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

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[Anonymous Coward]

Game of Thrones, one of the best selling TV shows on blu-ray.

Big shock...

[Mashiki]

The oatmeal covers this pretty well. When people complain and are waving money at you and you don't want to take it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Re:Big shock...

[imgod2u]

When a large mass of people are willing to pay, but you choose to limit the market to a much smaller mass just so that you can charge more, that's the definition of artificial scarcity.

Re:Big shock...

[Karzz1]

People are willing to pay HBO the normal cost of HBO ($10-15/month) for the ability to stream HBO.. HBO is not interested.

*sigh*

Re:Big shock...

[Dracos]

The reality is, internet changed everything. They only want to buy, what they want to buy.

This is why television's channel package business model is doomed. The average cable customer only watches about a dozen channels; the rest of their cable bill goes to subsidize the other 138 channels. Cable TV is increasingly seen as not worth the cost.

If we could get a la carte programming, cable costs would plummet... those dozen channels would total about $20/month. But so would the number of channels, most of which couldn't survive without their current subsidies. Every cable and studio executive will proclaim to be a "free market guy", except in cases like this.

Buffering issues

[Ironchew]

I can't think of any online TV show viewers that buffer the video in any appreciable way. Downloading the show via BitTorrent is pretty much the only way to guarantee the show can be watched on a slow connection, or, in the case of HD video, viewed at all without constant underruns.

Didn't get enough ad impressions last time?

[poity]

We've had a 1000+ post flamewar over this not even a month ago.

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:Who should set prices, and why?

[lattyware]

Crap. This is a classic argument that falls down. Let me spell it out for you.

Your argument: The customer can:

1. 1. Pay $x and get the product.
2. 2. Pay $0 and get the product illegally.

The reality: The customer can:

1. 1. Pay $x and get the product, in a medium they don't want, with adverts, in some areas a long time after it's come out, etc...
2. 2. Pay $0 and get the product easily and instantly, illegally.

Yes. There are some people who will pirate something regardless of what you do. The reality is that most people, given the opportunity to get something good in a form they want for a reasonable price will jump on it (Steam, Good old Games, Louis C.K., etc... have proved this). Most of those that do end up pirating are kids who probably couldn't afford it anyway (who later become paying fans), or people who wouldn't pay for it whatever. I'm not saying there are not sales lost to piracy, but there are far, far more lost to giving us content in a rubbish way for too much. Inconvinience us and of course we'll take it for free without the inconvinience. Not only that, but you are giving people a way to justify it to themselves morally.

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.