Have they no shame! How dare they to give us money and pay for content.

And that kids is why torrents are still the best way to watch TV. Free, no ads, higher quality, faster download speeds, no bullshit ...

Yup - because if they don't, their Australian licensees will sue them. When HBO originally made the deals to supply content to Australian Pay TV companies, that deal almost certainly included a clause giving the Australian company territorial exclusivity, because nobody wants to pay anything to compete with the original supplier, and HBO either didn't want or wasn't able to set up its own infrastructure in Australia. So although the technological environment has changed, HBO is still bound by the terms of whatever contract it signed until it expires. There's no way to know because contracts are private* but typically entertainment industry contracts involve 10-year terms and one-time renewability options.

* though maybe you could work it out from studying companies' annual reports, and maybe some kinds of contract should involve a public filing.

(from qzervaas): Australian pay TV is a scam.

Well yeah, but you live on an island and are relatively isolated geographically, which comes with an implicit economic cost that gets amortized over everything else.

Understood, but we're still taken advantage of massively by so-called Australian Rupert Murdoch.

Example: Formula 1 bait-and-switch. It was on free-to-air HD (one of the few HD programs actually shown in Australia).

In February (one month before start of new season), Channel 10 (partly owned by Fox) switched the rights to Foxtel (pay TV). To watch it in HD on Foxtel will cost about $80/mo.

Free To Air in Australia is dying a slow death, but there's no reasonable alternatives. Major sport here is shown in SD, except randomly if they maybe decide to upscale it, or show it in 1440x1080i (very rare though)

Oh, can't disagree with you there. I'm from Ireland and though we're less geographically isolated than Australia being an island nation I grew up seeing many similar monopolistic abuses.

I know a number of people here in Australia doing this. My argument to them is now they're just paying extra to pirate since the content isn't licensed here in this way.

Australian pay TV is a scam. It's the only way in Australia to see GoT, but HD isn't a default option. That'll be $10/mo extra thanks.