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>> "Thus, if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it." I get your point but that's incorrect. Alter

>> "Thus, if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it." I get your point but that's incorrect. Alternatives include: - paying for the cable + HBO subscription and only watching GoT. - waiting for the blu ray/dvd/iTunes release Both those options allow you to watch GoT and nothing else. The problem is that people don't want to wait for an official release or want a cheaper way to get it 'right now' (i.e. a cheaper HBO only subscription). I think GoT is a big torrent is because it's not available on TV in a lot of countries or there is a big delay between the US airing and the local airing. Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free. I would like to see how many people who torrent GoT (but say they would pay for it if it was available to them on their terms) would pay $3-5 for an episode via a torrent if there was a button to pay (and get it legally) and a button to get it for free (illegally).

Morgawr 12y ago
>Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free I would like to say this is wrong, but I have no evidence to support my claims. However what I can say empirically is that myself and many other people I know have stopped pirating games and/or music ever since easy-to-use services like Steam and Google Music came out. Personally, nowadays I find myself with so many legit games on Steam that my first thought when a new game comes out is "meh, I don't have time to play that, I'll buy it later when it goes on sale". Years ago it would've been "let's hop on XXXX to see if there's a torrent ready!". It simply is not worth it, to me, to pirate games, set up cracks, be sure I have all the proper files, set up backups in case I want to replay it later, etc etc. With Steam I can just click "download" and it just works. I firmly believe that if you make something easy-to-access, cheap enough (steam sales, anyone?) and immediate in delivery, you will soon realize piracy really does not matter. The market just needs to evolve and adapt to newer technologies.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  It's going to be a sliding scale isn't it? There will definitely be some sales lost, but not all of them would have bought it. I love how easy it is to get a book on my Kindle from Amazon at the click of a button, but given my voracious reading and the bill it generates it might be that I would consider looking at alternate sources for some of those books. So I might consider buying some and torrenting some. The alternative would be reducing the amount I read. And if I went the torrent route, I might suddenly notice that the volume of bought books might reduce from 5-10 legitimate purchases a month to 1 a month.
- afterburner 12y ago
  The automated, practically invisible patching on Steam is what really sold me on it.
- tekromancr 12y ago
  I have to agree. I think likelyhood of pirating something looks like free_time_available vs free_money_available. When I was a broke college student, I pirated near everything because I had a lot of free time, and no expendable income. Now that I am a startuper, I have no money and no time so I almost never pirate (or purchase) anything. If I ever get to a point where I have lots of money and little free time, I will very likely pay whatever is asked to watch what I want.
- thesteamboat 12y ago
  Perhaps it's more accurate to say that people acquire things in the cheapest way they can --- but also that they compute the `cost' as some combination of monetary costs, temporal costs, skills they have to use/aquire, social effects of community acceptance, etc.
drewblaisdell 12y ago
A better question: who would pay $3-5 for an episode of Game of Thrones in 1080p that starts playing with a single mouse click and is available as soon as the episode airs in the earliest timezone (at least an hour before it appears online illegally)? My guess: not everyone, but a lot of people.
- kh_hk 12y ago
  And there goes the whole entertainment industry + advertisement industry debate. Channels do not put adverts to sustain their content, they put content to sustain their adverts.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    HBO doesn't display ads in the middle of a show. I'd like to know exactly how much a non-HBO show makes from one viewing's worth of ads.
NotOscarWilde 12y ago
> Alternatives include: Frankly, I do not believe those are viable alternatives. Suppose I put food in front of a hungry man. Formally, his options are eat or don't eat, but it's clear that they are not equal from his point of view. He might not eat if his conviction is strong enough (say a hunger strike) but this doesn't change the fact that the options are not equally balanced. It is not fair or reasonable to assume that TV show aficionados have a strong enough moral conviction that copyright infringement is bad, compared to their desire to see more of the show. After all, in a way, the show is designed to make us want to watch more. Okay, now on to the former alternative -- paying for cable and only watching GoT. The first thing that needs to be said that this alternative is not universal -- there are countries where HBO is unavailable. Even this simple fact has implications -- a non-trivial market for torrents, for instance. But let us ignore this and assume cable is available. I think most people inside a capitalist society are trained to evaluate objects. This means that if you want to sell me a bundle, I divide the price based on the objects in the bundle. Usually, this is used by marketing in a devious, but smart way -- for instance by adding free modifications to a car, washing mashine, cell phone plan, what have you. In our case, it is detrimental -- people who only want to watch GoT and nothing else hardly see value in the entire HBO bundle. In fact, they actually see negative value in it, especially if they do all of their TV watching via their computer. The reason why I say they see negative value in the bundle is this: If you are asked to buy a fairly pricey bundle but all of the things in it except one do not interest you, you again divide the price... and note that you pay a lot of money for something you don't need. That's not a feeling a seller should promote. I think the smart move by HBO would be to offer individual shows for purchase on their website, and alongside them offer the HBO subscription as a discount on all the shows. This way the bundle feels like a discount again.
- XorNot 12y ago
  That's not even the issue: justifying TV piracy is easy - "I'll buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out". Which certainly seems fair enough - these things aren't just entertainment, they're culture. If you're a couple weeks behind GoT, chances are you're going to spoiled on it when some newspaper runs a damn headline about an episode. For people in Australia, there is no other option: many shows simply never make it here. I remember trying to watch Battlestar Galactica on Channel 10 - by the end they really didn't care about that show, and by the time we got it season 2 was already starting in the US. They didn't pick it up.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
codefisher 12y ago
I pirate tv and movies because for me that is the only reliable way. If I got to Amazon/iTunes and try and buy a download it rejects my visa card for not being from the country in which I live (studying overseas). The torrets are providing a better service, I find what I want quick and easy, and there is no payment problems. If there is a good service and I have to pay no problems. I am willing to give out $10 to Amazon every time there is a ebook I want. Give me a better service so I can follow the 2-3 TV series I want, and watch the occasional movie, I will pay.
malka 12y ago
Option 1 will force me to get a full channel package on Comcast. Option 2 will have DRM.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  Yes but the point was "if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it". It's not. Both of the options you state allow you to watch GoT and nothing else.
  - malka 12y ago
    option 1 is far from 'nothing else', since I cannot get HBO, without suscribing to a whole package. Option 2 will allow me to watch GoT, true, but I'd have to wait for the BR release.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      Yes there are caveats but with option 1, even though you get other channels, you don't have to watch them. Nobody is forcing you. Neither are perfect but they meet the criteria of the OP.
    - res0nat0r 12y ago
      I think his point is that you can't get everything you want, when, where and exactly how you want for free legally. It isn't up to you since you aren't the content creator. It is funny watching the entitlement of people now who believe they can some how demand all of the above.
      - malka 12y ago
        Well, it IS up to me. Thanks to piracy, I have the choice to not have to bend in front of Comcast to watch TV shows.
        k-mcgrady 12y ago
tomjen3 12y ago
HBO almost did that experiment: in the nordic countries you can get HBO Nordic (access to all of HBOs content) for the same as a Netflix subscription. It isn't very popular - partly because it is the same as a netflix subscription but so much less content, partly because it is a technical disaster (you can't use a tablet only, the ios app doesn't support streaming the pictures to a tv, no chromecast support while netflix has both) and partly because they launched slightly after Netflix with a much worse proposal. That said if the same offer was available in the US, I think a lot more users would take it. And certainly HBO makes nothing from torrent users. Finally users like buffet style content - it means you only suffer the pain of paying once, rather than every time you press the button.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Not that the Netflix launch was anything cheer about. A random glance back then showed Netflix being a year or two behind on Doctor Who seasons. Never mind that there is an aspect that keeps being overlooked, social interaction. A popular TV show or movie is not just about the experience itself, but also the chatter afterwards. Be it over the lunch room table, or over the net. And the latter is what drives many to pirate even if they know the episode will eventually be broadcast locally. This because they are involved in the chatter about the show online, and there people will discuss the latest when it aired initially, not when it aired in some nation or other.
waxjar 12y ago
Does it matter? I think most people who download Game of Thrones illegally would not have downloaded it legally (e.g. pay for it) had it not been available for free. Demand is much larger when a product is free. I doubt HBO is missing out on a large amount of sales. Especially without the amount of free marketing illegal downloading has brought them.
lewaldman 12y ago
I pay for Netflix, but watch every thing (including the Netflix productions) on Popcorn time. If HBO doesn't provide their content, on-demand, on my country, it's not my problem. Same goes to Walking Dead... Here in Brazil Netflix has it only till season 3... On popcorn time I can watch the last episode, with subtitles, only 2 or 3 days after it's aired. I'm really willing to pay for content as far as it's available on my country!
mbrameld 12y ago
I would definitely pay for GoT if it was available separately. I can easily get all the music I want for free via BT, but I happily pay Spotify $10 a month and haven't pirated any music in years. I would pay $10 for an HBO-only subscription in a heartbeat.

Morgawr 12y ago

>Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free I would like to say this is wrong, but I have no evidence to support my claims. However what I can say empirically is that myself and many other people I know have stopped pirating games and/or music ever since easy-to-use services like Steam and Google Music came out. Personally, nowadays I find myself with so many legit games on Steam that my first thought when a new game comes out is "meh, I don't have time to play that, I'll buy it later when it goes on sale". Years ago it would've been "let's hop on XXXX to see if there's a torrent ready!". It simply is not worth it, to me, to pirate games, set up cracks, be sure I have all the proper files, set up backups in case I want to replay it later, etc etc. With Steam I can just click "download" and it just works. I firmly believe that if you make something easy-to-access, cheap enough (steam sales, anyone?) and immediate in delivery, you will soon realize piracy really does not matter. The market just needs to evolve and adapt to newer technologies.

mattmanser 12y ago
It's going to be a sliding scale isn't it? There will definitely be some sales lost, but not all of them would have bought it. I love how easy it is to get a book on my Kindle from Amazon at the click of a button, but given my voracious reading and the bill it generates it might be that I would consider looking at alternate sources for some of those books. So I might consider buying some and torrenting some. The alternative would be reducing the amount I read. And if I went the torrent route, I might suddenly notice that the volume of bought books might reduce from 5-10 legitimate purchases a month to 1 a month.
afterburner 12y ago
The automated, practically invisible patching on Steam is what really sold me on it.
tekromancr 12y ago
I have to agree. I think likelyhood of pirating something looks like free_time_available vs free_money_available. When I was a broke college student, I pirated near everything because I had a lot of free time, and no expendable income. Now that I am a startuper, I have no money and no time so I almost never pirate (or purchase) anything. If I ever get to a point where I have lots of money and little free time, I will very likely pay whatever is asked to watch what I want.
thesteamboat 12y ago
Perhaps it's more accurate to say that people acquire things in the cheapest way they can --- but also that they compute the `cost' as some combination of monetary costs, temporal costs, skills they have to use/aquire, social effects of community acceptance, etc.

drewblaisdell 12y ago

A better question: who would pay $3-5 for an episode of Game of Thrones in 1080p that starts playing with a single mouse click and is available as soon as the episode airs in the earliest timezone (at least an hour before it appears online illegally)? My guess: not everyone, but a lot of people.

kh_hk 12y ago
And there goes the whole entertainment industry + advertisement industry debate. Channels do not put adverts to sustain their content, they put content to sustain their adverts.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  HBO doesn't display ads in the middle of a show. I'd like to know exactly how much a non-HBO show makes from one viewing's worth of ads.

NotOscarWilde 12y ago

> Alternatives include: Frankly, I do not believe those are viable alternatives. Suppose I put food in front of a hungry man. Formally, his options are eat or don't eat, but it's clear that they are not equal from his point of view. He might not eat if his conviction is strong enough (say a hunger strike) but this doesn't change the fact that the options are not equally balanced. It is not fair or reasonable to assume that TV show aficionados have a strong enough moral conviction that copyright infringement is bad, compared to their desire to see more of the show. After all, in a way, the show is designed to make us want to watch more. Okay, now on to the former alternative -- paying for cable and only watching GoT. The first thing that needs to be said that this alternative is not universal -- there are countries where HBO is unavailable. Even this simple fact has implications -- a non-trivial market for torrents, for instance. But let us ignore this and assume cable is available. I think most people inside a capitalist society are trained to evaluate objects. This means that if you want to sell me a bundle, I divide the price based on the objects in the bundle. Usually, this is used by marketing in a devious, but smart way -- for instance by adding free modifications to a car, washing mashine, cell phone plan, what have you. In our case, it is detrimental -- people who only want to watch GoT and nothing else hardly see value in the entire HBO bundle. In fact, they actually see negative value in it, especially if they do all of their TV watching via their computer. The reason why I say they see negative value in the bundle is this: If you are asked to buy a fairly pricey bundle but all of the things in it except one do not interest you, you again divide the price... and note that you pay a lot of money for something you don't need. That's not a feeling a seller should promote. I think the smart move by HBO would be to offer individual shows for purchase on their website, and alongside them offer the HBO subscription as a discount on all the shows. This way the bundle feels like a discount again.

XorNot 12y ago
That's not even the issue: justifying TV piracy is easy - "I'll buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out". Which certainly seems fair enough - these things aren't just entertainment, they're culture. If you're a couple weeks behind GoT, chances are you're going to spoiled on it when some newspaper runs a damn headline about an episode. For people in Australia, there is no other option: many shows simply never make it here. I remember trying to watch Battlestar Galactica on Channel 10 - by the end they really didn't care about that show, and by the time we got it season 2 was already starting in the US. They didn't pick it up.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

codefisher 12y ago

I pirate tv and movies because for me that is the only reliable way. If I got to Amazon/iTunes and try and buy a download it rejects my visa card for not being from the country in which I live (studying overseas). The torrets are providing a better service, I find what I want quick and easy, and there is no payment problems. If there is a good service and I have to pay no problems. I am willing to give out $10 to Amazon every time there is a ebook I want. Give me a better service so I can follow the 2-3 TV series I want, and watch the occasional movie, I will pay.

malka 12y ago

Option 1 will force me to get a full channel package on Comcast. Option 2 will have DRM.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
Yes but the point was "if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it". It's not. Both of the options you state allow you to watch GoT and nothing else.
- malka 12y ago
  option 1 is far from 'nothing else', since I cannot get HBO, without suscribing to a whole package. Option 2 will allow me to watch GoT, true, but I'd have to wait for the BR release.
  - k-mcgrady 12y ago
    Yes there are caveats but with option 1, even though you get other channels, you don't have to watch them. Nobody is forcing you. Neither are perfect but they meet the criteria of the OP.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    I think his point is that you can't get everything you want, when, where and exactly how you want for free legally. It isn't up to you since you aren't the content creator. It is funny watching the entitlement of people now who believe they can some how demand all of the above.
    - malka 12y ago
      Well, it IS up to me. Thanks to piracy, I have the choice to not have to bend in front of Comcast to watch TV shows.
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago

tomjen3 12y ago

HBO almost did that experiment: in the nordic countries you can get HBO Nordic (access to all of HBOs content) for the same as a Netflix subscription. It isn't very popular - partly because it is the same as a netflix subscription but so much less content, partly because it is a technical disaster (you can't use a tablet only, the ios app doesn't support streaming the pictures to a tv, no chromecast support while netflix has both) and partly because they launched slightly after Netflix with a much worse proposal. That said if the same offer was available in the US, I think a lot more users would take it. And certainly HBO makes nothing from torrent users. Finally users like buffet style content - it means you only suffer the pain of paying once, rather than every time you press the button.

digi_owl 12y ago
Not that the Netflix launch was anything cheer about. A random glance back then showed Netflix being a year or two behind on Doctor Who seasons. Never mind that there is an aspect that keeps being overlooked, social interaction. A popular TV show or movie is not just about the experience itself, but also the chatter afterwards. Be it over the lunch room table, or over the net. And the latter is what drives many to pirate even if they know the episode will eventually be broadcast locally. This because they are involved in the chatter about the show online, and there people will discuss the latest when it aired initially, not when it aired in some nation or other.

waxjar 12y ago

Does it matter? I think most people who download Game of Thrones illegally would not have downloaded it legally (e.g. pay for it) had it not been available for free. Demand is much larger when a product is free. I doubt HBO is missing out on a large amount of sales. Especially without the amount of free marketing illegal downloading has brought them.

lewaldman 12y ago

I pay for Netflix, but watch every thing (including the Netflix productions) on Popcorn time. If HBO doesn't provide their content, on-demand, on my country, it's not my problem. Same goes to Walking Dead... Here in Brazil Netflix has it only till season 3... On popcorn time I can watch the last episode, with subtitles, only 2 or 3 days after it's aired. I'm really willing to pay for content as far as it's available on my country!

mbrameld 12y ago

I would definitely pay for GoT if it was available separately. I can easily get all the music I want for free via BT, but I happily pay Spotify $10 a month and haven't pirated any music in years. I would pay $10 for an HBO-only subscription in a heartbeat.