7 ms·

It's price discrimination by ethics and wealth. If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO

It's price discrimination by ethics and wealth. If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones. There'll be a certain proportion of piracy:payers where this is no longer true. If everyone took TorrentFreak's position on piracy, Game of Thrones would make no money no matter how popular it was. If nobody pirated, Game of Thrones would be less popular. So it sits nicely at the current position. But this does not help if you don't have the 'cultural buzz' working in your favor, or if there are too many pirates. It's a mistake to think people adapting to the economic field means the economic field is good. DRM platforms like Steam are adaptations that do not please the sort of people who read TorrentFreak, but are necessary because of the extraordinary piracy rate of video games (famously, over 90% for World of Goo).

masklinn 14y ago
> It's price discrimination by ethics and wealth. If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones. It's also discrimination by discrimination. I'm not in the US, even with ethics and wealth I do not have the option of buying HBO to watch Game of Thrones. My "legal" options are to 1. wait a year for the DVD box sets or 2. wait two years for a shitty dub For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, all of these options not only suck hefty amount of balls but do so even more when the communities I interact with and share an interest in watch the episodes at or around release (also note, TV series communities don't maintain "spoiler alerts" for 2+ years after episode diffusion).
- Shivetya 14y ago
  Being in the US I cannot just buy HBO; not that I would want to, I only want this show. To buy HBO requires me to buy a minimum package with either the cable or satellite companies. that takes the cost of HBO and quadruples it if not more. I just received my legal copies of season two, it was 34.99 from Amazon. HBO could have had that money many months earlier if they would simply sell the show via iTunes or similar.
  - mrgoldenbrown 14y ago
    They could have their share of that 34.99, but they would lose more money in the process. https://twitter.com/HBO/status/210390531623227392 https://twitter.com/HBO/status/210390531623227392
mariallery 14y ago
"If everyone took TorrentFreak's position on piracy, Game of Thrones would make no money no matter how popular it was." Sure? I actually did buy the books and am going to buy the DVD-collections, just because I have seen it/read it, thanks to piracy. Somehow win-win situation.
- archgrove 14y ago
  Yes, sure. Because you wouldn't buy the books and DVDs from the rights holders, you'd buy them from some Chinese guy on eBay who was selling them for virtually the cost price of redistribution (and doing so perfectly legally, in the "information is free" world).
  - mariallery 14y ago
    Guess I was the silly one then, going to the local bookstore and getting my eyes full with tears of happiness: "Oh hey, they have the original(?) US-versions here in Germany!" :-) PS: sorry for the naive style, haven' t mastered the sharky way of saying things (yet)
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
> If everyone took TorrentFreak's position on piracy, Game of Thrones would make no money no matter how popular it was. If nobody pirated, Game of Thrones would be less popular. So it sits nicely at the current position. In Rainbows.
- dhugiaskmak 14y ago
  ... wasn't Radiohead's first album, is what you forgot to say. It's easy to be magnanimous and "experimental" when you've already got yours via the traditional route.
Nursie 14y ago
"If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones." If you're allowed to. Being non-US my money isn't good enough, apparently.
- joseflavio 14y ago
  Exactly. I live in France for several years and there is virtually no way of watching TV series and movies with the original sound (everything is dubbed here). The only workaround is to create a bogus SKY account (if you have a friend with an address in UK) and setup the antenna yourself... and even so it would be a breach in the sky contract... so the only solution I know is wait for the dvd to be released or torrents. I believe that the the media companies have no idea how much the expats play a significant role in the torrent dissemination/seeding, it would be interesting if there were statistics about it.
nitrogen 14y ago
First, I think your assessment of TF's readers' position on piracy is excessively uncharitable. Second, Steam is an example of a DRM-capable platform that gets things right. Steam reduces piracy because Valve made it so easy to part with your money. They also release their games internationally ASAP. People who object to the treatment of potential customers by media companies praise Steam. Finally, your use of the WoG piracy rate is disingenuous; as I recall, the developers released those numbers along with the sentiment that it was nothing to worry about.
celticninja 14y ago
Geographic location plays a part too. I would happily pay for GoT but I am in the UK and cannot get HBO. If I want to watch it legally i have to wait 3-6 months, alternatively I can download a copy 5 minutes after the episode ends in the US. This delay actually impacts on the UK broadcaster as they pay for the rights to show a programme but by the time it is shown many of their target audience will have downloaded the episodes. Same thing applies to movies. Works in reverse too with things like Doctor Who. There really doesnt appear to be a good reason for these delays between national markets other than "that is how it has always been done".
shmerl 14y ago
DRM is not necessary at all. Try proving otherwise.
borlak 14y ago
The problem for me is you cannot 'buy HBO'. You have to have cable first, which I don't. I'd buy an independent streaming subscription to HBO in a second, but they are not making that option available...
pasbesoin 14y ago
Your words "price discrimination" jumped out at me. Not so much to respond to your comment, but to post my own reaction, I'll briefly observe: From a U.S. perspective (mine): Increasingly (well, it's a long-standing practice, now), film and television production companies move production abroad to take advantage of lower production costs (labor, et al.). At the same time, they insist that I not source my viewing material from abroad -- that I not take advantage of lower foreign costs for the distributed media. Well, this is a loud and clear fail, from my perspective. What gives them the right to access such advantages while denying the same to me? And... by moving their production abroad, they reduce the work and -- supply and demand -- wage levels available in this country. If they want to "import" cheaper labor, etc. into their production costs, I should be able to "import" the cheaper foreign distribution product. Otherwise... I'm in the position of an increasing number in the U.S. who have simply decided, "fuck them". It's amazing how "free traders" suddenly find all sorts of arguments to the contrary, when free trade threatens to cut into their bottom line. Mostly, they're just another set of hypocrites. Dangerous ones, from my U.S. perspective, because of the way they are increasingly screwing us over, economically. I don't begrudge the rest of the world advancement. I begrudge the self-serving in my own society who sell out a portion of their own population for their own personal benefit. I -- and I think we all, here in the U.S. -- could do with a few less knicknacks in return for a more healthy level of social equity including particularly e.g. access to healthcare, good schools, and livable wages at reasonable quantities of work hours. And maybe other societies could do with a bit less brain drain and a bit more balanced social development. Less of us propping up foreign dictators past their and their regimes' natural lifespans. I guess I've gone and gotten all non-technical on HN, here. But... our technical decisions, such as production sourcing, are directly involved in this. When companies can move their production around, but people stay stuck in place (and as often as not, under repressive regimes), you do not have "free trade". The labor portion of the equation is not free. P.S. Sorry, that may have ended up a bit (or more) far afield from the original discussion. (Continuing with the perspective) Even at the "inflated" U.S. prices I see, I tend to purchase materials I find good and where I am not overly offended at the funding model (as one example, I've been a long-time supporter of O'Reilly press and have not gone out pirating books). But I'm damned well not going to be preached at by these hypocrites, any longer, nor by their hired guns who now think (I hope, still not entirely correctly) that they run this country. I think the U.S. could do with an overall rousing, depression-lifting round of "fuck them".
Udo 14y ago
Both you and the TV industry are ignoring a huge market, one that can only be served by torrents. I'm in that market. I would gladly pay for my favorite shows, but I'm not allowed to. And when they finally do make it to my artificially enforced zone of the world, it'll be 1 or 2 years later, and chances are I'll be forced to watch them with the atrocious dubbing that is mandatory in my corner of the world, and the only option would be to stream the files packed to the max full of DRM. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the day when torrenting becomes obsolete but as long as the content industry has their heads in their asses that won't happen. They simply prefer to lose money. I have my wallet right here, waving bank notes around, but they won't take them. From this one can only deduce that they're either pathologically stupid or that power is much more important to them than money.
- tferraz 14y ago
  I always think on buying the DVD, but then it won't work in my region...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - Udo 14y ago
    I thought I made it clear that this market is simply every TV viewer who does not have a US IP address and credit card.
- blowski 14y ago
  It's the Innovator's Dilemma. For the owners and shareholders of TV networks, solutions tend to fall in one of two mutally exclusive groups: Option #1: Take advantage of all these people who say they'll pay. In the short term, you'll probably lose a lot of money as you cannibalise your existing business model. But it does give you a moderate chance of long term survival. Option #2: Keep the status quo. In the short term, you'll continue to be mildly profitable, though your long term survival is unlikely. Since markets reward short-term behaviour, the first option is career suicide for any CEO. While the second won't mark them out as a visionary, it will guarantee them a large salary. What would you choose?
lucian1900 14y ago
The US is a subset of the world. Am I to be expected to move to the US and buy a TV subscription to watch the show when it airs? I would really quite gladly pay to get it at the same time as the US. They've lost a customer, but apparently they don't care.
belorn 14y ago
> DRM platforms like Steam are adaptations that do not please the sort of people who read TorrentFreak, but are necessary because of the extraordinary piracy rate of video games (famously, over 90% for World of Goo). There does not exist a single peer-reviewed study that shows a correlation between increased sales and DRM systems. World of Goo was one of the first indy games to reach large reception of users. Sadly, it takes time before people are willing to spend money on new concepts. Same effect can be seen in cult movies. Most cult movies do not earn a bunch of money. They barely even get copied at first. Blade Runner did not have an issue with piracy, and they still got crap in revenues. I would not be surprised if 90% of the people who have seen Blade Runner did not do so at a cinema. I would guess most people has seen it on a copied tape, copied by someone who thought "Ooo, what is this? this is nice. Let me share that with a friend". Had World of Goo been released today, they would had much better sale numbers together with current piracy numbers. World of Goo of the past has shown that indy games a worth the risk of buying a copy and testing it out (if one would ignore the paradox). It should also be mentioned that creator of Psychonauts got more (or close to it) money from kickstarter, than from initial sales. Ie, people were more willing to bet money on something for little or no return, than they were willing to bet money on the original game itself before it was known to be good. Do anyone actually think that DRM would have made the original Psychonauts a massive revenue source?
- Shorel 14y ago
  I played World of Goo pirated. One year later I bought two licenses in Steam. I also have heard lots of similar anecdotes, I would be very interested in an study about this phenomena.
  - niggler 14y ago
    This actually appears in music much more than games. With music, discovery is a major problem, and pirating allows for music to be heard by a larger audience. Some of those people become fans and ultimately buy tickets to concerts (artists accrete more money this way, incidentally)
  - Erwin 14y ago

masklinn 14y ago

> It's price discrimination by ethics and wealth. If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones. It's also discrimination by discrimination. I'm not in the US, even with ethics and wealth I do not have the option of buying HBO to watch Game of Thrones. My "legal" options are to 1. wait a year for the DVD box sets or 2. wait two years for a shitty dub For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, all of these options not only suck hefty amount of balls but do so even more when the communities I interact with and share an interest in watch the episodes at or around release (also note, TV series communities don't maintain "spoiler alerts" for 2+ years after episode diffusion).

Shivetya 14y ago
Being in the US I cannot just buy HBO; not that I would want to, I only want this show. To buy HBO requires me to buy a minimum package with either the cable or satellite companies. that takes the cost of HBO and quadruples it if not more. I just received my legal copies of season two, it was 34.99 from Amazon. HBO could have had that money many months earlier if they would simply sell the show via iTunes or similar.
- mrgoldenbrown 14y ago
  They could have their share of that 34.99, but they would lose more money in the process. https://twitter.com/HBO/status/210390531623227392 https://twitter.com/HBO/status/210390531623227392

mariallery 14y ago

"If everyone took TorrentFreak's position on piracy, Game of Thrones would make no money no matter how popular it was." Sure? I actually did buy the books and am going to buy the DVD-collections, just because I have seen it/read it, thanks to piracy. Somehow win-win situation.

archgrove 14y ago
Yes, sure. Because you wouldn't buy the books and DVDs from the rights holders, you'd buy them from some Chinese guy on eBay who was selling them for virtually the cost price of redistribution (and doing so perfectly legally, in the "information is free" world).
- mariallery 14y ago
  Guess I was the silly one then, going to the local bookstore and getting my eyes full with tears of happiness: "Oh hey, they have the original(?) US-versions here in Germany!" :-) PS: sorry for the naive style, haven' t mastered the sharky way of saying things (yet)

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

> If everyone took TorrentFreak's position on piracy, Game of Thrones would make no money no matter how popular it was. If nobody pirated, Game of Thrones would be less popular. So it sits nicely at the current position. In Rainbows.

dhugiaskmak 14y ago
... wasn't Radiohead's first album, is what you forgot to say. It's easy to be magnanimous and "experimental" when you've already got yours via the traditional route.

Nursie 14y ago

"If the product of your willingness to pay and unwillingness to pirate exceeds some amount of money, you buy HBO to watch Game of Thrones." If you're allowed to. Being non-US my money isn't good enough, apparently.

joseflavio 14y ago
Exactly. I live in France for several years and there is virtually no way of watching TV series and movies with the original sound (everything is dubbed here). The only workaround is to create a bogus SKY account (if you have a friend with an address in UK) and setup the antenna yourself... and even so it would be a breach in the sky contract... so the only solution I know is wait for the dvd to be released or torrents. I believe that the the media companies have no idea how much the expats play a significant role in the torrent dissemination/seeding, it would be interesting if there were statistics about it.

nitrogen 14y ago

First, I think your assessment of TF's readers' position on piracy is excessively uncharitable. Second, Steam is an example of a DRM-capable platform that gets things right. Steam reduces piracy because Valve made it so easy to part with your money. They also release their games internationally ASAP. People who object to the treatment of potential customers by media companies praise Steam. Finally, your use of the WoG piracy rate is disingenuous; as I recall, the developers released those numbers along with the sentiment that it was nothing to worry about.

celticninja 14y ago

Geographic location plays a part too. I would happily pay for GoT but I am in the UK and cannot get HBO. If I want to watch it legally i have to wait 3-6 months, alternatively I can download a copy 5 minutes after the episode ends in the US. This delay actually impacts on the UK broadcaster as they pay for the rights to show a programme but by the time it is shown many of their target audience will have downloaded the episodes. Same thing applies to movies. Works in reverse too with things like Doctor Who. There really doesnt appear to be a good reason for these delays between national markets other than "that is how it has always been done".

shmerl 14y ago

DRM is not necessary at all. Try proving otherwise.

borlak 14y ago

The problem for me is you cannot 'buy HBO'. You have to have cable first, which I don't. I'd buy an independent streaming subscription to HBO in a second, but they are not making that option available...

pasbesoin 14y ago

Your words "price discrimination" jumped out at me. Not so much to respond to your comment, but to post my own reaction, I'll briefly observe: From a U.S. perspective (mine): Increasingly (well, it's a long-standing practice, now), film and television production companies move production abroad to take advantage of lower production costs (labor, et al.). At the same time, they insist that I not source my viewing material from abroad -- that I not take advantage of lower foreign costs for the distributed media. Well, this is a loud and clear fail, from my perspective. What gives them the right to access such advantages while denying the same to me? And... by moving their production abroad, they reduce the work and -- supply and demand -- wage levels available in this country. If they want to "import" cheaper labor, etc. into their production costs, I should be able to "import" the cheaper foreign distribution product. Otherwise... I'm in the position of an increasing number in the U.S. who have simply decided, "fuck them". It's amazing how "free traders" suddenly find all sorts of arguments to the contrary, when free trade threatens to cut into their bottom line. Mostly, they're just another set of hypocrites. Dangerous ones, from my U.S. perspective, because of the way they are increasingly screwing us over, economically. I don't begrudge the rest of the world advancement. I begrudge the self-serving in my own society who sell out a portion of their own population for their own personal benefit. I -- and I think we all, here in the U.S. -- could do with a few less knicknacks in return for a more healthy level of social equity including particularly e.g. access to healthcare, good schools, and livable wages at reasonable quantities of work hours. And maybe other societies could do with a bit less brain drain and a bit more balanced social development. Less of us propping up foreign dictators past their and their regimes' natural lifespans. I guess I've gone and gotten all non-technical on HN, here. But... our technical decisions, such as production sourcing, are directly involved in this. When companies can move their production around, but people stay stuck in place (and as often as not, under repressive regimes), you do not have "free trade". The labor portion of the equation is not free. P.S. Sorry, that may have ended up a bit (or more) far afield from the original discussion. (Continuing with the perspective) Even at the "inflated" U.S. prices I see, I tend to purchase materials I find good and where I am not overly offended at the funding model (as one example, I've been a long-time supporter of O'Reilly press and have not gone out pirating books). But I'm damned well not going to be preached at by these hypocrites, any longer, nor by their hired guns who now think (I hope, still not entirely correctly) that they run this country. I think the U.S. could do with an overall rousing, depression-lifting round of "fuck them".

Udo 14y ago

Both you and the TV industry are ignoring a huge market, one that can only be served by torrents. I'm in that market. I would gladly pay for my favorite shows, but I'm not allowed to. And when they finally do make it to my artificially enforced zone of the world, it'll be 1 or 2 years later, and chances are I'll be forced to watch them with the atrocious dubbing that is mandatory in my corner of the world, and the only option would be to stream the files packed to the max full of DRM. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the day when torrenting becomes obsolete but as long as the content industry has their heads in their asses that won't happen. They simply prefer to lose money. I have my wallet right here, waving bank notes around, but they won't take them. From this one can only deduce that they're either pathologically stupid or that power is much more important to them than money.

tferraz 14y ago
I always think on buying the DVD, but then it won't work in my region...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- Udo 14y ago
  I thought I made it clear that this market is simply every TV viewer who does not have a US IP address and credit card.
blowski 14y ago
It's the Innovator's Dilemma. For the owners and shareholders of TV networks, solutions tend to fall in one of two mutally exclusive groups: Option #1: Take advantage of all these people who say they'll pay. In the short term, you'll probably lose a lot of money as you cannibalise your existing business model. But it does give you a moderate chance of long term survival. Option #2: Keep the status quo. In the short term, you'll continue to be mildly profitable, though your long term survival is unlikely. Since markets reward short-term behaviour, the first option is career suicide for any CEO. While the second won't mark them out as a visionary, it will guarantee them a large salary. What would you choose?

lucian1900 14y ago

The US is a subset of the world. Am I to be expected to move to the US and buy a TV subscription to watch the show when it airs? I would really quite gladly pay to get it at the same time as the US. They've lost a customer, but apparently they don't care.

belorn 14y ago

> DRM platforms like Steam are adaptations that do not please the sort of people who read TorrentFreak, but are necessary because of the extraordinary piracy rate of video games (famously, over 90% for World of Goo). There does not exist a single peer-reviewed study that shows a correlation between increased sales and DRM systems. World of Goo was one of the first indy games to reach large reception of users. Sadly, it takes time before people are willing to spend money on new concepts. Same effect can be seen in cult movies. Most cult movies do not earn a bunch of money. They barely even get copied at first. Blade Runner did not have an issue with piracy, and they still got crap in revenues. I would not be surprised if 90% of the people who have seen Blade Runner did not do so at a cinema. I would guess most people has seen it on a copied tape, copied by someone who thought "Ooo, what is this? this is nice. Let me share that with a friend". Had World of Goo been released today, they would had much better sale numbers together with current piracy numbers. World of Goo of the past has shown that indy games a worth the risk of buying a copy and testing it out (if one would ignore the paradox). It should also be mentioned that creator of Psychonauts got more (or close to it) money from kickstarter, than from initial sales. Ie, people were more willing to bet money on something for little or no return, than they were willing to bet money on the original game itself before it was known to be good. Do anyone actually think that DRM would have made the original Psychonauts a massive revenue source?

Shorel 14y ago
I played World of Goo pirated. One year later I bought two licenses in Steam. I also have heard lots of similar anecdotes, I would be very interested in an study about this phenomena.
- niggler 14y ago
  This actually appears in music much more than games. With music, discovery is a major problem, and pirating allows for music to be heard by a larger audience. Some of those people become fans and ultimately buy tickets to concerts (artists accrete more money this way, incidentally)
- Erwin 14y ago