provide the bandwidth for their pay stuff? There's just no downside.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[MostAwesomeDude]

Woot, a troll.

Okay, so listen up. If you can't afford a Ferrari, that is understandable. Ferraris are spendy little cars. But DVDs? They're perfectly affordable. So is basic cable. The problem here is not cost, not at any level -- Australia is an English-speaking country with similar obscenity laws and a excellent grasp of American culture. There should not be any costs associated with "preparing" episodes for export to Australia, neither for broadcast nor for DVD.

People are pirating it because there is no other way to get it. For some inexplicable reason, the industry seems to think that there is little to no demand for importing these shows, and so they've neglected to do so. It's sort of sad, really; the industry hasn't always been this way. For example, Cartoon Network started airing late-night anime precisely because polls showed that the biggest demographic of anime fansubbers and traders was also the demographic most likely to sit up late at night and watch cartoons. While this may not seem like a big deal to you, it was an amazingly awesome thing for anime lovers, and I think that Cartoon Network got it right.

Your "wait for it" method assumes that the show in question will in fact be aired and released in Australia regardless of consumer input. This is not true. There are many shows in markets which simply never arrive in places due to a lack of demand. For every anime imported, dubbed, edited, NTSCed, and aired or released in America and Canada, there are dozens that they predict just won't sell no matter how snazzy the packaging is. The only way to show that there is a serious demand is to pirate the shows.

The TV business is usually not as receptive to input as the Adult Swim guys. They don't understand much besides money and ratings. The only way to force them to speed up their importing schedules is to create economic impetus -- to pirate the shows that are being demanded. Anything else is futile.

The same is true in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only do we get most movies much later (if at all). We also get TV series MUCH later (if at all), and to add insult to injury, it's all in some crappy translation (you just can't translate puns, nor can you really adequately translate interesting dialog), spoken by speakers with totally different voices than the original ones, and so forth...

As a result, I don't even own a TV anymore (just not worth it, especially since the government makes us pay >$15/month), only watch DVDs once in a while, and otherwise watch downloaded stuff from overseas.

It's like the war on drugs: wake up, nobody cares if it's illegal. When people want something, there are two choices: sell it to them in an open, competitive market, or prohibit it and live with the results (mafia gangs, illegal distribution). But you can't change people.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[anagama]

Except they can make money by directly selling it to the people and cut out the networks altogether. I suspect that since the media companies are really married to the advertising model however, they don't consider the potential for direct sales. Now, I don't condone piracy when the piracy might interfere with the content producer's ability to earn money, but by the same token, I've become quite accustomed to having commercial free entertainment on DVD or through iTunes. I'm in the US so it is easy for me to get things by legal means and so I do. If I was AU, I wouldn't feel guilty about downloading because nobody wants to sell it to me anyway. Right or wrong, this is the future market media companies have to deal with and what they ought to do, is figure out how to deal with it profitably.

They can't?

[Leuf]

This situation different. If the material is not released in any pay format, the content producer cannot possibly suffer any negative consequences by banned groups' piracy.

Just because they haven't released it YET doesn't mean there's no potential harm. If they can't get the content in a timely fashion and everyone has already watched it off bt, then why bother releasing it late? You don't get to decide when and how they have to release the content.

The reality is that we have a global audience now. Aussies can get on the net (except for the Tassies that are still working on that whole fire thing) and want to talk with other fans of the show, but it's impossible for them to do so because the dominate online presence is a year ahead of them. The content providers have to do a better job releasing things everywhere at as close to the same time as is reasonable or else human nature is going to take over.

Brainwashed

[clang_jangle]

You sir are brainwashed.

The people who began calling the process of copying files from the network w/o the permission of the "IP owner" "piracy" and "stealing" are the **AA parasites, and they add little to no value while conspiring to hold us all back technologically and for what? To keep milking a clearly obsolete business model.

Data wants to be free; we can only restrict distribution and charge $$ for it by making some artificial arrangement (which is always going to be defeatable). Even so if they would price their "IP" at a level the market is willing to bear and provide it in a format people find useful (vs restictive) most people would rather just buy it, it's easier.
These are some *reasons* piracy happens.
So the real excuse makers and criminals here are the **AA .

All this is not big news --- do try to keep up old man!

The post about copying the ferarri is spot on and should be modded up.

Re:Brainwashed

[Dun Malg]

Data wants to be free;
Oh god, not that crap again - data isnt tangible, it doesnt want to *be* anything, let alone free. Hey genius, let me introduce you to the fascinating world of Rhetorical Devices.
Note that those with "nothing to lose but [their] chains" need not actually be confined by chains, nor does a comment of "I wouldn't want to be in your shoes" have anything to do with the relative merits of footwear.
"Information wants to be free" is a catch phrase, shorthand for the larger, more complex principle that the entire purpose of information is to be shared. But you knew that. You were just being an ass.

Tape Trading

[mrshowtime]

It seems that in the torrent age, everyone has forgotten that tv shows used to be traded on VHS all over the world. I used to get Dr. Who episodes from my cousins in England (I had a very expensive PAL/NTSC converter-player) and I used to trade episodes with a lot of people all over the world. Now I can just download whatever tv episodes that I want. I don't understand why nobody gave a shit about tape trading, but now if I share a private torrent or a custom made dvd of a tv show with my friends, instead of sending them a tape, I am a now PIRATE! Television has always been regarded as "disposable" entertainment. It was not till Lucille Ball started filming all her show that anyone thought that a tv show could hold any future value after once it aired. Look at the BBC, they have had a policy of no reruns past the original broadcast. While we here in the states got to watch Dr. Who/Blakes 7 over and over again on PBS stations, it was difficult to find old episodes in the UK.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[MillionthMonkey]

Well, we wanted all this "globalization", didn't we? And we have worldwide communication now, don't we? So why do they act surprised when people start pirating titles when they delay release dates across different continents by months?

I mean, geez, who's running the television industry, the Dutch East India Pictures Association? Why is their incompetence the fault of the market? Why do we have laws to protect incompetence?

Here are some examples of the delays

[dns_server]

It is really that bad for a majority of programs especially scifi:

Alias for example, according to wikipedia it was shown 2005-2006, It has not been shown in australia yet with no plans from what i can see to have it shown, There is also no release date for the dvd. Star Trek: Voyager was the worst you finished in 2001, we finished in 2005.

With Battlestar galactica we just showed the last episode of season 2 a few hours ago (started at 11:40pm but would be shown anywhere between 10:30pm and 2:30am) You are half way through season 3.

Stargate sg1, we finished season 9 last month, Stargate Atlantis we are at season 2 episode 6.

Extras started their second season last week.

The O.C. Is one exception though, channel 10 actually showed episodes of this within a week of the us, You showed it on the 22nd we showed it on the 23rd or 24th (the Australian rules pre-season has started so some regions where delayed).

Most programs are put on a 6 month delay much of this is because of the difference in ratings periods, yours is around September ours started a few weeks ago.

Re:It's Still Wrong

[Sj0]

"The unethical"?

I'd say that's pretty subjective. Personally, I believe that since I pay a lot of money for cable TV, I've 'paid my dues' with respect to gaining access to the media. I don't believe that advertisers have any moral right for me to watch their ads, and I can easily show that nobody in the entire chain loses money as a result of my downloading a TV show I've paid for access for, to watch at another time and place.

Within my ethic, then, I am acting in a perfectly ethical manner. I'm simply attaining content I've paid for from another source, using an internet connection I've paid for. Since, in my ethic, I am not obliged to watch advertising just becuase some company paid for it, downloading TV shows is completely ethical for me.

AU more ads than anywhere in the world

[pwylltwiceborn]

The MAJOR point should also be that australia has more ads per show than ANY country on the planet.. HEROES was almost 2 hours long for the first ep when it aired here (seriously 1min view for 1 min ad) We are, on average, at 20 minutes of ads per hour. (its sweden or norway next on the list at 17min) Also for all of us SCIFI watches - BSG, Stargate, Trek, DrWho etc, we want to watch it as it is released as well read the forums etc. Also in the 90's - did you know that they SPED UP the shows so that a 44minute show ran for 43minutes? Yeap - another minute of ads there. (channel 9 was the main user of this)And that was when they didn't choose to edit Star Trek:Next Gen to fit more ads in..(yeap that's right they cut whole scenes out!) Another example was with the Muscial Buffy Episode - they sped it up slightly (shown on channel 7) so it was a bit out of key - My Wife was soooo pissed, but loved me for my DVD copy i had got earlier (was first getting tapes sent from the states then dvds - love my mates) and all this quickly from memory while at work........

Helpful hint for non-USians to use iTunes

[patio11]

You *can* download from US iTunes. You just need an American address, an email account which is not the same as the one linked to your AussieTunes account, and a US payment method. For the American address, you can use the White House for all I care (or, if this scares you for some reason, use Google maps to pick out a city/state at random and use "1234 Maple Street" with the appropriate zipcode). The email can be whatever the heck you want. The payment method is the only tricky part, and its a lot less tricky thanks to eBay. You see, lots of people who get gift certificates but really wanted cash put them up on eBay and some other sites. Buy some gift certificates from eBay (at a discount to face value), get the codes mailed to you, use them to buy from iTunes. Since you aren't inputting a credit card they won't have the computer verify your address because there is nothing to verify it against.

I keep two iTunes accounts around, one for Japan and one for the US. Thankfully they don't do geotracking or anything, and they'll both happily integrate into the same iPod/iTunes/etc.

(Incidentally, the White House address:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
)

It's Illegal, but is it Wrong?

[batwingTM]

They are not stealing it. I don't know about the law down under, but in the states, if you receive a copy from someone who made the copy, not only have you not stolen it, you also have not received stolen goods nor violated copyright law. Please explain this whole stealing business.

O.K. Let me come out and say this. I live in Australia and I regularly download TV episodes from the States, and the reason, you cannot trust Aussie TV stations. Many years ago in Australia a show was broadcast called American Gothic. it had received good reviews and Network Ten had the rights to it. So I watched the first episode, it seemed good, I watched the second episode, it was alright, I watched the third episode... And I had no idea what was going on. I spoke to friends in Oz, seeing if I had missed something, and they too found the show confusing and odd. I stopped watching.

I later discovered the Network ten screened (and I apologise if I get the numbers wrong here, it was a while ago) episodes 1,2,13. Thirteen! when a TV station cannot even screen a TV show in order there is a problem. "My Name is Earl" was screened out of sequence last year on Aussie TV. Seven screened at US children's puppet show called "Greg the Bunny" a few years back during the School Holidays at 11:00 am in the morning, so the kiddies could see it. If any of you have seen "Greg The Bunny" you will know that this IS NOT, nor could any reasonable person conclude that it WAS EVER aimed at children. but why would a TV exec actually WATCH the show before airing it. (Seven dealt with a large numbers of complaints from concerned parents)

So now I download almost all the TV I regularly watch. But the problem lies deeper that just this. as someone earlier mentioned is that when a TV station in Australia buys the show they buy the Distribution rights in Australia. Network Ten used to own the rights for "Xena" in Australia and that caused a few problems with Pay TV.

So am I stealing, nope, I am not. am I violating copyright. yes, yes I am. Funny thing is, legally I would be better off stealing. if I stole a CD from a music store I could be caught, fined $200-$500. If I am caught SINGING a SONG whilst walking down the STREET I can be fined $1230 for illegal broadcast of copyrighted material. Also applies to "Happy Birthday" (copyrighted until 2030 as I understand) so who in Australia isn't guilty of copyright violation? When you make criminals of your population, you're population will commit crimes. It's pretty simple