Game of Thrones The Most Pirated TV Show of the Season

TheGift73 sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "With nearly 4 million downloads per episode, the HBO hit series Game of Thrones is the most pirated TV-show of the season. Worldwide hype combined with restricted availability are the key ingredients for the staggering number of unauthorized downloads. How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory complete the top three, albeit with significantly fewer downloads than the chart topper. ... While there are many reasons for people to download TV-shows through BitTorrent, airing delays and HBO's choice not to make it widely available online are two of the top reasons."

Comments

Re:Why pirate network TV?

[Kohlrabi82]

I will explain the situation for Germany:

First of all, real popular shows you read about on the net normally haven't arrived on German networks, yet. Most of the time they arrive with at least one season lag, if at all. And even if you can watch the show by then, it is normally on networks which will drown you in ads every few minutes.

And don't get me started that not even today, with the full digitization of TV, you have the option to watch foreign shows undubbed in Germany. If you ever had to suffer through the German dubs of TV shows, you would no doubt also strongly consider piracy.

Of course you can wait for the DVD/BD box to arrive, containing an English audio track, but those may again arrive late or not at all. Coincidentally, GoT has been an exception here. Also, the pricing is oftentimes on the ludicrous side, and thanks to DVD and BD DRM you cannot even just get the US release.

Re:If not artificial scarcity then what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue with HBO is that they are not an independent company. With their programming, they are one of the few companies that could make a killing by distributing online, as we all know. However, they are a division of Time Warner. The rest of their channels just don't have the pull HBO has. What would happen to them if they started selling HBO without a cable contract?

Large conglomerates lead to decisions like this: good for the conglomerate, bad for some divisions, and most customers.

Re:If not artificial scarcity then what?

[LordLucless]

So you are saying everyone is entitled to cheap entertainment, cheap being whatever you dictate.

It's got nothing to do with entitlement. It's just what's going to happen. Restrict a market, a black market develops. You can bitch and moan about it all you like, but if you want to solve it, you need to address the root cause of why that market developed. Trying to legislate it away is futile, as it just further restricts the market, and enhances the value of the black market further.

I don't think there is a good excuse for unlicensed viewing of recorded entertainment other than "because we can."

And I don't think there is a good excuse for 100+ years of copyrighting entertainment otgo unheard.her than "because we can". Unfortunately, since I don't "donate" millions to politicians, my thoughts don't appear to count.