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Who's Pirating Game of Thrones, and Why?
TheGift73 writes "In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release. Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why? One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead. And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode). But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn't help either."
In Australia, our TV networks show an incredible amount of greed and disdain in regard to popular TV series from the US. They constantly shift the time and day on which the show airs. They frequently leave gaps of several weeks between episodes (see Big Bang Theory) in order not to compete with other networks which may be launching a new show expected to dominate in the ratings. The more popular the show the more advertisements they pack in - sometimes up to 6 ad breaks in a single 21 minute show! The ad breaks are now so aggressive that they sometimes cut off punch lines (see the Simpsons). And sometimes they even play the damn episodes out of order (Firefly and American Gothic)! And they wonder why we go and download them where we can actually enjoy the show. F you Australian TV networks. You have no-one to blame but yourselves.
In my country the delay would probably be around a year plus there's a good chance that we'd have to watch a poorly dubbed German version instead of the original English thus there's really no other option except piracy.
It's an ancient technology, still used by the elderly and the feeble-minded to obtain single-media entertainment and unsourced information in a serial, time-oriented fashion. It's the precursor to the on-demand random access entertainment and information sources we have today.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Game of Thrones is kind of a loss leader-- it gets people to buy a subscription
That week is critical to not seeing spoilers online, we live in an international community, forums inhabited by users all around the world, if half of them can't see the episode for a week+ that doesn't work.
Pretty sure that TV series is based on books which have been available for years already. So I don't know how one week more would make a difference.
So from the sounds of it, you think waiting a week is reasonable.
How about waiting a month?
How about waiting a couple of months?
How about waiting a year?
Before pirating in Australia, it used to be a regular thing to have to wait up to a year, before you'd get the latest movies and TV. Even then, we'd only get a small fraction of what was in the US.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm Australian, I have Sattelite TV (foxtel) for $70 a month (because my wife and kids like it), and don't have access to watch Game of Thrones and Fringe, the two shows I actually give a fuck about. If I want to watch Game of Thrones, I need to upgrade to the $100/month package, and then watch it at the time they specify.
Fuck that. I pirate Game of Thrones, and Fringe and buy the box sets when they come out.
... wait, what?
I'm not saying that Cable/Satellite providers in Canada don't rip you off, but what you say just isn't true:
You don't need an HD-DVR. You just need any old cable/satellite box. Bell's site completely sucks and I wasn't able to price anything out, but with Rogers you can get basic digital cable ($34.49/month), rent a receiver box ($4.56/month) and get the TMN and MPIX package ($20.95/month which includes HBO) for a total of $60/month plus fees (which admittedly always makes me cringe, but I don't know what they actually come to).
I do believe that Cable/Satellite is over priced and only get it because other household members want it, you greatly exaggerate the situation and only make yourself look silly.
Regional licensing. Don't know about the parent but I live in a country that only recently (last six months) got movies in the iTunes store. TV shows? Hah! We've been begging for that for ages. Foreign TV networks won't let us watch shows via their websites ("This content is not available in your region at this time") and local TV channels clearly don't have the right licensing agreements to stream foreign shows (even more infuriating when they list all shows they air on their website but only a handful have the little "stream this show now" icon next to it).
At this point I've just given up. I don't even own a TV anymore, just a 1080p projector and my computer. I use a couple of RSS feeds from private torrent trackers to download the few shows I want to watch whenever they become available (normally within hours of airing in their country of origin). My only problem these days is that I catch myself talking about stuff that happens on the shows weeks or sometimes months before my friends (since they watch the "imported" broadcast on TV).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
legality will differ by country. In the netherlands this is perfectly legal.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
And is it really such a horrible hardship to go to the bathroom during the FBI warning?
Is it really so unbelievable to you that people don't feel they should have to sit through that bullshit if they actually paid for the fucking product like they're supposed to? Unskippable commercials and previews, ridiculously long animated menus...I click my pirated file and the episode starts, immediately.
My pirated copies of the first season of Game of Thrones don't have any of that bullshit on them, they're in a file format and in a codec that is recognized on every device I have, and will play on literally any device I have without a bunch of stupid bullshit DRM standing in the way. They are literally a superior product in every single way.