HBO Says Game of Thrones Piracy Is "a Compliment"

An anonymous reader writes "HBO programming president Michael Lombardo not only says that illegal downloading of Game of Thrones isn't hurting the show, but goes so far as to say it's 'a compliment' and worries about the image quality of pirated copies"

Comments

No shit

[phizi0n]

Finally a suit that understands piracy HELPS more than it hurts, especially when the legal means of consuming the content is limited to few regions of the world.

Re:No shit

[jfengel]

The question is whether more piracy would help the show more. He presumably would like somebody to actually pay for what appears to be a fairly expensive show to produce. A little piracy is free advertising; universal piracy kills the bottom line.

So he may well decide that the current amount of piracy is a boon, but would continue to suppress pirates to the full extent of his ability and the law, to keep it from being any bigger than it is. He could easily eliminate piracy by seeding the torrents himself, and telling everybody that it was OK to take it from there. But I doubt that even this "enlightened" suit will do that, nor would he if he were permitted to.

I suppose he might try to depend on subscriptions from people who decided they wanted to get it via HBO's regular distribution channels anyway, though it seems unlikely.

Re:No shit

[Sarten-X]

Finally a Slashdotter that understands piracy both helps and also hurts, especially when the legal means of consuming the content covers most of the intended market.

Re:No shit

[jhoegl]

Remember when...

Re:No shit

[Entropius]

If there were a way to pay fair market value for a DRM-free recording (meaning: one where I can go mplayer GOT-S1E01.mkv and have it work) of the show, then fewer people would pirate it.

People pirate it because the only way to watch it legally is to subscribe to HBO. Their business model induces the piracy.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The moral answer is that if you like the show, pay for it. Buy the DVD or buy a subscription. Piracy is only wrong if you use it only to avoid paying a reasonable price for a product.

Re:No shit

[Cinder6]

Or you could wait for DVD release, or buy it via Amazon Instant. I don't have HBO, but I can still easily access the show via legal means; I just have to wait longer than subscribers.

Re:No shit

[timmyf2371]

But what is fair market value? The $3.99 charged per episode by the iTunes store seems reasonable when compared against other forms of entertainment. I don't think making it DRM free should increase this price either.

The problem is, for every person like you who is prepared to pay fair market value, there are 10 people like me who pirate TV shows because a) it is free and b) there are no adverts included.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Yeah, HBO's revenue is mostly from (a very expensive) subscription and then DVD/BD sales of the show later. If the show is good enough (and several HBO shows have been) they actually have people paying twice to watch it same-day and then have the collection later...

But there are definitely situations where piracy would hurt them - for example, widespread access to the show BEFORE it airs on HBO would hurt subscriptions, and professional pirates selling the whole season in perfect BD quality for a few bucks would hurt DVD sales.

Basically, for the majority of consumers it's about convenience more than anything else. Make it more convenient to pirate than pay, and many will. As long as pirating is still illegal, involves a certain level of computer knowledge, and can be of questionable quality, it's still going to be limited to a small subset who are somewhat technical, "hobbyist" collectors, and/or don't care or understand the value of their "free" time (given HD streaming copies of most TV shows can be purchased for $2, which is worth about 2 minutes of your time to acquire if you make $60 an hour).

Re:No shit

[Weezul]

Just make a stink about low quality pirated copies and sell better quality copies online after a short while. Any serious fans will love the excuse to rewatch all the shows at higher quality.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

People pirate it because the only way to watch it legally is to subscribe to HBO. Their business model induces the piracy.

Their business model induces piracy about as much as a woman's clothing induces rape. Pirate the show if you want (clearly the harm is much lower/almost non-existant) but don't pretend it's the content owner's fault you did it.

Re:No shit

[OrangeTide]

Wait. you mean that scale matters? And that you can have too much of a good thing? Say it ain't so!

Why can't we go back to the good old days when everything was black and white? These varying shades of grey make it hard to use boolean logic in my online debates.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

People won't wait, even if you might. This is a fact. Any suggested alternative to piracy must account for that.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

Their business model induces the piracy.

No, people who want to have some entertainment on their own terms, without paying for it, "induce" the piracy. No, they don't even "induce," they simply "commit" it. They can't be troubled to wait for a DVD or to grab it through Amazon, etc. No... they have to have it RIGHT NOW, because they are entitled to being entertained by the work of other people who spend millions of dollars.

Induce. Oh, please.

Yeah, yeah. And people who wear overpriced basketball shoes in the wrong part of down are inducing other people to shoot them in the head to take them, too. Is this inductive reasoning you're using, here?

HBO is asking for it, man! Did you see that short skirt that HBO was wearing?

Re:No shit

[cheekyjohnson]

Whether it helps or hurts is in itself a mere opinion and really depends on what you believe is hurtful to begin with.

Re:No shit

[foniksonik]

Don't forget the extra $50 / month for access to download and with HBO it's another $50 / month for a subscription on top of the $50 / month for base cable.

So to watch GOT on demand (rather than in a predefined timeslot) and on a device like a tablet it costs $150 / month both during the show season and before/after unless you jump through hoops to sub/unsub HBO (not actually sure if you can).

Now of course you get additional content with that but it's like wanting to eat a salad and having to pay for the full buffet.

Re:No shit

[cheekyjohnson]

'Piracy' is only wrong if you are of the opinion that it is wrong.

Re:No shit

[spire3661]

Yes, but do you understand that current copyright ALSO helps and hurts. There is vast amount of 'wrong' on both sides. No one can claim the moral high ground of the current IP situation.

Re:No shit

[eggstasy]

You have to pay extra to watch Game of Thrones, in America? That's absurd.
TV and Internet here come in the same package, you can't get one without the other, and it's pretty cheap, 100 mbit fiber, includes free calls from your landline and two cellphone to any network in the country + some other countries as well. Free DVR, too, included in your wifi router...
I can't possibly imagine why it would be illegal for me to stream a TV series on the train instead of watching it at home.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Their business model induces the piracy.

No, people who want to have some entertainment on their own terms, without paying for it, "induce" the piracy. No, they don't even "induce," they simply "commit" it. They can't be troubled to wait for a DVD or to grab it through Amazon, etc. No... they have to have it RIGHT NOW, because they are entitled to being entertained by the work of other people who spend millions of dollars.

You completely miss the point... There is a demand with no legal supply. Thus piracy.

However, since they aren't trying to compete with that market, it doesn't matter to them.

When it eventually does come out on DVD or Blu-ray, many of those pirates end up buying it. The people who already subscribe to HBO generally do not buy it because their cable providers have on-demand viewing of most of the episodes around the same time as the DVD comes out.

HBO is smart. This way they can sign 'exclusive' deals with cable providers. Yet, due to the piracy, their advertising still reaches other markets those exclusive deals don't permit them to do business in. Then, when those exclusive deals expire and they can release the DVDs, their sales are much higher than any program with much less piracy.

Re:No shit

[houghi]

Some people do. Other people do it because they do not want to pay anything, not even cable. And other do it because they are paying for the cable, but are unwilling to buy the DVDs later.

There is not one specific reason why people pirate. And even a single person can have multiple reasons, depending on what they pirate.

  I know people who pirate just so they have it. Not even to look or (in case of software) use it. Others use it as some sort of video recorder, because they are limited with the ones that comes with their cable.

Many people, many reasons.

Re:No shit

[ceoyoyo]

I think you're mixing up observed cause and effect with morality. If you go walking through a bad neighbourhood displaying wealth you might well get attacked whereas if you had kept a lower profile, you wouldn't have. That doesn't make the attacker's actions morally defensible, but it is something that is likely to happen.

If you take an attractive and seductively dressed woman and dump her into the yard in a male prison during exercise time, she's more likely to get raped than under other circumstances. That doesn't mean the rape is okay or that the prisoners aren't guilty, just that it's more likely to happen. I think the woman would be quite reasonable to put some blame on you for contributing to her rape in that case. Inducing it, if you will.

Heavily advertising a TV show then not allowing people to watch it by legal means is very likely to increase the rate of piracy. You can argue about whether piracy is morally defensible under those circumstances but your moral arguments have nothing to do about whether or not it's likely to happen. If HBO is creating circumstances under which their show is more likely to be pirated then they are inducing it.

Re:No shit

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. Apple figured this out with iTunes. Sadly they and most major ebook publishers have not figured that out with epubs.

Kudos to Baen Books who have figures it out and sell their non-DRM books in multiple formats at a reasonable price.

Re:No shit

[cheekyjohnson]

If I assume that by "privacy" you meant "piracy," then no, I do not believe it to be a right, and that it because (at least in the US) copyright infringement is currently illegal. However, if you were to ask me if I believe that 'creators' are entitled to government-enforced monopolies over ideas and the ability to control the data stored on your equipment, then no, I do not believe anyone is entitled to any such thing.

Re:No shit

[kbolino]

I guess the change in alcohol consumption patterns during Prohibition was just a coincidence then?

Re:No shit

[MightyMartian]

So ultimately the lesson is that if you put out a product good enough that people are willing to pay for, piracy becomes more of a kind of marketing than a destructive activity.

Pity more content producers didn't get that.

Re:No shit

[MightyMartian]

That's what my daughter did. She watched pirated copies of GOT, and then as soon as the DVD for the season was available, went out and bought them. This show has produced a pretty huge fan base (I like the books better myself) so I imagine from HBOs perspective BitTorrent is more of a marketing tool.

Re:No shit

[devent]

Oh way to go to include the "lets compare piracy to a real crime where a person is actually hurt". That argument is no better then "think of the children" "argument". You can't compare a crime where real people are hurt to a crime where it's just a copyright violation. It's not even theft, it's a copyright violation, a civil offense. With a copyright violation at minimum nobody is hurt and at maximum the studio is losing a few bucks. And you compare that to rape.

With the DRM enabled you can't obtain the video in markets where the studios haven't enabled it. Without DRM I could just get it from their website or whatever and watch how I like. In this case DRM is not preventing any piracy, but encouraging it.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

People pirate it because the only way to watch it legally is to subscribe to HBO.

And not only that, but you have to subscribe a TV programming package too. There's no way to get HBO programming on its own; even if you try to subscribe to HBO GO to watch online, you first must be subscribed to HBO through one of the major cable/dish providers.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Actually, HBO subs are $15-20 / month, and basic cable is ~$40. And including the cost of your Internet access into the price makes about as much sense as including your rent into the cost of a meal you made in your kitchen. And you can't download a torrent without Internet access, either...

Also, unless you signed up for a long-term contract with your cable/satellite provider HBO is month-to-month. In fact I have several friends who only add it specifically when GOT is on :)

Anyway, if you want to watch it on demand you do need cable and an HBO sub, that's true. But that's really no difference from watching it live (or DVRed) by broadcast. There are many networks who make their shows available next day for $2 ea. HBO waits until the season is over before they do that so as not to cannibalize subscription revenue, but they still do make it available on iTunes, VUDU, Amazon, etc without any need for cable or a sub...

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Did you read my whole comment, ie, the "clearly the harm is much lower/almost non-existant" part? You can most definitely compare an argument that the illegal activity (I never said crime or theft, again READ IT) was the *victim's* fault to any other illegal activity where someone makes such a ridiculous claim. The hyperbolic comparison was, of course, the POINT.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Who is the victim in your analogy?

Re:No shit

[spire3661]

Minimum $45 digital tier cable + $15-20 for HBO + cable box rental $15+ $5 guide fee (cant record HBO on CableCARD). $75/mo is probably the cheapest you can get HBO in the U.S.

Re:No shit

[Zumbs]

But with DVD releases GP still does not get a simple file that can be played. Also, most DVDs come with (easily broken) DRM and FBI "you are a bloody thief" messages.

Re:No shit

[SScorpio]

Yup, you get to wait a year from when it's aired for subscribers.

With many people cutting the cord, subscribing to HBO isn't an option, thankfully it looks like they are open to the idea of allowing a digital only subscription to access HBO-Go.

Your options are currently:
1) Subscribe to cable and HBO and watch on Live TV, HBO OnDemand, DVR, or online via HBO-Go
2) Wait a year for the Blu-Ray and DVD boxset
3) Click the torrent for the new episode posted 5-10 minutes after it finishes airing, and wait 10-15 minutes for the download and play it on any hardware you have.

It might not be legit, but you aren't really giving the consumer choices, having it available on Amazon Instant Video where you purchase each episode or the full season and have a one to two week delay would be reasonable. But waiting for a whole year when illegal option is available all that time?

This same practice hurt the movie industry where a movie would come out and then be available in its country of origin on DVD before it heads across the global for release in theaters. Or PC games released 8 months later due to translation/localization. What happens when the global release is within a few weeks of one another? There is less piracy as people can get their fix.

Re:No shit

[Cammi]

In alaska, you must pay over $200 a month in order to be permitted to subscribe to HBO. I can, however, get last seasons' episodes from Amazon. If HBO had have a clue, they would allow anyone to subscribe to HBO Go, but they are not that bright. So ... Until HBO get's a clue ...

Re:No shit

[thoth]

You completely miss the point... There is a demand with no legal supply.

And you completely miss the entire planet the point is on. There is ALWAYS some demand for ANYTHING at a zero price - does that make copyright infringement OK?

Re:No shit

[Maritz]

Lots of people pirate it as it comes out and buy the box set later. Big fucking deal. Comparing it to rape is asinine.

Re:No shit

[Xtifr]

The use of hyperbole does not invalidate an argument, much as we might wish it to. What it does is make it harder for those who disagree to hear the argument, which is unfortunate. The problem with Godwin is not that comparisons to the Nazis are necessarily incorrect; it's that it's such an emotionally loaded claim that reason flies out the door at that point.

Re:No shit

[Ironhandx]

Honestly I would subscribe to HBO if I could do it WITHOUT paying like $150 to the cable company for the everything else I don't want first.

Re:No shit

[erroneus]

Piracy was also a huge help in establishing Microsoft's critical mass with Windows95/98/NT/2000. After they achieved that, they locked things up a bit tighter to better ensure people are paying.

Not saying that's what HBO has in mind, just saying it's good when it serves their purposes.

Personally, I say it means HBO should start selling downloads on subscription and/or on an individual basis at a reasonable micro price. If I could download a DRM free 1080p version of GoT episode for like $0.80, I probably would. (For that matter, I probably can..., just haven't looked. If someone knows anything, reply here.) Direct downloads are easier and less risky than torrents.

Re: No shit

[cyber-vandal]

Amazon Instant is only available in the US. Piracy is often a way to route around stupid local licensing agreements. I don't want to have to pay for all the crap on Sky or Virgin here in the UK just to watch one show.

Re:No shit

[Inconexo]

Still, I wouldn't have bought AGOT DVD if I hadn't knew the series. I wouldn't have known the series if weren't from a "illegal"[1] copy.

[1] In my country is not actually illegal.

Re:No shit

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...especially when the legal means of consuming the content covers most of the intended market.

...after the two/three/four years that it often takes for a top-notch show to reach my country in the first place.

Re:No shit

[jedidiah]

> Or you could wait for DVD release, or buy it via Amazon Instant.

Neither of those solves the problem of having something that can be played with mplayer. Device support for Amazon streaming is actually rather limited and removing the DRM from a DVD presents a potential legal problem.

Re:No shit

[devent]

I get your point. You compared rape with copyright violation and then say: it's the victims fault. It's the classical line of "argument" from politicians and publish studios for harder copyright enforcement.

My personal opinion on copyrights is that the copyright holder lost any morality left at least since the Copyright Term Extension Act 1998

Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.

Re:No shit

[jedidiah]

A copyright violation is not necessarily morally wrong.

Copyright is a public policy mechanism. It's not a moral or natural right. It is something that may or may not be employed by the state to encourage creativity. The end goal of copyright is ALWAYS "piracy".

Crimes that don't have an associated tort should always be suspect. If you aren't selling in their country, there can't be any harm because you have already decided that those pirates have no value.

There are no damages.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if the actual market for your show is much larger than the intended market? HBO is missing out on profit by not making their content easier to purchase worldwide.

Re:No shit

[jedidiah]

Adverts?

What kind of clueless idiot are you? This is HBO we're talking about. How can we take anything else you say seriously if you can't get the basic details of the situation right?

It's hard to say for sure. However obscurity is usually far more harmful than piracy.

Re:No shit

[Sarten-X]

They're also missing out on the cost to distribute it worldwide while making sure not to run afoul of censorship laws, cultural taboos, local trademarks, or embarrassing history. After all that, there might still be some profit, but perhaps not enough to justify the increased administrative difficulty and legal risk for the parent company. Believe it or not, some companies really don't want to go chasing endlessly after every cent of profit they can possibly get.

Re:No shit

[multimediavt]

It's not even theft, it's a copyright violation, a civil offense.

Uhh, in the U.S. copyright infringement is a criminal offense. Don't you actually read that FBI warning that comes up before EVERY bit of content on DVDs? Also, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Now, there are also civil charges for copyright infringement that can be applied, but it's a crime and there are people that suffer financial loss because of it. Those people usually don't include Hollywood as their profits keep going up despite copyright infringement. But, small production companies and artists trying to get their foot in the door do suffer real consequences of copyright infringement and do suffer real "hurt" because of it. I'm not getting on a high horse here as I have violated a few laws in my time, but I am not ignorant of what I am doing nor the real consequences thereof.

Re:No shit

[jamstar7]

I'm thinking standard rezz pirate video would help sell the HD rezz. I TIVO a lot of tv shows then move them to my computer, then buy the DVD set to rip down when they come out to get rid of the 'bug' in the lower right hand corner.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

No, you didn't get my point at all, just made it what you wanted for your point. Sigh.

My point was I don't care what the illegal activity is, don't blame the victim. If you believe piracy/copyright infringement is ok, then go ahead and do it, but also get some balls and admit the reason is YOU think it's ok, not that someone else coerced you into doing it.

Copyright terms and validity actually have nothing to do with my point (it's your point that used mine as a straw man). But, to go in that direction... I do think copyright infringement should be illegal and have a penalty, but anyone doing it for personal use it should only be penalized for the price of the content (like, $25 max per movie). Maybe some nominal fine as well, but the current $25k max is insane. And if you can prove you paid for the content already (like, bought a DVD or digital stream and then torrented it) it should not be illegal as the point of copyright is a licensed right, not a physical copy. Of course professionals doing it is a different story, but that's already criminal.

I also agree with you (and am maybe even more extreme) on copyright extensions. For most cases, I think the copyright of media should be limited to an initial useful term to realize profit (for example, 5 years for a movie is far more than any studios plan for when estimating profitability; individual works like novels may need a longer term, but in no way should extend significantly past the death of the author).

Re:No shit

[stewbacca]

An HBO subscription isn't the only legal way to watch it. It's on iTunes and Amazon instant video, and probably others.

Re:No shit

[hobarrera]

This is absolutely true.
Where I live, if I want to legally watch the show, I need to hire cableTv+HBO. It's way too much of an expense for me.
And I'm middle classed, for the average citizen, those cost are out-of-reach.
However, paying 1-3USD per episodes would be ok. It may sound like little money, but remember that not much of what you pay for cabletv goes to the actual show, a lot of the money is lost on the way.

Re:No shit

[stewbacca]

Your point was well received by me. All these other morons around me..meh, I can't vouch for them.

Re:No shit

[jamstar7]

OK, 'The Wire' was a co-production of HBO and a private company, Blown Deadline Productions, who may or may not be wholely owned by HBO. HBO seems to have reserved the DVD rights and the merchandising rights, and they sold the hell out of it overseas as well. HBO sure as hell wouldn't have kept it going for 5 seasons if it wasn't profitable, their shareholders would lynch the board of directors. I doubt any of the actors made a dime out of the foreign sales or the merchandising due to Hollywood accounting.

Keep in mind that according to Hollywood accounting, nobody has made a profit in Hollywood for over a century.

Re:No shit

[hobarrera]

DVD realease has lower quality. Why would I want that?
Amazon Instant is not available in my country.

Re:No shit

[Endo13]

It's not always as simple as that.

I want to watch it in hi-def. I don't own a Blu-Ray player as I've never needed one. Anything I want to watch in high-def I get digitally. I currently don't have cable or satellite at all because there's just not enough shows I'd watch to make it worth my while. When I last had cable, I watched less than 5 hours over the course of three months. So I'm not going to get cable or satellite AND subscribe to HBO for just one show.

I'd gladly pay $5 (maybe even a little more) per episode to get it legally DRM-free in high-def. But it's not available to buy that way.

Of course, today it'd be so easy for them to sell it that way, so why don't they do that? I'm guessing it's because they crunched some numbers and decided they probably make more money from people who currently subscribe to the channel rather than just selling individual episodes of shows, even if they'd get rid of some piracy by doing the latter.

Re:No shit

[Endo13]

Uhh, no it's not. You didn't even bother to actually read what you linked.

Copyright infringement is a civil matter, except in certain specific cases.

(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;

(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or

(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Not sure if you are joking, but my basic analogy had two parts, and his was missing the key one.

Re:No shit

[Mashiki]

Or you could wait for DVD release, or buy it via Amazon Instant. I don't have HBO, but I can still easily access the show via legal means; I just have to wait longer than subscribers.

"Not available in Canada..." so...yeah a nice big fuck you on that one. For some parts of the world there are no "legal means" to get it.

Re:No shit

[TrekkieGod]

No, people who want to have some entertainment on their own terms, without paying for it, "induce" the piracy. No, they don't even "induce," they simply "commit" it. They can't be troubled to wait for a DVD or to grab it through Amazon, etc. No... they have to have it RIGHT NOW, because they are entitled to being entertained by the work of other people who spend millions of dollars.

That may be true, but if you're trying to have a successful business plan, do you really think it's a good idea to have one which depends on changing human nature?

Maybe you don't think these people are "entitled to being entertained by the work of other people who spend millions of dollars." It doesn't really matter does it? They think they are, and they have the means to achieve their goals, whether you like it or not. So you have one of two choices...spend lots of money trying to make it more difficult for these guys to get what they want, or give them most of what they want, lowering the number of people who choose to go the pirating route. As long as you gain more by doing the latter than you spend by doing the former, that's the way you should go. Simple cost-benefit analysis.

HBO is asking for it, man! Did you see that short skirt that HBO was wearing?

Did you really just compare copyright infringement to rape?

If you must use a human sexual behavior as an analogy, it's more like dealing with teenage sexual activity. You can argue they shouldn't be engaging in it, and you're probably correct in that they're not ready. That said, if you tell them that abstinence is the way to go, you're fighting against human nature, and you're going to fail. Instead, if you teach them the concepts behind safe sex, you let them have what you want and you minimize the dangers of pregnancy of STDs. There will still be those who will engage in unsafe sex, and there will always be those guys who will pirate no matter what because what they want is the free part. However, you haven't proposed an alternate solution that does a better job.

Re:No shit

[friedmud]

I want to watch it in hi-def. I don't own a Blu-Ray player as I've never needed one.

You want hi-def... therefore you now need a Bluray player... simple.

BTW - The Blurays of GOT are _awesome_. The video and audio quality are REALLY good and the commentary and special features are also completely worth it.

I subscribe to HBO on my Dish... but I have also purchased both of the seasons of GOT on Bluray. They are epic.

Can't wait for the new episode tonight!

Re:No shit

[inasity_rules]

South Africa... (No I'm not GP, but I live in such a place.)

Re:No shit

[Firethorn]

Just because they are choices you do not like, does not mean they are not choices.

In general, consumers WANT to give you money, surprisingly enough. However, the amount they're willing to pay, the time they're willing to wait, the restrictions they're willing to put up with varies.

Subscribing to cable is not an option everywhere. Subscribing to cable and HBO is expensive as all heck if all you're going to watch is "Game of Thrones". Consumers are impatient - they're not going to want to wait a year, at least not all of them. Box sets are still expensive.

As a media marketer, it's in my best interest to realize that the consumer market is varied, and depending on my pricing and options offered the piracy rate can vary wildly, along with my sales. HBO has probably determined that getting money from the premium customers and letting the rest pirate is the better option than gathering more of the market, but watering down the price it can extract from premium customers.

Re:No shit

[Chrontius]

I waited.
Then I forgot Game of Thrones,
Forgot it got made.

Now, thus reminded,
I discovered my life,
it has not suffered

for lacking this show,
and I doubt I'll watch this show,
until, for five bucks,

I can get seasons
in Wal-Mart's $5 DVD bin.
They have a problem.

Without the lure of
Instant gratification,
They've already lost.

Re:No shit

[Chrontius]

Adequate internet: $20/month
Adequate cable: $100/month
Unwillingly unemployed or underemployed: 27,000,000.

Decide if you, collectively, want to bitch about people on unemployment paying $100 or more a month for cable, or bitch about crybabies who have chosen to cut the cord. Complaining about both is hypocricy.

Re:No shit

[FuzzNugget]

How about, we all just accept that:

* A little piracy helps more than it hurts and is a generally nothing more than free advertising
* Making content easy-to-use, open/DRM-free, accessible and reasonably priced deters piracy better than does antagonizing your own fans through legal bullying ("you'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar")
* Despite your best efforts, a negligible and inconsequential number of people are going to be freeloaders no matter what. These are people who are either unable to obtain it through "legitimate" means because it's (1) not made available to them, they (2) can't afford it, are (3) simply cheap or are (4) naive.

There are some sub-points on that third item:

(1) Unavailabliy: there is no excuse for this. These people are paying customers except that you won't take their money, so they turn to the only possible alternative. If it's unavailable to certain users becuase of their location, that's your own damn fault for keeping everything locked up in bullshit legal entanglements. There is clearly a market and reaching that market is a trivial expense in 2013.
(2) Can't afford it: don't write these people off. They are in the market, just not yet. These are the same college students that use cracked copies of Photoshop, but who will later be purchasing it at the full ridiculous price from Adobe.
(3) Just cheap: OK, you probably won't deter these people because they can't be detered. They don't care and it's not worth persuing them and becoming universally despised as a result.
(4) Naive: they just don't know how these things actually work, they just assume that it's all on the up-and-up and that a computer is just a glorified stereo and VCR. And why wouldn't they? Radio's free, OTA TV is free, YouTube is free... the way to attract them is not to send letters threatening to riun their lives over 24 songs. You tell them, "look, here's the improved level of service and quality we can provide you for a reasonable price."

In essence, it's a matter of balance and legal bullying is the wrong way to go about tipping the scale when it's too heavy on the side you don't like. It sounds like /maybe/ they're just starting to get the slightest, subtle twinge of this realization.

Re:No shit

[aaaaaaargh!]

especially when the legal means of consuming the content covers most of the intended market

Uh, perhaps they should intend a bit more then?

Really, this is starting to piss me off. Where I live it is basically impossible to legally watch anything but "America's Next Top Model" and "Extreme Reconstruction" on expensive internet set-top box TV or buy buying decade old series I've already watched on DVD for ridiculously high prizes. No new series, no legal streaming, no working cinema on demand. You can't imagine how gladly I would pay for being able to watch a series or movie on my PC in halfway good quality... in English without subtitles, not synchronized or with letters smeared all over the picture. But no, apparently it's just totally impossible to set up reliable streaming outside the US in a country where just about everyone has a 100Mb fiber optics connection.

Re:No shit

[lexman098]

Are you of the opinion that a woman *can't* make herself more inclined to be raped? It's always wrong to rape someone, but only focusing on punishing rapists instead of also looking at institutional problems is a big mistake.

Also, I'm still talking about piracy.

Re:No shit

[Mashiki]

It's showing on HBO Canada tonight.

Pirate if you want to pirate, pay if you want to pay, but spare us the bullshit about not having any legal means to get it when you very clearly do.

The new episode is showing on HBO Canada. Previous episodes are not available in Canada, not unless you're using a proxy to get around "region blocking". Please spare me of your self-righteous indignation when you have no idea of what you're talking about.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

I would wager there are almost as many people who pay for HBO who aren't 'consuming' this series as there are people who pirate it. At least this guy understands that he's not hurting for cash, and doesn't feel the need to squeeze every possible penny out of every person to ever hear the series' name. I would be OK with it if this guy wants to run the country.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

HBO doesn't become poorer if I see an episode of their show without paying for the privilege.

So... there's really no point in anyone paying HBO for what they produce, right? After all, if people who want to see the show but who find a way to rip it off don't cost them anything, then everybody should rip it off. Right? Because, no harm done. Somebody else will come up with the millions of bucks it costs to make what they all want. No need for the audience to pay for it.

Are you even listening to yourself?

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

"Intended market". Now there's a bullshit legalese term if I ever heard one.

The 'intended market' line is a convenient way to say "We're too lazy to localize our series, or negotiate and organize syndication deals elsewhere". When that is the only reason for not having a full, global market, then you are throwing away vast potential revenue, and you should not be allowed to complain about 'piracy' hurting your bottom line. Hell, if they were good businesspeople they would offer free viewing on their site for non-intended markets so their content can reach everyone regardless of subscriptions and fees.

I'd also like to point out the fallacy that is "If they didn't pirate it, they'd pay for it". That's just complete nonsense, and applies to a very small amount of piracy cases. In my case, I only pirate stuff I would never pay for. If I'm willing to pay for it, in any way or at any point, I will just buy it instead.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

Eight.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

No, we don't feel "entitled" to it.

So if you're not entitled to it, and don't feel entitled to it, and you won't pay for it (or, if you can't get HBO, won't just wait to buy the material when they put it up for sale for you), what is your justification for ripping it off? See, if you felt entitled to it, we could talk about the philosophical flaw in your world view that leads you to believe you're entitled to it. But since you say you're not within your rights to have it, you're basically signing up for the "it's just me ripping off something small, and I'll let the chumps pay for it for me."

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

missing out on the cost to distribute it worldwide

Welcome to the internet: Where video can be shared with everyone, worldwide, regardless of their cable subscription or locale, for pennies.

Storage/CDN, bandwidth, hosting. Done. Pennies. Also let's not forget a couple ads in the mix can generate them exceedingly more money than they spend to distribute it. Shit, throw a single commercial in the file and upload it to TPB yourself. Then you don't have to pay for bandwidth or hosting, and you make enormous profit for such a widely-viewed commercial.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

Did you really just compare copyright infringement to rape?

No, I'm pointing out the GP's obnoxious proposition that HBO is causing people to rip off their work.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

Are you of the opinion that a woman *can't* make herself more inclined to be raped? It's always wrong to rape someone, but only focusing on punishing rapists instead of also looking at institutional problems is a big mistake.

So, you're all for burkas because it just makes more sense, right? The institution of not covering a woman's entire body is clearly part of the problem. Big mistake, right? Are you even listening to yourself?

Piracy is no different. How easy or hard it is to do doesn't change the pirate's actions, ethically.

Re:No shit

[fluffy99]

Finally a suit that understands piracy HELPS more than it hurts, especially when the legal means of consuming the content is limited to few regions of the world.

Or perhaps he realizes that anyone watching Game of Thrones likely already has an HBO subscription and it's not representing lost revenue. I suspect the vast majority of people downloading Game of Thrones are doing it to watch at another time, catch up on a missed episode or two, or perhaps they just got hooked on the show and want to see all the old episodes. Does HBO have ads in this series? (I don't know) If so, then perhaps people are downloading to avoid ads which might be a concern to the advertisers.

Re:No shit

[Charliemopps]

A little piracy is free advertising; universal piracy kills the bottom line.

Universal Piracy kills the bottom line of the current system. That needs to happen anyway. The longer the industry stretches this out with lawsuits and legal maneuvers the worse it will be for them. The world has changed, there is no way to stop piracy and the vast majority of the public doesn't see it as wrong. If the recording industry refuses to change, they are doomed.

Re:No shit

[elashish14]

Yes, but the one invariant is that copyright harms everyone else, with no help to be found. It's responsible for the repeated attempts at crippling the internet, gives us fundamentally broken technologies like DRM, wastes millions of dollars in the legal system, leads to obscenely non-constitutional laws and statutory penalties, thoroughly subverts the democratic process, and serves as the driving factor in several terrible economic/trade policies. In short, it completely sinks legitimate users as well as innocent bystanders, while the jury is out on whether it even serves any real purpose for the proprietors (and it really doesn't appear to at all, once you lose the farcical notion that each pirated copied is one (or hundreds, in the case of Jammie Rasset-Thomas) of lost sales).

We really need to reconsider our copyright policies. This world can't afford to be held back just because America chooses to sell itself out to moneyed interests.

Re:No shit

[Nadaka]

I pirated GoT. I also bought a copy of season 1 and season 2 on blue ray afterwards. Season 1 shortly afterwards and season 2 just recently.

I will likely pirate season 3 because they won't release it concurrently with the showing, and buy it later.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

You want hi-def... therefore you now need a Bluray player... simple.

Hi, this is reality, have we met? If you think BluRay is the only viable way to watch HD content, you are too stupid to properly insult.

You know what's more awesome than paying $50 for a season's worth of GOT on BD months or a year after it airs? Downloading GOT the night it airs, with the same quality, for free(or for a few bucks if they allow it).

Also, how much of what you pay for your Dish do you think goes to things like Nickelodeon, or 6 news channels, or HGTV, or CrimeTV, or Nogginz, or whatever, which you will never watch? Wouldn't it be nice if you could avoid paying so much for just a few episodes you actually want to see?

Welcome to the discussion. I think you're pretty well caught up now.

Re:No shit

[Smauler]

If you leave your valuables on display in your car, they're more likely to get nicked than if you don't. There have been lots of adverts reminding people not to leave valuables on display in their car. This doesn't mean that any less of a crime has been committed if someone nicks on display or not on display valuables.

Police sometimes issue advice for women not to walk home alone, etc. Do you really think the police will turn around and blame the woman who does if she gets raped?

No one is arguing that it's not copyright infringement if you pirate GoT when it is not available in your country (at least, I don't think they are).... I'm not quite sure what your point is.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

If they provided a better, simple, modern, cost-efficient and popular way to view their program, which was already easily available to them(oh, I don't know, like....the internet?) then many pirates would not do so. I am one of those many pirates. They don't provide this, hence, they induce much of the piracy with their company's policies and business model.

But hey, it's always good to throw rape randomly into a comment to shock people away from critical thinking, right?

Re:No shit

[elashish14]

Uhh, in the U.S. copyright infringement is a criminal offense. Don't you actually read that FBI warning that comes up before EVERY bit of content on DVDs?

Who cares what the US government thinks, honestly? The copyright laws have been bought and paid for ever since the existence of the Disney Corporation, and everyone in the world knows it. Pay someone enough money and you'll get them to admit anything. The whole legal profession is based on it.

Also, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. Now, there are also civil charges for copyright infringement that can be applied, but it's a crime and there are people that suffer financial loss because of it.

I quite simply cannot understand how it someone could be considered a victim when they produced an artistic work, and people went out of their way to enjoy it. Those who choose to support it are going to. Personally, I've done my best to make sure that I give as little as possible to groups who take away my rights for their moneyed interests, while happily giving to those who make their content available in reasonable terms.

Those people usually don't include Hollywood as their profits keep going up despite copyright infringement. But, small production companies and artists trying to get their foot in the door do suffer real consequences of copyright infringement and do suffer real "hurt" because of it.

I think the main difference between large and small companies is that small companies have to put out quality to survive. Large companies in all honesty, don't and they often get by with rehashing the same old content and releasing it dozens of times. Example: Star Wars. Furthermore, copyright law does about as much as patent law to help these small companies, as the cost of litigation pretty much wipes out anything that they have to gain from the enforcement action, while large companies just use them to bully around people that they disagree with, even when they do nothing wrong.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

Are you really calling the litigious, antiquated, ineffective businesses encompassed by the MPAA and their ilk 'the victims' on par with a rape victim? Clearly, even if you say 'the harm is much less' your comparison is nonsense and doesn't stand up to any real analysis. If you make an actual argument I might even agree with you, but you just spit a false comparison, and followed up with repeated defenses of your (rather insensitive to rape victims) retarded analogy.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

You call the copyright mafia 'the victim' and then say

Copyright terms and validity actually have nothing to do with my point

followed by a list of copyright terms and your opinion on their validity.

Wow, now there's a degree of hypocrisy, double-talk, and bullshit I don't see every day.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

there is no such thing as a victimless crime

Not sure if trolling...or retarded.

There are many things that are plainly and obviously victimless crimes, including many drug charges, traffic citations, and the fact that 'suicide' is a crime. It just so happens that copyright violation is also a victimless crime, unless you buy into the proven-false propaganda that people who pirate media would buy it if they couldn't pirate it.

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

I'm not sure: Is it still Godwin's Law if it's compared to rape or murder(or something equally as horrible but unrelated) instead of Nazis or Hitler?

Re:No shit

[MacGyver2210]

No, that is completely unrelated. You are saying "There is always someone out there who wants something for nothing." That is true, but what we are discussing is something completely different: In this case, there is something people want, and they are willing to pay for it, but the provider will not allow them to buy it.

This DOES make copyright infringement OK - at least in my(and many people's) view. If you can't legally purchase something even if you want to, then they aren't losing any sales when you pirate the media, and there is no loss for them. The losses they experience in the long run come from their failed business model not allowing them to take your money, not from your actions of piracy.

Re:No shit

[hedwards]

If GOT is the only thing on HBO that you want to watch, then $3.99 an episode is probably a bargain, but the more items you want to watch the less of a deal that becomes. It looks like the minimal HBO package is $18 a month right now, so you'd save a bit.

Of course that's on top of a cable or satellite subscription, and if you're just wanting GOT, then you save a ton of money by just buying the downloads.

Re:No shit

[foniksonik]

I can't watch it on my tablet without Internet and the HBO app, so Internet is a part of it. How else would that work? I don't have a TV btw so any cost for cable is too much. Why is a TV required to enjoy GOT? No TV means no DVR, an extra $10 monthly, which is where basic cable becomes $50 monthly.

So to watch GOT I'd have to buy a TV, order cable with a DVR tax and upgrade to an HBO plan.

That's a large investment.

Think ill stick with an RSS feed from my seedbox and a laptop running a media center app to get it on my tablet. Ill buy a box set next year when it's available but would rather just pay them now (without all of that extra crap I don't want).

Re:No shit

[Xtifr]

No, but all of them lower the tone of a debate, and tend to cause emotion to override reason for all parties, on both sides.

Re:No shit

[Alsee]

Note that our copyright laws have literally been getting drafted by industry layers, and they have been slipping lawyerly "gotchyas" into the text. Specifically, in the No Electronic Theft Act (N.E.T. Act) theyredefined "financial gain:

17 U.S.C. Â 101 - Definitions
The term âoefinancial gainâ includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.

And from the U.S. Department of Justice:
It is a common misconception that if infringers fail to charge subscribers a monetary fee for infringing copies, they cannot be held to have engaged in criminal copyright infringement. It is the position of the Department that the term "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" does not require the payment in money for the infringing works, but includes payment by trading anything of value for them. Thus, when "bartering" (i.e., the practice of exchanging infringing works for other infringing works) results in the unauthorized dissemination of substantial amounts of infringing product without recompense to the copyright holders, prosecution appears to be fully consistent with the purposes of the criminal copyright statute.

In other words, they they slipped a redefinition into the law to take essentially any use of P2P and magically shove it under the criminal copyright code which was originally intended only to target serious commercial piracy operations.

Virtually everyone who has ever used any P2P is guilty of a felony, subject to one, three, or up to five years in prison. Double that - up to ten years in prison - for a second offense of downloading some music from P2P. Because, someone who download music twicewould attempt to actually enforce that law. If they attempted to round up tens of millions of random Americans - mostly people's kids - for felony copyright infringement charged with several years in prison, there would literally be a hundred million people storming the streets with torches and pitchforks. If they actually attempted to enforce this law the general public would overthrow the entire U.S. government in under 48 hours. And somehow I suspect the new government wouldn't be quite so friendly to any of the other batshit-insane demands coming from the copyright lobby.

-

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

but you just spit a false comparison, and followed up with repeated defenses of your (rather insensitive to rape victims) retarded analogy.

No, dude, you have said the same thing multiple times here, and posting it more than once doesn't make it any more relevant. It was hyperbole to point out you should never, ever blame someone ELSE for YOUR actions (even if you in fact think the victim is an evil money grubbing corporation). I was not being insensitive to anyone any more than your comment/point is being insensitive to developmentally challenged people (I assume, right??)

Re:No shit

[Nostromo21]

If HBO were really cunning & smart, they would have floated each ep as a kickstarter project & said they're not releasing it until it hits $xxx. Then they could just seed a few torrents & let us chumps pay for distribution & word-of-mouth reviews/free advertising.

Someone with an already popular show & loyal fan base is bound to try this soon, just surprised they haven't yet.

Re:No shit

[Alsee]

Did you really just compare copyright infringement to rape?

Yeah, he did. That is a form of terrorism.
And only a pedophile would deny it's terrorism.

-

Re:No shit

[dead_user]

That commercial would be in the movie for one and a half minutes before someone helpfully stripped it out and re-seeded the file. Four people total would see it.

Re:No shit

[ThePeices]

" Also, there is no such thing as a victimless crime. "

I LOLed

Re:No shit

[Sarten-X]

Oh, yes... pennies for that simple stuff that any nerd can set up in minutes or less. Now get a cultural expert to determine whether the villain's taunt is close enough to cause outcry among war-torn villagers in rural Africa, and someone to check all countries to see if Initech is a real company that might sue for defamation, and get a linguistics expert to check every character's name for any unfortunate coincidences, and a small army of lawyers to make sure that joke about Chinese-made products will still be well-received in China... and see how many more truckloads of pennies that costs. Also don't forget the accountants to count those penny-carrying trucks.

Modern "distribution" means more than just putting a product in a customer's hands. It means putting a product in customers' hands knowing that it will be as likely to be suitable for that customer as much as it would for any other. Distributing to a global market means the product must be suitable for entire world, with all its quirks and cultures, not just the United States' free-expression orgy. Bandwidth isn't the problem.

Re:No shit

[AmiMoJo]

This exactly, the shows become popular and fan sites spring up, everyone is talking about the season finale on G+. You can wait a year to see it or just pirate it now, join in the fun and maybe buy it when the DVD comes out.

The movie industry understands this and at least makes some attempt at a world wide launch.

Re:No shit

[nametaken]

You win all the cookies for today.

I think of it like an Adobe and Microsoft approach. Don't make anything too hard to pirate, because you want kids and emerging markets using your products. Hook 'em so you'll be the standard.

Maybe later you bitch that nobody pays for anything and release the hounds. But mindshare comes in at priority #1.

Re:No shit

[nametaken]

Absolutely, if you go the torrent route. I think a more Netflix, or appropriately, HBO Go approach would make a lot more sense.

Though as HBO has said themselves, they're uncomfortable jeopardizing the arrangement they have right now by getting aggressive in online delivery. Today the TV companies sell everyone on HBO, handle the customer support, all the billing, etc. HBO doesn't necessarily want to have to do a lot of dealing with customers directly.

Re:No shit

[zyzko]

Why not require quality ads on quality show, I believe for some the Superbowl is huge just for the ads?

Get 1-2 actually good ads on start of the show, and an "official" stamp and there will be only little demand for ad-free version.

Of course what would be even better - let us pay for the episodes because HBO doesn't like ads - but wait, they do like the cable bundles and hugely delayed iTunes releases...

Re:No shit

[Rich0]

You completely miss the point... There is a demand with no legal supply.

And you completely miss the entire planet the point is on. There is ALWAYS some demand for ANYTHING at a zero price - does that make copyright infringement OK?

Of course not.

However, there would be demand even at a moderate price - like a dollar an episode or whatever. Right now the only way to legally watch the show involves subscribing to HBO, or waiting a long time to buy it in some other way. Most people aren't going to subscribe to a cable channel for just one show.

Nobody is suggesting that HBO should be required to give it away for free. They should just make it available via a few online distributors for a reasonable price.

This is why Apple made a killing with iTunes - they realized that even though people could download music for free you could still make a ton of money selling it for $1/song, because people weren't going to buy a whole CD for $20 just to get the 1-2 songs they wanted to hear. The issue wasn't so much the price as the bundling.

Re:No shit

[jaymzter]

Then it doesn't matter, South African's have "diplomatic immunity!"

Re:No shit

[Dahamma]

Two *different* conversations, which I clearly stated with the subtle "copyright terms and validity actually have nothing to do with my point" that you kindly repeated. Thought it was a reasonable segue to the *other* topic but some people take more mallets to the head...

But anyway, pretending anyone with a copyright is the "mafia" is absurd. Why would anyone listen to anything else you say?

Re:No shit

[fafalone]

You tell them, "look, here's the improved level of service and quality we can provide you for a reasonable price."

That statement needs to be true before it's effective. Pirated content provides a better experience. You don't always need to be online and the selection is almost always better. And quality? These days I just download the 1080p streams they post on the web. Personally I hate being at some companies whim and fancy about what seasons they can or cannot carry, can or cannot offer in HD, and when they may just up and discontinue the service.

Although the technical barrier to entry is somewhat higher than simply streaming your shows, no legitimate offering can compete with my 70-show library served up by a couple NAS devices. Sure it's 8TB (and another 3TB for 320 movies, 200 of which are in HD), but it's a complete replacement for TV on any device on my network. Local copies are better than streams for almost every situation (unless you and everyone in your family never want to watch it again).

Also there's a reason for pirating that you forgot to mention: I pay for cable TV. As far as I'm concerned, since it's my right to record anything that airs and edit out commercials and format shift, I have every right to simply download it instead.

Re:No shit

[eriks]

I wish I had mod points for you, but I don't, so I'll comment instead and say that the fact that there are people willing (indeed, even eager) to compare an act as essentially harmless (as admitted by a major corporate head) as sharing some TV episodes, to the heinous and criminal act of rape, simply to try and strengthen their argument, is a good example of one of the issues facing our society: totally inappropriate hyperbole. Certainly this social issue is more important than online filesharing.

My next paragraph may make me a tad hypocritical, though perhaps illustrates my point.

The (thinly veiled) comparison to rape suggests that this person (if he/she/it is not a troll, which I guess is likely) thinks that rape is not much worse than, or even equivalent to copyright infringement. It's a logical hypothesis.

Slightly more seriously: If the poster was not a troll, then I'd guess that they're not consciously aware that they think that way, and the comparison bubbled up out of the unconscious, perhaps in reaction to seeing a somewhat charged and leading assertion, since I don't see that HBO is "inducing" anyone to infringe copyright any more than the US Mint induces people to counterfeit, though if I was going to make that point (I don't personally care to, since I would say it's irrelevant) I think I would let my argument stand on it's own without denigrating womankind or bringing up 9/11 or whatever other horror might be in fashion, since at least for a free-thinking audience, the hyperbole only serves to diminish the point.

That said I do think it's somewhat refreshing to hear a corporate spokesperson admit what most of us have known for years, that casual online (or offline) sharing of copyrighted content, on the whole, is at worst economically neutral, since much of it amounts to free advertising, as some of the people that obtain or and/or provide an infringing copy will also spend money on the same or similar content, or cause others to, since people will spend money on stuff they like.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Who has been prosecuted under the DMCA for ripping DVDs they own?

Who gives a fuck who has been prosecuted? It's the law.
If you are going to break the law anyway you may as well just download the fucking thing.

Re:No shit

[Mabhatter]

HBO needs to do something about the bundling costs. I would gladly pay for HBO's content on my cable bill. But their parent company uses its monopoly on HBO to push dozens of channels nobody wants... So they can jack up the real price of HBO from $20 per month to $50+ because you have to "tier up" to be allowed to pay for it in the first place. With HBO, my "programming" part of mt cabe bill would be well over $100.. That buys an awful lot of DVD box sets in a year.

Re:No shit

[Mabhatter]

You won't see that because HBO is the carrot used to get subscribers. It's cost is high to get CABLE COMPANIES to subscribe to lots of channels their customers don't want... Which they have to bundle before they make money letting you watch HBO. With each of the big 4-5 producing houses doing it, they are packing the lower tiers with Ad-filled crap channels to "out ad space" the other producing houses.

Re:No shit

[Mabhatter]

Well.. If you want 27 million people out there making TROUBLE instead of working...

Cable TV is really cheap "bread and circuses" if it keeps he masses from rioting because there are few jobs that allow one to add VALUE... You aren't even a useful TAXPAYER until you make at least $100k or so.

Re:No shit

[jamstar7]

What, you don't know how to rip a DVD down to an AVI???

The ONLY DVDs that give me shit to rip are those 8 gig ones. I know there's a trick to it, I just haven't figured it out. In the meantime, I can run it through a DVD player set to output on Chan 3 and pipe it to a capture card and save it off there.

Re:No shit

[Areyoukiddingme]

Copyrights (and patents) harm everyone except those monied interests you mention at the end of your post.

I could stop right there, with that observation, but there's more to be added.

These tax schemes with shell corporations in Ireland and the Cayman Islands only work because "client" corporations in America pay the shell corporations all of their profit. The mechanism they use to justify any number and every number they wish to use? Royalties. Copyright and patent royalties. The tax fraud being perpetuated relies on the ability to pay a bogus "licensing fee" to the shell corporation. This number is anything the perpetrator wants it to be, "negotiated" on the spot to whatever is most convenient to enable the fraud. And it's legal.

Any significant blow to copyright or patents runs the risk of ruining the game, hence copyright and patents must be protected and extended at all costs, population and culture be damned.

Not to put too fine a point on it but... "Follow the money."

Re:No shit

[mjwx]

...especially when the legal means of consuming the content covers most of the intended market.

...after the two/three/four years that it often takes for a top-notch show to reach my country in the first place.

This,

Dearest HBO, I'd like to buy Game Of Thrones but you leave no option open to me as an Australian.

So I end up pirating. It's not that I'm trying to rip HBO off, it's that HBO wont shut up and take my money.

Re:No shit

[Areyoukiddingme]

Did all of that fit in a series of tweets? :P

Re:No shit

[spire3661]

Thanks for this. I knew it had 'copy-once' which i thought meant Win 7/Tivo Prem. wouldnt record it at all and i didnt have HBO to test it. I went the opposite way and gave up on the TiVo Prem. and built 2 WMC recorders. Core i5 and 16 Gb RAM each with 8 network tuners. If one falls over a VM on the other WMC starts up and takes it place. I dont allow them to be used as anything other then Windows Media Center boxes aside from the virtual machines in the background.

Re:No shit

[flimflammer]

Yikes. You actually didn't get his point at all.

Re:No shit

[flimflammer]

Heavily advertising a TV show then not allowing people to watch it by legal means is very likely to increase the rate of piracy.

Where are they heavily advertising it where there is no legal means to watch it? I doubt HBO is advertising Game of Thrones somewhere they have no presence. That would be pointless.

I'm not denying that there are places with people whom would like to watch it but do actually have no means to do so (no HBO), however that is different from the argument you made. I seriously doubt HBO is advertising it to them and then depriving them of the ability to watch. It's more reasonable that they heard about it second hand and got interested of their own accord.

Not wanting to get basic cable and HBO is not them denying someone the legal means to watch the show just because they only care about Game of Thrones. Sure it's an exorbitant price for such an individual, but they're not the intended market anyway. They can pirate it all they want, but they don't get to use the "well I had no way to legally get it" card. There was a way, it was just out of your price range for the entertainment so you decided to take it regardless.

I've committed my fair share of piracy over the years, downloading TV shows and video games that I could never afford. I've since moved out of it and personally feel better for it. I don't look down on pirates because I used to be one, but at the same time I never tried to hide behind moralities and defend my actions as anything more than wanting something I couldn't have under my own terms.

Re:No shit

[Eivind Eklund]

For 96% of the world's population, there is no access to "Amazon Instant".

And the comment here is that legal access would lead to less piracy. I believe that; I actually buy and rip DVDs or Blurays for everything I watch, but it is an utter pain and I am oh so tempted of going for the much easier route of just pointing my computer at the right torrent files and getting it pre-ripped and quicker. There's so much hassle put in the way of a good experience for those of us that want to stay legit.

Re:No shit

[w0mprat]

Finally a Slashdotter that understands piracy both helps and also hurts, especially when the legal means of consuming the content covers most of the intended market.

Helps mainly. Hurts barely at all. Thought we didn't get a Slashdotter that mentioned merchandise - the tangible goods (including the George R.R. Martin books) that get purchased by people who may have never paid a penny for the original content. Often a merchandising empire is a vastly bigger source or revenue than the original legal means of consuming the content. This is becoming the case with GoT.

The occasional Slashdotter will point out the war on piracy was never about lost revenue, it was about profit maximization, and in the case of DRM for example, about leverage over equipment manufacturers (any prevention of casual copying was a small bonus). Example: Apple's declaration that DRM had failed, and subsequent was not some cathartic pro-user move, but rather they are a huge content consumption equipment manufacturing when they became powerful enough to dictate terms in the opposite direction, they through DRM it right back in the freakin' content industries face.

Richard Plepler may see piracy as a background noise HBO has to live with - but one that is actually helpful, possibly lucrative if played right.

Re:No shit

[inasity_rules]

Mweb + Telkom isn't so bad. I get decent speeds when Secom isn't down, and it is only about R800/month... Then again I'm not a game of thrones fan, so I'm not worried....

Re:No shit

[inasity_rules]

Not sure about that, but "illegal" (whatever that means here) file sharing is against the TOS for most providers.

Re:No shit

[Chrontius]

Naw, I realized that I had accidentally written the first part very nearly in the form of a haiku, and then massaged the rest of it to make it fit. ^_^

Re:No shit

[nhat11]

Yea some piracy is good but if you look at a country like China where they pirate and copy everything (yes even fighter jets and towns) you can see the end result when it's too extreme.

Re:No shit

[ScentCone]

You are astoundingly unable to grapple with a rhetorical device that points out the GP's absurd proposition. It doesn't matter if it's rape of ripping off the entertainment that five hundred people just spent half a year making. Every "it's OK because the victim was asking for it" excuse is just as slimy as the next, ethically. You're pretending to be too obtuse to understand that basic point so that you can trot out some faux outrage to distract from the fact that you'd like to preserve your ability to rip things off when it suits you.

Re:No shit

[anarxia]

I believe that all government-given rights are actually an illusion. I can't think of a single right that does not have exceptions. Take freedom of speech for example. You might speak your mind but the press can portray (all hail our corporate/government overlords) you as a lunatic so it becomes irrelevant what you are saying. Right to a fair trial? Ask your Japanese-born citizens during WW2 or potential terrorist citizens in more recent times. If basic rights can be repealed I think it's pointless to speak about rights at all.

Re:No shit

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong.

I can watch Game of Thrones on the TV. We're on 2nd season here.

I don't understand why we don't get the series a couple of weeks later than origin country. A couple of weeks is for the translators to work on the subtitles. I don't need subtitles, but some people do.

Right now the delay will be many months, if not a year.

No, I cannot subscribe to HBO here. But I would not do that even if I wanted to. I want to see Game of Thrones, the rest I don't give a shit about. Would I pay to stream/download an individual episode of GoT? Yes, definitely. But only if it were hassle-free and HD quality, like Vimeo or Youtube. No DRM, no Microsoft-only and no proprietary stuff. Would I pay over 5 dollars? No, probably not.

I'm not alone. There's probably, estimating very conservatively, at least five hundred thousand people like me in my country, if not more. 8 episodes á 5 USD á 500k = 20 million USD. That's just one season. For 3 seasons this setup is already 60 M USD.

I can live without GoT, some people can't. What's the alternative for the people who can't live without it? They have money, they could give it to HBO, but HBO does not want to sell. So people go to another place which "sells", where no money is exchanged. Thus they pirate the show. And why they did it was because of HBOs business model, or maybe lack of greed. I'd presume tens of millions would interest them.

The bottom line is this: people will get your "product" sooner or later. The question is whether you want to get paid for it or not.

It's a business model problem.

Re:No shit

[porjo]

I live in the UK and came to the same conclusion regarding CBS's Survivor series. It doesn't get shown here on free-to-air TV. It's available on both Amazon & Itunes as a download (which I'd be happy to pay for)...but try downloading from outside the US and you're told to p!$$ off. There is also no DVD available for the season that I'm interested in. I tried contacting CBS about this, but so far no response...

Re:No shit

[Andy Dodd]

It's not just worldwide... It's even in their core markets that they have a problem.

See, right now, the only way to LEGALLY get their content is to:
Purchase a cable TV subscription
Purchase an HBO cable subscription (more expensive for a single channel than most streaming services), which, for the most part overlaps significantly with other services out there (Netflix, Redbox, etc.)

Now, I know HBO wants to use their "original content" to get users to pay for the whole shebang - but right now, in an era where many people are trying as hard as they can to "cut the cable".

If HBO allowed people to purchase HBO GO on its own, many of their piracy problems would disappear.

Another way of looking at it is:
Consumers in the USA hate cable companies with a passion. Right now, HBO will only sell their content legally through these almost universally hated entities.

Re:No shit

[tlhIngan]

Dearest HBO, I'd like to buy Game Of Thrones but you leave no option open to me as an Australian.

You could buy the Blu-Ray and import a US Blu-Ray player. (given they're like $50, I'm sure you can probably even find them in Asia). Also assuming that they're region-locked.

You could buy the DVDs and use a region free DVD player. Something I'm told a lot of Aussies have already.

Amazon will ship you the Blu-Rays and DVDs. The player you'll have to come up with yourself, but I'm sure you can either find one or import it from North America easily.

Hell... Game of Thrones Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3. On itunes. Downloadable now.

Those are the easist options and available now, legally. No torrents required.

Re:No shit

[dragon-file]

But not all piracy hurts. If you have a product that sells for $100 ea. and 10 people pirate it you would expect $1000 dollar losses and that is the general train of thought for most suits. However a study was done a while back (can't remember specifics) that found that some of the illegal download actually led to product sales. So that estimated $1000 dollar loss was more like only 6 or 7 hundred.

Re:No shit

[Si]

If it's legal, by definition it cannot be fraud.

Re:No shit

[loneDreamer]

This world can't afford to be held back just because America chooses to sell itself out to moneyed interests.

The United States, please. The majority of America chooses nothing of the sort. I'm not sure if people intent is to summarily dismiss all other American countries or to put us into the same bucket as the US outright, but I like neither and I'm kind of tired of it. Would it be fair for me to say things like "Europe chose Hitler".

Re:No shit

[cheekyjohnson]

Take freedom of speech for example. You might speak your mind but the press can portray (all hail our corporate/government overlords) you as a lunatic so it becomes irrelevant what you are saying.

I just take it to mean that you generally won't be thrown in prison because the government doesn't like what you said, not that others won't mock you for what you're saying.

If basic rights can be repealed I think it's pointless to speak about rights at all.

Bad things happen; I don't think a valid response is to completely give up.

Re:No shit

[Holladon]

Yes, but the one invariant is that copyright harms everyone else, with no help to be found.

Everyone "else"? Other than whom? Copyright law has excesses and abuses, of course, but copyright in the abstract is intended to encourage creation and innovation by granting certain rights to creators and innovators (thereby ensuring some form of compensation for their creation and innovation such that, in the better cases, the time they spend creating and innovating won't have to by necessity be spent earning a living through some other means less suited to their unique talents). So, at its best, copyright should, far from harming everyone, help everyone -- it helps creators and innovators through the aforementioned grant of rights and creation of incentives, and it helps everyone else by incentivizing the creation and innovation that we all enjoy/consume/experience betterment from/etc.

If your comments are strictly limited to "copyright" as in, copyright law in the United States as of 2013, then I'll grant that there is an argument to be made that it does more harm than good. But even then, it's unreasonable to say that it only harms everyone but, presumably, a select subset of content owners. Even though copyright law is quite broken, it still arguably incentivizes some creation, and some subset of things created are of sufficient use that their existence justifies their protection. Again, I'm not making an empirical (or, really, hypothetical, since we don't know what the alternative universe looks like) argument about whether on balance the current copyright regime does more harm than good, but at a minimum, your comment is vastly overinclusive to the extent it purports to deny any good whatsoever. At least, that's a more detailed and thoughtful argument that you haven't made here with your brief comment.

It's responsible for the repeated attempts at crippling the internet,

Erm, no. Copyright isn't responsible for the attempts to cripple the internet. You have good old-fashioned monopolistic practices like corporate acquisition and industry integration, with a heaping does of regulatory capture and anti-competitive lobbying at the government level, to thank for that. You don't even need a copyright when you have a sufficient concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. The reason most of us don't have FiOS, for instance, has absolutely zero to do with copyright. Copyright is an excuse many companies use for draconian power plays, but if they couldn't point to piracy, rest assured they'd point to something else. The major telecomms have had a lot of luck slowly crippling our regulatory infrastructure (and, otherwise, structuring regulations in a way that keeps out competitors) in such a way that they can control our ability to use the internet. But if you think copyright is anything more than a pawn in this overarching scheme, I respectfully suggest you stop wondering what type of bark that is on the tree over there and instead start thinking about what kind of forest the tree is growing in.

gives us fundamentally broken technologies like DRM,

DRM would exist even if copyright law were more reasonable, and most likely even if copyright law didn't exist at all. Indeed, if there were no copyright law, DRM might well be the only thing that would enable content creators to make a profit (and thereby have any reason to create the content in question). If there were no copyright law, the only way that DRM would not exist would be if the government for some reason passed a law against it, and the only reason I could think it would do that would be if the government itself was going to assert ownership over all content. I don't think either of us thinks that would be a good thing.

We really need to reconsider our copyright policies. This world can't afford to be held back just because America chooses to sell itself out to moneyed int

Re:No shit

[Holladon]

That statement needs to be true before it's effective. Pirated content provides a better experience.

Very much depends on the content in question. For example: I just got an Apple TV. Cost 100 bucks. It directly links up with my computer, my iTunes account, my Netflix account, and my Hulu Plus account. The last of those (Hulu Plus) is the most obnoxious to use, and for that reason, it's the last one I go to. I like to think that as content delivery continues to evolves, HP will either improve its delivery mechanism or be crowded out by other providers. As for iTunes and Netflix, my experience is pretty much uniformly fantastic, convenient, and fast. I do a one-time setup for my accounts and have instant, easy streaming access. I have access to vast libraries of content, whether things I've purchased on iTunes or things available on Netflix. It's incredible. I just turn on the TV, fire up my remote (which, by the way, is my PHONE thanks to Apple's incredible platform integration), and tell my Apple TV what I want to watch today. Boom, easy, that simple.

For the small subset of things not available through iTunes or Netflix, though (or HP, which is, again, my last resort), if I go to the effort of trying to find it online or downloading a -ahem- less-than-legitimate copy, my experience is considerably lesser. First I have to fire up a program to search for the file. Then I download what I hope will actually be the file I'm looking for. Then I have to make sure it's a good copy and that it's actually what it claims to be. If it's not, there's twenty minutes wasted and I start over again looking for another download. Repeat until I find a good one. Then I hook up my computer to the TV, turn off any programs that might interrupt the show, fire up the viewing program (which requires using my laptop trackpad and keyboard rather than a few quick thumb movements on my phone), make sure the screen is properly maximized and my mouse cursor isn't sitting somewhere that will interfere with the viewing, and then I *finally* watch the show, which, absolute best-case scenario, will be of a quality equal to that from the primary content delivery mechanism. Takes much longer, requires an investment of more time and bother on my part, is less reliable, AND now I'm also using up space on my hard drive instead of being able to stream (and download to my computer or a mobile device, on demand, if and when I ever want to). Apple's relaxed DRM policy is perfectly fine with me, and low-level DRM is something I'm perfectly willing to put up with for a superior experience (up to five computers can be authorized on my account, with unlimited numbers of mobile devices that can sync with any of those computers -- not at all unreasonable for legitimate personal use, frankly). Seems to me Apple has found a pretty solid delivery scheme that's both above-board from a legal perspective and provides an overall better experience for me, the user. I just wish everyone would get on board with either offering timely on-demand content through a direct-subscription service like Netflix (or even HP, which, even coming in as the worst of the "legit" non-cable, non-satellite content-delivery services, is STILL more convenient than pirating -- even though the commercials are annoying, it requires less effort from me to ignore HP's commercials than it does to futz around for half an hour to snag free unauthorized content) or next-day availability on iTunes. HBO's "wait a year and then you can buy it" option for non-cable subscribers makes me a sad Panda.

Re:No shit

[OrangeTide]

Right, a basic business plan is:
Step 1. Acquire consumers
Step 2. Get them to pay you some how.

Doing them in the opposite order is often attempted but in my opinion it is putting the cart before the horse.

Re:No shit

[AK Marc]

Dearest HBO, I'd like to buy Game Of Thrones but you leave no option open to me as an Australian.

http://www.dvdwarehouse.com.au/game-of-thrones-season-1-2-boxset-9325336167564.html First search result. Seasons one and two box set, also available individually. What was the problem again?

Re:No shit

[camazotz]

Brilliant analysis and breakdown, kudos. I think the only problem, of course, is when people in the cheap/naive category start to tip the boat and become ubiquitous. But as you say, at that point the goal is to make a paid version of the product more accessible than the pirated version.

Re:No shit

[TrekkieGod]

You are astoundingly unable to grapple with a rhetorical device that points out the GP's absurd proposition. It doesn't matter if it's rape of ripping off the entertainment that five hundred people just spent half a year making. Every "it's OK because the victim was asking for it" excuse is just as slimy as the next, ethically. You're pretending to be too obtuse to understand that basic point so that you can trot out some faux outrage to distract from the fact that you'd like to preserve your ability to rip things off when it suits you.

I'm not the person you're directly replying to, but since this all stems from people misunderstanding my point, I figured I'd clarify:

When I asked, "did you really just compare copyright infringement to rape," I didn't miss the point he was trying to make about blaming the victim. I also didn't mean to go the route of, "You said rape! It's too heinous a crime to be compared to anything, so you've just lost the argument!" My point is that the level of blame to the person committing the act is vastly different. If I stay logged in to my e-mail account when I leave my computer and a friend comes in, notices it, and starts reading it, I'm going to say, "dude, not cool." He'll say, "well, you just left it open, I saw it, and it made me curious." It doesn't make him right and I'm not to blame for the fact that he chose to read something that wasn't meant for him. That said, the "crime" isn't a big deal and I'm not seriously hurt by it. So even though it's not my fault that other people can't control themselves, the easiest way to prevent them from infringing on my privacy is to log out of my e-mail account.

Similarly, I don't think it's HBO's fault that people choose to pirate their show. That said, they can steps to encourage more people to go the legal route. This is why the comparison to rape was inappropriate. I think it's perfectly alright to tolerate some copyright infringement, in fact, I think it's the way to go in a simple cost-benefit analysis. It's not alright to tolerate violent crimes, even if it could lead to statistically significant lower amounts of it overall. With copyright infringement the victim gets to say, "you know, if the amount of pirating is below a certain threshold, it's actually beneficial for us from a marketing perspective." You're not going to see any rape victims say, "you know, I was only raped once. That wasn't so bad."

Re:No shit

[RivenAleem]

("you'll catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar")

Unfortunately many of them are running with the idea that a steaming pile of shit attracts flies more than either, and for less.

Re:No shit

[RivenAleem]

Read all the way down,
No Burma Shave.
I am dissapoint.

An ideea

[tracius01]

HBO should put top quality torrents on TPB

Awesome

[ceoyoyo]

I'd sign up for HBO if there was a way to do so without paying my cable provider an obscene amount of money for Flip This Nanny and Douchebags Live Together 14 as well.

Maybe I'll mail them a donation.

Re:Awesome

[war4peace]

I was thinking the same. Full digital subscription? Yes, sir. Subscription linked to some shitty cable TV one? Nope.

Re:Awesome

[kye4u]

I think this is what Netflix is doing well at. Specifically, producing their own content (i.e. House of cards) and allowing people to watch the content without having to subscribe to packages the cable company forces you to.

Re:Awesome

[Jetra]

Wouldn't HBO profit better as a standalone channel purchase than a 6 or 12 moth subscription? If we have to pay a few cents per channel, a lot more people would be willing to drop the sports channels which come standard so as to buy HBO and Showtime.

Re:Awesome

[war4peace]

That wouldn't fly for me either. I do not need cable TV. I have been cable-less for 15 years and counting (ever since I left my parents' house at 18). The only thing that would work for me would be digital subscription. Pay-per-view would be even better but hell, all of HBO for a few bucks a month would do as well. And would make my wife happy.

Re:Awesome

[antdude]

Moths? Who does moths for subscriptions? :P

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

HBO currently sells access to its shows via cable and satellite. How do you think Comcast is going to react if HBO tries to disintermediate them? HBO is not interested in gutting their core business in order to try to capture a few pennies from a bunch of people who either can't or won't buy their expensive subscription. HBO is a premium product. They charge premium prices. HBO wants me, the upper-middle-class guy who appreciates and will pay for quality TV, and does not want you, the pirate who is willing to pay "a few cents" for their shows, because they know how to make money selling entertainment to me and it is doubtful whether anyone can make a profit selling to someone who thinks an hour of entertainment should cost "a few cents". Anon because I've modded, demonlapin.

Re:Awesome

[lexman098]

HBO is owned by time warner. Good luck with that.

Re:Awesome

[Mabhatter]

That's not how "cable TV" works. You have 4-5 big production houses that basically "own" all the channels and rent them to cable companies. They basically collude on which tier they want their channels... Channels like HBO are the carrot to get subscribers... And the stick they use to sell lots of channels to your CABLE COMPANY you don't want... So cable has to bundle things to pay for the few really cool channels customers will leave if they don't get.

Re:Awesome

[marsu_k]

They have this here, called "HBO Nordic" (unsurprisingly, this means that is is available in Nordic countries - basically, it is an almost full back catalog of HBO shows, some shows from other channels as well, and new episodes are added with local subtitles the next day after they've been aired in the US), and I've been lamenting the same thing for ages as well. With the exception that I'm unable to get HBO in any form over here - I can subscribe to a cable package (and get lots of content I'll never watch or wish to pay for), and even then I only get some select shows 4-6 months after the original airing. Which, in our ever-connected global world is an eternity really, you'll get spoiled very easily.

So when HBO Nordic was announced, I was very excited, even went so far as to upgrade my TV for it. But, well, while OK-ish, the service is not as great as they had promised. Beforehand, they said streaming should be available from Windows, OSX and Linux - and when it was actually launched, it turned out it uses the "Widevine" plugin - any guesses which OS is not supported? This was not an issue for me as I upgraded the TV, but otherwise (as my HTPC runs Linux) I would have been very irritated. But the "smart" TV app is quite atrocious as well, it gets the job done but just barely. One very irritating feature is that when you select a show, episodes are displayed in a descending order, newest first. And each with a quite detailed synopsis. Thus, if you're starting to watch a new show, you'll have to scroll to bottom without looking at the screen. Even more annoyingly, the synopsis is displayed when the playback is paused. And unlike Netflix, the app doesn't track properly what you've been watching and what episodes you'd probably like to see next.

And of course, the price isn't what they promised. Yes, it is 10€ / month - if you subscribe for a full year. If you wish to pay on a monthly basis, then it is 15€ / month. I opted to get it for the year, but I'm not really sure it's worth it, Netflix is a better deal (even with the limited selection here compared to the US). So during this year I'll try to get into some unknown (to me) shows, and follow a few that I would pirate otherwise, but I'm not sure I'll renew my subscription after that. Beyond GoT and Boardwalk, there are no current HBO shows I follow religiously, so perhaps I'll just get HBO monthly when they're on.

Re:Awesome

[mdervin2001]

Wouldn't HBO profit better as a standalone channel purchase than a 6 or 12 moth subscription? If we have to pay a few cents per channel, a lot more people would be willing to drop the sports channels which come standard so as to buy HBO and Showtime.

The Cable business makes sense to people within the cable business. HBO gets paid twice from your local cable provider. HBO gets a flat fee from your cable provider, then they get a cut of all the subscription prices. It works out for the cable provider because they get to charge you for the 200 channel package and a cut of the money they send to HBO. This type of arrangement also goes for ESPN and pretty much all the channels an average cable viewer would actually want to see (and the flip side, the Home Shopping Network and others pay a fee to the cable providers to carry their station).

If HBO/ESPN/AMC would offer an internet only option, cable providers would be pissed and would demand terms costing HBO/ESPN millions.

In addition if HBO went with a monthly subscription model, they would be at the mercy of their hit shows and scheduling. People would add/drop channels every three months.

So instead of the $15 a month for the HBO/Cinemax bundle or the $3.99 per show on Itunes. It would be $30 a month for a la carte HBO or $8.00 per show on itunes.

And then we'd have all you crying about how you have to steal because the "Price isn't Fair." (Piracy is stealing, let us pretend to be adults here).

HBO Gets it Right

[ohnocitizen]

And we should reward them. This is EXACTLY what we want content producers to say. Let's buy the shit out of their DVD's, and publicize the series even more. Let's support companies that take the right stance.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[ohnocitizen]

We should also, in a friendly way, urge them to have their content delivery more closely match the spirit of their PR. If they are OK with piracy that's great! Are they still issuing complaints? Fans would LOVE more ways to pay for their content. Are there viable means for them to make it more available? Fans want the series to make a ton of money, so it continues (and we get more tasty battle sequences). How much more revenue could they secure if they made it easier to purchase? (Relevant).

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[dubbreak]

How much more revenue could they secure if they made it easier to purchase? (Relevant).

Exactly. If he's concerned about image quality, then why not offer downloads that are up to his standards at a price that's so good it's easier to pay it and get a guaranteed good DL.

Heck, run their own private (pay for) torrent site and they can avoid some bandwidth costs. Or free official torrents with an advert or two at the begining (which they should get some revenue off or).

There are ways to monetize free viewers. I stream a few shows from the comedy network (Workaholics mainly, since they have the latest episodes) an I don't mind the ad interruptions.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[Dahamma]

Wha? Ok, Hollywood is out for itself and no one else, sure, but "slaves"? Hyperbole, much? In fact, it's not even hyperbole, I can't even come up with any analogy that makes the slightest sense with that one. Seriously, it's not food and water, it's just a stupid TV show.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[PhrostyMcByte]

There are ways to monetize free viewers.

They have the tech. It wouldn't take long to add credit card processing to HBO GO. Clearly something is holding them back -- they're able to make more money from the cable companies alone than they would from allowing anyone to pay for streaming. Likely due to cable companies threatening to not pay as much if that were to happen.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[Kjella]

Exactly. If he's concerned about image quality, then why not offer downloads that are up to his standards at a price that's so good it's easier to pay it and get a guaranteed good DL.

I can't really say the quality is better or that it is simpler, but I did sign up for HBO Nordic's streaming service, 79 NOK/mo (13.51 USD/no, for comparison Spotify Premium is 99 NOK/mo) for commercial free HD streaming within 24h of US premiere, no TV subscription required (or offered AFAIK in the Nordic markets). It's a pretty barebones offering with some huge draws like Vikings and Game of Thrones but a rather narrow selection, but it's a lot more current than Netflix. It's not downloads but you can watch past seasons of most HBO produced shows, there's no offline mode though so you can't take it with you. I hope this becomes the model for most TV, cutting out the cable/satellite broadcasters as middlemen.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a few seconds to setup a torrent download. Game of Thrones torrents are super popular, so they will download at whatever speed the limits of your internet connection allows, but you don't need to sit and watch the download anyway. If you already have payment info setup on iTunes, then I guess it's probably about the same amount of time (type in search, click buy/download) with the difference that you have to wait for it to be available, it will have DRM so playing it will be a pain, the download will probably be slower, and to top it all off, you have to pay for the privilege of that poor service.

Personally, I'm plenty willing to pay and wait for a slower download (I usually download TV shows at least a day or two before I get around to watching them anyway), but the DRM is a dealbreaker for me.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[Dahamma]

But most of what you said is not true for the vast majority of users (ie. the 99.9% not using a Linux desktop to watch TV). I don't use iTunes much, but on VUDU it's 2 clicks on a remote to purchase and one more to play back. If it's on Netflix it's one click to play and that's it. Streaming starts instantly (no download needed), and on VUDU if you want to download it's usually at almost the max 30Mbps speed of my ISP. Both are DRMed, but there is no pain whatsoever to stream or play a download on my TV, PC, or tablet (almost always on the TV for me since I'm not a big fan of watching on a PC - I'm usually using the PC while watching ;)

And "paying for the service" is not a pro/con unless you think piracy is fine, in which case the rest of the arguments are entirely moot. I'm not a big fan of piracy (since IMO watching a silly TV show is not a fundamental human right as some seem to think) but on the other hand I can't find any fault in someone who pays for the content and then torrents it to get a DRM-free copy...

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[jedidiah]

Hollywood is outsourcing all of it's IT geeks and artists in the special effects industry. All of those millions they make off of pretty much every movie they release and they are giving shops like Digital Domain the shaft.

It may only be "entertainment" but the are also subverting the law in general. The same laws that apply to useful stuff also apply to "mere entertainment".

That's the problem with letting Micky Mouse run amok in Congress.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[Dahamma]

I wholeheartedly agree that the studios screw the CG effects workers. I have a lot of friends in that industry (which up in the Bay Area is not unionized) and their contract re-negotiations are definitely borderline illegal. They are some of the more talented people I know with some of the lowest salaries for their expertise; like the game industry, it's tough to negotiate when your employer knows you love your work.

But those are industry *employees*, not customers, so it wasn't his point. And not a SINGLE one of those effects people that I know thinks piracy of their movies to "stick it to their employer" is a good idea, because a large part of their income (up to 1/2, in some cases) is based on bonuses they get from the movie's box office gross.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[zyzko]

The launch of HBO Nordic was a huge steaming pile of...warm material.

Everybody in the Internet was waiting for it, they promised HD quality and fast releases, just a day from US release with local subtitles, with archive of old series.

What we got was a mandatory yearly subscription, a service that works in HD just on Samsung smart TVs, and a vague promise that HD for other devices is "coming soon". Also, not every show is available because of some excuse on local rights. They had a really good chance to do this right (Netflix did, although people complain that their selection is small and their HD is not bluray-HD; still there is a HD client for Xbox/PS3/iOS/Silverlight browser) but they managed to totally screw it.

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[sehlat]

Please consider. Hollywood tells you what you may do with your property. Where you may do it. How you may do it. When you may do it. For how long you may do it. And demands draconian punishments for what THEY judge as misbehavior.

People who do that to others have, historically, been addressed as "master."

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[marsu_k]

I'm not saying they didn't blow the launch, they most certainly did. I still decided to subscribe for a year, out of pride I guess as I had ranted so much about not having a legal option. However, I have to ask about this:

What we got was a mandatory yearly subscription, a service that works in HD just on Samsung smart TVs, and a vague promise that HD for other devices is "coming soon".

I haven't tried to view the shows from a browser, but is this (having no HD) really true also for the Android/iOS apps? I find the quality on my Infinity to be very tolerable (it has a 1920x1200 display) - having said that, I very seldom watch HBO on a tablet, usually directly from my (yes, Samsung) TV. I though the main current gripe was that multichannel audio is not available outside Samsung "smart" TVs? Oh, and at least here in .fi they also offer a monthly option, although it's more expensive (10€/mo vs. 15€/mo).

Re:HBO Gets it Right

[zyzko]

Hi, also from .fi (as you might have guessed from my email) - from the HBO Nordic FAQ:

Do you offer HD?
Yes, for PC, Mac and Smart TV's

So no, iOS and Android are not HD, although on a smaller screen that might not matter as much.

But missing the PS3 and Xbox clients they promised - just lame.

Not so accidentally HBO is offering their shows on a premium cable service (on TeliaSonera). So same tricks as in the US - premium partners (in this case Samsung and TeliaSonera) first, others can "enjoy" degraded service.

Funny that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that, someone I know got this...

We have received a DMCA file sharing complaint and the date, time, and IP address provided matches the date, time, and IP address was in use. Illegal file sharing is against our terms of service and we cannot ignore DMCA take-down requests, as such we kindly ask you to stop sharing said files to comply with this request. Please note repeated offences may result in permanent suspension.

####
Reference: xxx-xxxx
Title: Game of Thrones
Infringement Source: BitTorrent
Infringement Timestamp: 2012-x-x x:x:x
Infringing Filename: Game of Thrones S02E08 xxxx
Infringing File size: 405105216
Infringers IP Address: x.x.x.x

####

Re:Funny that...

[war4peace]

A 400 MB file? Crappy quality. That's why you received the notification: "stop sharing shitty quality episodes!"

Re:Funny that...

[Anonymous Coward]

A 400 MB file? Crappy quality. That's why you received the notification: "stop sharing shitty quality episodes!"

A 480p x264 rip viewed from >6 ft on a 32" TV looks fine. I know plenty of people who can't tell the diff between DVD and BluRay (I'm not one of them).

Re:Funny that...

[war4peace]

He's just in denial. He does see the difference but denies it. In some movies, small things that have a meaning are just colored spots of undefined stuff on lower quality. Now I'm not all up in arms for Blu-rays (let alone the ugly mess that 3D movies are) but still, when a movie is made in (and FOR HD), cutting the resolution to 1/16 of the original pixel surface is not preserving the message, that's for sure.

Word of Mouth

[Mystakaphoros]

Honestly, if it weren't for downloading, I don't think I would have even heard of the show.

Re:Word of Mouth

[mooingyak]

Honestly, if it weren't for downloading, I don't think I would have even heard of the show.

Because you live in a cave and rarely interact with the other bipedal creatures?

I'm not saying everyone should have seen it or even want to have seen it. But to not even hear of it takes a great deal of effort.

Re:Word of Mouth

[ScentCone]

Honestly, if it weren't for downloading, I don't think I would have even heard of the show.

You are lying.

Re:Word of Mouth

[Dahamma]

I'm not saying everyone should have seen it or even want to have seen it. But to not even hear of it takes a great deal of effort.

Especially since he's posting on a Slashdot article *about* the show...

Re:Word of Mouth

[ThatsMyNick]

Not GP, but I dont think I would have noticed it either. I dont have TV and I never noticed it online, until there were a lot of articles on Slashdot about how high the piracy rate was, and how awesome the show was. The show was well into the second season, by the time I noticed it. So I really dont think I would have ever noticed it, if not for the high piracy.

Re:Word of Mouth

[Mystakaphoros]

That's kind of where I was going with the comment. The buzz amongst people I talk to has been primarily generated because they were able to grab copies of it off the Interwebz.

Re:Word of Mouth

[multimediavt]

Honestly, if it weren't for downloading, I don't think I would have even heard of the show.

Wow, really?!?! Everyone I know was talking about the show shortly before the first season ended. I don't have cable or satellite so I had no clue at the time, but because of all the talk my friends shared about the show I started watching via iTunes, etc. The number of torrent downloads was not the reason I started watching the show. So yeah, word of mouth, literally is what got me watching the show.

Re:Word of Mouth

[Anonymous Coward]

On a Slashdot article about *downloading* of the show. Not all of us are immersed in mainstream culture. To hear of the show you'd have to have HBO, watch other TV advertising and/or hyping it, buy entertainment magazines advertising and/or hyping, be active in fantasy circles or interact with a significant number of people who are (not everyone will be talking about it all the time) and for those of us dealing with mostly like-minded folks this is not hard at all. It is surprisingly easy to *not* hear about things you consider having reached general saturation if you are out of the hype loop. The top things tend to eventually reach us weirdos by osmosis, in this case the vector was all the talk about how pirated it was, if not for that I might not have heard about the show for years to come.

Re:Word of Mouth

[Dahamma]

I don't know why you have to "be active in fantasy circles" to hear about it. I read all of the books just because I like fantasy and it's been at the top of the best selling fantasy novels for the past decade. If you are a fantasy lover and have ever been to a bookstore or Amazon, you will have seen many references to it. If you aren't, who cares? Clearly you don't seem to even realize it's a longstanding fantasy series, so you don't qualify as one of "us weirdos", sorry :)

Re:Word of Mouth

[Seumas]

Not really, it doesn't. Since I don't watch live television and I use an adblocker online, I find out every once in awhile that I'm not aware of entire swaths of "popular culture" (and no, I don't regret missing out on these things one bit, either). I tend to learn about movies and shows long after they're over with and get around to watching them (if I even want to, on the rare occasion) even longer afterward than that (for instance, I just now started to watch ALIAS on Netflix, which I think is a decade old -- and not very good). I only found out this weekend that there is a second or third GI Joe movie coming out, that Prometheus from last year or whenever was part of the Predator franchise, and learned that "Two and a Half Men" is not the same as "My Two Dads" (which is what I assumed everyone had been talking about during the whole Sheen thing).

Now, it might be a little bit unlikely to say he has never heard of Game of Thrones (the TV series), but it's entirely possible that he's heard the name and just not cared enough to find out what it is. See my example above, about "My Two Dads" and "Prometheus".

Re:Word of Mouth

[strikethree]

Hm. I have not watched TV for well over a quarter of a century now (yes, I am THAT guy). Nobody I know talks about this show. I heard something about it somewhere before but I can not tell you what it is about or anything.

In short, it is not that hard to have missed something that you consider to be quite common. I just do not live in the same world you live in. Lots of other people do not either.

A letter to HBO

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Michael Lombardo,

I watch pirated copies of the show in 1080p, the quality is just fine.

Thank you,

AC

Thanks a lot

[Huntr]

Wish I'd known they felt so charitable before I ordered HBO specifically for the GoT season. :/

Let me just say...

[Dan East]

You're welcome.

And he is right

[gweihir]

The difference is that some people actually look at the facts first, like this guy. He is not the first to notice that with a good product aimed at a target audience that can pay does not suffer from unauthorized noncommercial (!) copying, but profits.

The typical attitude is the greed-inspired "This is ours! They are stealing!", reinforced by stupidity. The fact of the matter is that "copyright" is an artificial construct. The only thing that is an actual natural right is to be identified as the creator of a work. Copyright was introduced in England, because commercial piracy, perpetrated by printers and publishers lead to the actual creator of works not making money anymore. As to whether creators of works should be compensated at all, the time-honored answer is that if the audience liked it, some of them will give. And that has to be enough. It was for countless centuries. Turns out that in the Internet age, it is even easier to find people that are willing to pay for works of art when not forced to. And there are (by now pretty strong) indicators that not forcing people to pay actually increases total revenue for works of good quality. There are also indicators that works of bad quality suffer, and that is the real beef of the copyright fascists: They have gotten so used to be able to force bad quality on people and have them pay-before-consume (an entirely unnatural model for entertainment) that they want to keep that despicable model at all cost.

Re:And he is right

[ScentCone]

The only thing that is an actual natural right is to be identified as the creator of a work.

,Br> Why is that a natural right, but not being ripped off isn't? Why do you have a natural right to someone knowing you created something? Specifically.

And be careful of the logical minefield you're about to step into.

Re:And he is right

[gweihir]

You are not ripped off as no information you create belongs to you. You are simply its creator, but not its owner. You typically are also the holder of a copy. But that copy is in no way different than any other copy.

I am not stepping into any minefield here, I am just pointing out facts. They are pretty obvious unless you are brainwashed. If you really have trouble to understand the nature of things, I recommend reading "What Color Are Your Bits": http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Sure, the content-industry would like things to be different. They try very hard to change reality, but ultimately they will fail. Of course, if you have this fantasy that a specific piece of information somehow can "belong" to you, you will conclude that you are being ripped off. But if you redefine your perception of reality arbitrarily, that is entirely your fault. While a copy of the information can belong to you, the information cannot. And it did exist long before you "created" the work by crating the first copy of it, as all information is eternal. Just representing it is a different matter.

Re:And he is right

[ScentCone]

In other words, you don't want to answer the actual question.

Re:And he is right

[gweihir]

I just did. Some thinking and research may be required to understand a complex issue. If you cannot invest that, then you have no business commenting on it.

Re:And he is right

[euroq]

They have gotten so used to be able to force bad quality on people and have them pay-before-consume (an entirely unnatural model for entertainment) that they want to keep that despicable model at all cost.

How the fuck is pay-before-consume an entirely unnatural model for entertainment? I can't imagine the act of purchasing a prostitute an entertainment service which is unnatural to pay beforehand. I can't imagine how going to see a movie and deciding "meh, that was a 2/5 or 1/5" and deciding not to pay for it.

The only thing that makes sense in your model is walking down a street and seeing a street performer, where I decide to pay if I liked it enough. The thing is, I didn't intend to be entertained by that street performer just by walking down the street. Sure, if I like it enough, I will pay after the fact. But for fuck's sake, if I download a movie (pirate it), I expected to be entertained, whether or not I liked the movie after I watched it.

Even 2000 years ago, you paid the ticket price before seeing the play.

Re:And he is right

[euroq]

Ugh I just read that diatribe from the URL you posted. It was exactly the worst example you could possibly have chosen - the copyright of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of 0's and the idea of someone else having a "copy" of those 0's.

In a society without intellectual property, the painting/songs/bits you created and physically held are not yours and they are not protected from copying by someone else. In a society with intellectual property, the paintings/songs/bits you created and physically held by someone else are not yours but they ARE protected from copying by someone else without your permission. If someone held the copyright of 0101 and there was the intellectual copyright of 0101 in that society's laws, then by those laws someone else cannot copy 0101 illegally without the permission/payment of the copyright holder.

You are trying to conflate your world views and the reality of laws. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with your world views. But I'm telling you the reality of the laws of the U.S. are factually not what you are saying. You say it's a illogical disagreement with reality. Well, it's not a disagreement with reality - Lady Gaga can create the song which can be represented by millions of certain bits, and those millions of bits can be copyrighted by Lady Gaga. You simply disagree that the copy on someone's harddrive without permission should be illegal, but the law says otherwise. The reality of the copy of those bits is real - but the reality of the law is also real.

Re:And he is right

[ScentCone]

And, of course, you're still not even attempting to explain why someone has a "natural right" to be known as the author of what they create. Are you saying it's a natural right, but just not one (unlike freedom of speech and assembly) that government should protect? What mechanism is it you're proposing by which an author's "natural right" to having his name on the books he writes is preserved even as the work is being ripped off by people who would no longer be bound by the copyright laws you consider irrational?

They are showing the full S2 on of the free trail

[Joe_Dragon]

They are showing the full S2 on of the free trail of HBO today on HBO2.

And you can DVR it and view it on your time even after the end of free trail.

The Alternative's Image Quality Sucks

[garcia]

Because it's blank; as in, I don't have cable TV nor will I ever have it again because streaming is what I prefer. Once HBO stops just putting feelers out to the public so the cable companies can realize the hold HBO has over them and they could move their catalog to streaming only, maybe I'd have a clue what Game of Thrones is even about.

HBO: streaming++; current business model--

Re:The Alternative's Image Quality Sucks

[MtViewGuy]

It depends on how well they encode the broadcast. With modern desktop computers using quad-core CPU's and good encoding software, .MKV and .MP4 files of TV shows look very good in both 720p and 1080ik formats.

Re:No money for HBO

[mcvos]

Not everybody has access to HBO in the first place.

Buy HBO content on iTunes

[SuperKendall]

I'd sign up for HBO if there was a way to do so without paying my cable provider

That's why I buy Game of Thrones on iTunes. HBO gets money, and morally I am justified in downloading shows before they are released on iTunes.

It's a more direct form of donation as I don't really watch the other HBO content at this time. If they ever did unleash HBO GO to anyone that wanted to pay for it I might subscribe that way.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[MysteriousPreacher]

That's why I buy Game of Thrones on iTunes. HBO gets money, and morally I am justified in downloading shows before they are released on iTunes.

I wish I had that option where I'm living - no TV shows on the store. With The Walking Dead I can either pay for Fox, wait for the DVDs to be released (currently awaiting season 3) or go torrent it right now to get it quickly and for free. I prefer to do this legally, and wish their business model was more geared to taking my money.

I'm just not keen to pay for a channel when there's very little I'd want to watch on it, and TV is too intermittent a pastime to justify the monthly costs beyond basic cable.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, iTunes works. HBO has enough good content that I'd actually subscribe if there was a reasonable way of doing so. Other producers occasionally have something good but the signal to noise ratio isn't high enough that I'd pay for any kind of subscription.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[devent]

But it encourage the shit DRM and lock-in in Apple. I would rather just pirate the movies or not watch at all.
If you just pirate the movie maybe HBO and others gets the message that DRM is bad for them. Of course not watching it it's a better message. But you can't not watch it and get the message why you not watching it.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[thoth]

I'd buy Game of Thrones on iTunes - I buy a few other shows already - if it were current. But if I have to wait a year to buy it, the same time the DVDs come out, I might as well get it through Netflix since I'm already subscribing to that.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[jedidiah]

...yes, the elephant in the room.

We can all just get GoT as part of our Netflix-by-mail subscriptions. This has got to hurt HBO much more than piracy. It legally bypasses both the cable subscription and the DVD sale.

As a Netflix user, I am probably a much more likely potential buyer than some degenerate pirate.

It's legal too.

I watched season 1 that way. My marginal cost was zero. HBO's marginal profit was zero. It was all perfectly legal too. There's nothing these corporate shills can say about it either.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[multimediavt]

If they ever did unleash HBO GO to anyone that wanted to pay for it I might subscribe that way.

I believe they mulled this over recently (Google "hbo go non subscribers") and made a bunch of the providers angry so they backed off doing it. iTunes seems to be the best route around having to get cable/satellite to watch HBO content. The delay is the killer.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[antdude]

Amazon too. How come Netflix doesn't carry the newest TV/television episodes (e.g, The Simpsons and The Office)? Too many services to have if one has Netflix already.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

i just torrent the show and sent a $100 bill to michael lombardo with a note that said it was payment for game of thrones.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[SuperKendall]

But it encourage the shit DRM and lock-in in Apple.

Of all the shit DRM on video, the Apple DRM is one of the least shit - because Apple DRM lets you play things on approved devices even offline, and you can download for offline viewing instead of streaming.

And if the DRM offends you so much, remove it. Honestly for a Slashdot user to complain about something so easy to strip is rather silly.

If you just pirate the movie maybe HBO and others gets the message that DRM is bad for them

You don't think that message was delivered about five years ago? They have that message.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[Phroggy]

And if the DRM offends you so much, remove it. Honestly for a Slashdot user to complain about something so easy to strip is rather silly.

Last time I looked into it, removing DRM from FairPlay DRM'd videos without loss of quality sounded non-trivial. Do you have an easy way to do it?

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[FuzzNugget]

"Morally justified" is a bit too strong a statement; even ethically justified is probably even too strong. "Personally justified" is just the right amount of flavor.

Copyright is not a question of morality. It is not right vs. wrong, despite the brainwashing. There is nothing absolutely wrong about not paying for a copy that doesn't deprive anyone else of one and there's nothing absolutely right about paying for it.

But this is a conversation for another time and place ... it's a long walk from where you obviously are to this understanding.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[devent]

"Apple DRM lets you play things on approved devices even offline" Oh that is really nice of Apple.
Was the brainwashing campaign really so successfully? How about: I don't need any approving to play my music on my devices, which I legally bought and own?

"And if the DRM offends you so much, remove it."
It is illegal to remove any DRM, even for legal purposes like backup, format and time shifting.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[SuperKendall]

How about: I don't need any approving to play my music on my devices, which I legally bought and own?

Nor do I, the difference is I get whatever I want legally and ethically and then use it how I like.

It is illegal to remove any DRM

Not for personal use, and if that even bothered you at all anyway you are MORON. Get off Slashdot you non-technical goose-stepping wanker. Did you also tattle to the teacher when you were in school? The world has a word for people that follow even rules they have made up in their own head because they think they MIGHT exist. That word is "asshole".

I hope you realize that in this post I am showing you a lot more respect than you deserve, and you are now appropriately berating yourself.

I'll let you have the last post as I don't read things from people that lack common sense.

Re:Buy HBO content on iTunes

[devent]

I think you don't understand my opinion. I'm lamenting the current legal situation in the US and the stuff that the USA is try to push to other countries (I'm not US citizen and I couldn't care less what the legal situation is in the USA, if the US wouldn't push their laws to Europe and of course if Europe wouldn't try to please the US).

I'm lamenting that the current copyright laws are trying to enforce perpetual copyright protection, and try to eliminate the public domain. I'm lamenting that the laws are lack moral, remove rights and shifting in the private room of citizens.

My opinion would be: reduce the copyright terms back to 14 years plus 14 years extension, and limit them to registered works. Put in law that a work will lose any copyright protection if the publisher chooses to use DRM for that work.

The copyright terms should be step by step reduced because of technological innovations. Because the publisher have shorter and shorter time to market and can make up profits faster. Thus the terms should be shorter to limit the damage to the public.

It can not be the rule of law that any work have much more protection then a patent. A patent can change the society, create new markets, save lives, etc. But it have only 20 years protection and you have to disclose the innovation. But if I write this text, I have more protection then a real innovation. Or if I just make a picture that picture is protected for 120 years. Thus copyright should only be applied to registered works, like patents. Also the problem where the author of a work can't be found. Not all works are of importance to allow monopole protection.

With copyright you have not only privileges, but you give rights to your work, too. The right to the public to use your work (public domain), the right to make backups, the right for format shifting, re-sale right. But with DRM you choose to take away those rights. Thus you shouldn't have any privileges, too.

Is this a joke?

[sconeu]

[checks date]

No, April Fools Day is tomorrow.

Re:Is this a joke?

[petman]

[checks date]

No, April Fools Day is tomorrow.

by sconeu (64226) on Monday April 01, @01:42AM (#43325411) Homepage Journal

Re:Is this a joke?

[sconeu]

I'm in PDT, and the story posting time was also 31 March in PDT.

Re:They are showing the full S2 on of the free tra

[adolf]

They are showing the full S2 on of the free trail of HBO today on HBO2.

What URL can I get this free trial at?

Re:you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it

[SighKoPath]

That's still giving money to a cable provider for a ton of shit that I'll never watch. No thanks.

Re:They are showing the full S2 on of the free tra

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a free trial, it's a free trail. You need to go on Route 66, and make a LEFT turn at Albuquerque.

Otherwise you end up watching Honey-Boo-Boo.

Hmmm...

[feepness]

If quality is such a concern, they can always seed it themselves.

I already pay to watch Game of Thrones...

[Vitriol Angst]

... but I don't watch it. Not that I don't think it's good -- but I tend to watch these kinds of shows in a cluster. It's annoying to get into a story, and then wait 6 months for its resolution.

So I pay for it, and Honey Boo Boo, and thousands of other things I don't watch to get the few things I do.

So for me, as I'm sure it is for a lot of people; we already have a small portion of our budget set aside for "entertainment" -- and it's not going to go up, just because an exec somewhere wants 15% growth, or is upset that people don't pay $15 for a DVD anymore.

Dish Network has my $85 a month -- but I don't use their "service" to watch things any time, it stinks and I'd rather not use a bandwidth noisy, badly designed wifi to download back shows or overpriced new content - I already have the XBox for that and their network barely works as well.

Media is a "service" -- you pay for a stream, not a single show. If I paid "a la carte" I'd probably spend a lot less than $85 a month. The Media sellers want their cake and eat it too but they can't have it -- not unless they want to start actual journalistic news again and uncover the bank frauds, and all the other fat cat criminals who abuse the system.

Americans have lower wages. We have entertainment fees. So therefore, some of you are going to have to lose our money -- there's just less of it. If the Media wants more, they have to push for higher wages, and that means tariffs and higher taxes on the wealthy.

Or they can arrest people who barely have enough money for an internet connection for downloading crap that they charged me for but I didn't watch yet.

Re:you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it

[Dahamma]

That's still an extra $30-40 a month beyond the $15-20 HBO subscription for crap they don't want...

Legality and the "illegal downloading" meme

[cryptocloud_ca]

It's perhaps worth pointing out that, despite the omnipresent representation of non-commercial filesharing by media outlets as "illegal," that is a misnomer. Commercial (or, at a stretch, large-scale non-commercial) redistribution of copyrighted materials can - although very rarely does - result in criminal charges being brought under most European and North American legal systems. This is what it means to be "illegal," in the common usage of the term in English: risking criminal charges and concomitant penalties. However, noncommercial filesharing is in fact covered by civil legislation, not the risk of criminal prosecution. That is, if you share that Justin Beiber song and get "caught" doing it, you risk being sued by one of the various front organizations set up by the media oligarchies expressly for that purpose. They may drag you through court, subpoena your ISP's records to get your real-life identity, win a money judgment against you for economic costs and punitive damages, and appeal this judgment all the way to the U.S. Supreme court (which we've actually seen, of course)... but they won't be able to get you charged with a crime, they won't be able to arrest you, and they won't be able to put you in prison. Thus, downloading the latest HBO show isn't - definitionally - something that is "illegal." That is simply inaccurate. What is more accurate to say is that doing so may engender civil liability if pursued in civil court in some jurisdictions. It's not quite as snappy as calling it "illegal downloading," but on the flipside it has the benefit of being accurate. The "illegal downloading" meme has been spread with impressive effectiveness by the media oligarchs and has now become so well-entrenched that one rarely sees someone correct it. Which is reason enough to correct it. Illegal things are those which risk criminal penalties if caught and convicted. Downloading HBO shows isn't going to result in you going to prison, not even under the wettest of the wet dreams of the media mercenary lawyers. It might result in all sorts of bad experiences in _civil_ courts - which can certainly be bad, and certainly are nothing to scoff at. But it's not criminal, and it's not illegal. In contrast, selling DVDs of those HBO shows that you burned from your torrented master is, indeed, covered by criminal statute - as is (arguably) running a big tracker that takes advertising and is thus (arguably) commercial in nature even if for its users it is free. See also: TPB. The creeping spread of police state claims of "illegality" when it comes to actions and decisions that are not, in fact, in the legitimate realm of criminal consideration is worrisome, and is rightfully to be resisted. Crime - and hence "illegality" - should be reserved for actions that harm another person or otherwise have a substantive impact on the social framework itself. Petty commercial disputes between individual participants in economic exchange - and that's what the dispute over noncommercial filesharing actually is - does not come close to rising to this level. Yes, it's handy for the media oligarchs to cloak their purely economic interests in the language of criminal sanction. But, however useful, it's inaccurate. A lie, in other words.

Re:Legality and the "illegal downloading" meme

[cryptocloud_ca]

Yah, apologies for the missing para's - didn't realize we needed full html as default.

That textbrick really is unsightly. Sigh.

Re:you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it

[ceoyoyo]

Nope. Where I am the only option is to get HBO in a package, on top of basic and a separate fee for HD. As far as I can tell (they won't give you an actual price unless you let a representative contact you) it would cost somewhere around $40 a month. That's a bit much for one channel.

One step too far

[hahn]

I would pay to watch the show. I would pay for an HBO subscription to watch the show. I WON'T pay for a cable subscription just to get an HBO subscription just to watch the show.

Re:One step too far

[ArsonSmith]

I'd pay to stream the show. I would pay for an HBO streaming account I WON'T pay for an internet connection just to get an HBO streaming account.

Is it piracy when I pay the TV tax?

[Brobock]

Here in Sweden, I pay a TV tax. This tax goes to paying for state owned TV channels. They broadcast Game of Thrones without commercials. There are no advertisers being hurt, and my TV tax goes to paying HBO for the syndication rights. The issue is I do not like seeing the subtitles that are burned in. I also like my show at the highest resolution with surround sound.

So is it piracy when I download it rather than watching it directly from syndication?

Re:Is it piracy when I pay the TV tax?

[rodarson2k]

I think it's a bit silly that they're able to sue without showing that any harm was done.

There are about four intermediate steps between HBO and my watching the TV show, and all of them are paying HBO the same amount regardless of if i download the show or not.

Authors don't sue libraries for letting people read their books for free (although, to be fair, i'm sure they've tried to).

Re:Is it piracy when I pay the TV tax?

[Anonymous Coward]

They broadcast Game of Thrones without commercials.

Game of Thrones broadcasts without commercials in the US too, btw. That's what HBO is, a premium channel that doesn't have commercials during broadcasts.

If it wasn't for piracy I would have never watched

[davydagger]

If it wasn't for finding Game of Thrones on the internet, I would have never found the show.

Being that its on HBO, a premium channel, I would never have never even know about it.

Re:No money for HBO

[Shark]

But is it immoral for you to take a (very detailed, for the sake of analogy) picture of someone else's car and build your own similar car at your own cost?

The media industry's problem is the same problem the car industry would have if everyone could afford a car-sized star-trek style replicator that runs on 100W of electrical power.

The question is, if such a replicator existed, would you make it illegal for the sake of the car industry? If people used it to produce their own food, would you have that device banned for the sake of farmers? Content distribution, as an industry, is growing obsolete.

If carriage makers had the same kind of lobbying power as the media industry, you wouldn't be on the computer reading this right now, you'd be tending to your horses.

"No we haven't sent out the game of thrones police

[Riceballsan]

Umm... a threat I got from my cable company saying a report from HBO puts one strike on my account... leads me to believe the opposite. They almost certainly do have a team sniffing torrents and issuing complaints with internet service providers.

Difference between theft and copying

[tepples]

Doesn't make it any more morally right to steal one.

When I steal a car, the owner of the car loses one car that he could drive or sell to someone else. When I copy a TV show, what analogous thing does the owner of copyright in the TV show lose? And let's pretend I had the technical ability to make a perfect copy of a car with a replicator. Would the owner of a car mind?

Re:Difference between theft and copying

[Dr_Barnowl]

A car is a bad analogy. You don't drive a car once, then stick it in the garage. Driving the car does not reduce it's subsequent utility (much).

If you're the kind of person who watches a show once and doesn't feel the urge to watch it again, then if you watch an unauthorised copy, you are a lost sale. That's what the copyright owner loses - the opportunity to make some money out of you.

Other ways they might lose the opportunity to make money out of you include if you watch the first part of a season and decide it's not worth watching. This would make a GOOD car analogy, you've had a test drive.

Sure, the care owner wouldn't mind, doesn't lose anything, but it's not the car owner we're talking about. We're talking about the car manufacturer. And I'm fairly certain that Ford would come smacking down hard on anyone making perfect Ford knockoffs.

Re:Difference between theft and copying

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a movie. I lend that movie to a friend. He watches it. He, by your reasoning, is stealing. Such nonsense.

Re:Difference between theft and copying

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol no. You have no proof the person would've ever given you a cent, let alone anywhere near full price. That argument is a joke, otherwise anything that impacts ANY business must be regulated. You open a restraunt near mine? You stole my business. You should be shut down.

there's arguments to be made against piracy, but anyone claiming it's a lost sale is completely out of touch with reality.

Need level 3 cable TV first

[tepples]

you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it.

In all cities? I thought one had to first add "Digital Starter" on top of limited basic, and then add "Digital Preferred" on top of Digital Starter, in order to qualify to subscribe to HBO. At least that's what Comcast has been advertising for Xfinity service in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Re:Need level 3 cable TV first

[asylumx]

This has been my experience, as well. If HBO wants to curb piracy (which it sounds like they don't care about anyway) then they need to offer subscriptions outside of the cable networks. I'm guessing there's some stipulation in their contracts with the current carriers that prevents them from doing this.

Respect my property rights and I'll respect yours

[Kohath]

I used to think that people in the entertainment industry deserved to get paid for their work. But they keep donating to socialists who steal more and more taxes from me. Since these people don't respect my property rights or my right to get paid for my work, why should I respect theirs?

Transformative use too?

[tepples]

HBO is one of the more aggressive companies when it comes to DMCA takedowns on filelockers and usenet.

Is HBO aggressive enough to where it'll DMCA a review of an episode that incorporates short clips from the episode?

ESPN

[tepples]

Buy the DVD or buy a subscription.

How do you recommend that someone buy a subscription to HBO without ESPN, which isn't even produced by the same company?

Re:ESPN

[stewbacca]

ESPN comes with most base package prices. You aren't paying extra for ESPN, you are paying the entry fee into cable. Yes, it sucks, but no, that's not HBO's fault nor does it excuse pirating Game of Thrones because you don't want to pay the imaginary premium for ESPN.

Re:ESPN

[tepples]

Yes, it sucks, but no, that's not HBO's fault

Yes it is. HBO could have offered a stand-alone subscription to HBO Go.

To qualify to order HBO

[tepples]

What else did you have to order first in order to qualify to be able to order HBO?

Re:To qualify to order HBO

[Huntr]

Well, I'm already a Dish sub. I started a chat with an online rep, asked if I could get HBO at half price for 6 months and they said ok. I almost crapped when I saw HBO pckg reg price is $18/month. I can stomach $9/month to get the new season of GoT.

Still not as good as free, tho. :)

Dopwnloading is just an appetizer

[flogger]

I can't get HBO, for various reasons. So I download Game of Thrones. When the DVDs are available, I buy them. Actually. 95% of the things I download I buy... It may be interesting to see how much media I purchase that I haven;t downloded... I am thinking that most of it I've already downloaded.

There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[gavron]

Illegal requires a violation of a law. There is no law preventing downloading of a file.

This is why nobody is arrested for downloading files. Some have been charged
with CIVIL suits for MAKING AVAILABLE these files.

Is it unlawful to download a file? No.
Is it unlawful to upload a file? No.
Is it unlawful to back up your DVD to a file? No.
Is it unlawful to take that backup file and place it on the Internet? No.

Before you turn on the flamethrowers, I ask that if you disagree with any of these
statements above, KINDLY include a direct link to a current statute or law that
makes any of those four things violate a law.

Regards and happy easter

Ehud
Tucson AZ US

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[sconeu]

This is why nobody is arrested for downloading files

Aaron Swartz says hello... or would if he wasn't dead.

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[gavron]

>> This is why nobody is arrested for downloading files

> Aaron Swartz says hello...

Aaron Swartz wasn't arrested for downloading files. He was arrested for violating computer access laws. Strike 1.
I asked if anyone responded to include a law citation. You didn't. Strike 2.

NB the CFAA has no section on "downloading."

E

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[lordholm]

This is an incorrect understanding of law. There are several types of law. You are apparently only recognising vertical law, but breaking a horizontal law (e.g. a contract) is also against the law and illegal. It may not be a criminal act and breaking a state imposed law, but it is still illegal.

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[gavron]

This is an incorrect understanding of law. There are several types of law. You are apparently only recognising vertical law, but breaking a horizontal law (e.g. a contract) is also against the law and illegal. It may not be a criminal act and breaking a state imposed law, but it is still illegal.

You are misstating the way laws work and "vertical law" or "horizontal law" are as such aspects of property law which is not relevant here.

Contract violations are not a violation of a law and are therefore not unlawful or "illegal."

Again: There's no such thing as illegal downloading. That means there is no law which is broken by the mere act of downloading.
If you think differently I ask -- again -- provide such statute or law citation.

E

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[multimediavt]

Is it unlawful to upload a file?

It is if that file is a copyrighted work of someone else and that upload location is not inside your home network.

Is it unlawful to back up your DVD to a file?

Hell yes it is! Breaking the DVD crypto is a federal crime. Google that shit yourself.

Is it unlawful to take that backup file and place it on the Internet?

Yes it is. See the answer to the previous question for why.

Just because you can get away with something doesn't make it legal.

Re:There's no such thing as "illegal downloading"

[gavron]

None of your answers are correct under current US law,
and you didn't cite a single law or statute as requested.

Merely asserting something doesn't make it so. (I stand
by that same standard but since I'm asserting THERE IS
NO LAW being broken, there's nothing to cite.)

E

Re:No money for HBO

[spire3661]

Check your terms. Copyright infringement can in no way be construed as theft under the current legal framework. Theft has EXTREMELY specific legal meaning and you sound like an idiot when you try to call IP infringement 'stealing'

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[Cammi]

It makes since if you think on it.

Theft isn't the important part

[Aphoxema]

I'll sit through something that's playing on TV that I don't really want to watch (often as a home care aid at a client's house), but I won't download a torrent of something I don't care to sit through. Even if I had the drive space for it, why would I put any additional effort into doing something entirely for myself that I don't want to do?

I suppose it says a lot more if I actually go out and buy the DVD for it, but my time is valuable to me and it should say a lot what I choose to do instead of what I'm essentially forced to settle for due to scheduling and what other people around me want.

Look less at the "we're not making a sale" part and more at the "what is someone getting out of this".

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[asylumx]

Hrm... I'm not sure that you understand the intent of using an analogy.

Re:No money for HBO

[Maritz]

Because stealing a car is exactly the same as making a copy of a file. You don't do your argument any favours with this dreadful analogy.

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[Dahamma]

Actually, he does. An analogy is a matching inference or relation, not an equivalency.

"day : light :: night : dark" doesn't mean day == night.

Doesn't matter what the illegal activity is, when the person committing it blames the victim it's wrong. Using a hyperbole to make the analogy is a common rhetorical device. Obviously there is no equivalent harm, that's why I said so IN MY POST. Sigh.

Re:No money for HBO

[Demonantis]

And in the markets they can't I bet there is a lot of Game of Thrones merchandise(can't pirate that right now) which probably has good margins on it. The shows work as a vehicle to sell those products.

Re:No money for HBO

[multimediavt]

Wow, that hypothetical argument was really out there. The issue that Hollywood has with copyright infringement deals with distribution of content and the revenue that consumer demand for that content generates. Is it immoral to take a picture of a car and replicate it for your own personal use? No. Mostly because cars aren't copyrightable to begin with (Google the difference between copyright and patent). But, if you take a picture of a work of art and replicate 10,000 of them and sell them (or even give them away) then you're breaking the law if that work of art wasn't yours to begin with. I can produce my own episodes of Game of Thrones if I so desire, I just can't distribute/sell them or show them in public. Copyright doesn't always have to deal with duplication per se, it has to deal with distribution of a copyrighted work/idea/format that wasn't yours to begin with. I can make as many copies of things as I want so long as they are for my personal use and I'm not selling them or showing them off in public as my own original work.

Let's play "repair the analogy"

[tepples]

A car is a bad analogy. You don't drive a car once, then stick it in the garage.

If you're referring to the fact that a short film is consumable while an automobile is durable, then pretend I said "pizza" instead of "car" (and "eat" instead of "drive") or pretend I said some animated movie that a single-digit-year-old child likes to watch and re-watch instead of Game of Thrones.

Other ways they might lose the opportunity to make money out of you include if you watch the first part of a season and decide it's not worth watching.

How would I do that if pay TV involves a 12-month commitment, as well as a commitment to several other services that are traditionally tied to HBO?

And I'm fairly certain that Ford would come smacking down hard on anyone making perfect Ford knockoffs.

For one thing, you can pretend I said stealing from a car dealer. For another, under what law? In context, we're debating the merits of the very law that grants exclusive rights. Otherwise you're saying "because patent law exists, copyright law must also exist," which shifts the debate to one of the merits of patent law.

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[stewbacca]

No I think he was using a stupid analogy to point out the stupidity of the point he was commenting about.

Re:you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it

[hobarrera]

The costs are even worse if you live in underdeveloped countries.
While the cost of pirating it is quite the same (even cheaper, actually: we have no monthly download caps!).

Re:They are showing the full S2 on of the free tra

[multimediavt]

That's too risky for me. I always make a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Maybe you should stop letting Bugs and Daffy navigate!

Gimme what I want and I'll gladly pay

[Opportunist]

I don't have a problem with paying for the DVDs or the subscription fee to the channel that gives me what I want. What I have a problem with is getting what I want.

What I want should be easy to do, from a technical point of view: Watch the show in its original makeup. Sadly, it's near impossible to get that here. Because, you see, everything gets dubbed here. Everything. There's a whole industry built around dubbing foreign shows. And considering just how many movies are made domestically, I'd dare say it's bigger than the "real" movie industry. The big problem around it now is that they seem to lump every actor too bad for actual acting and every writer too stupid to actually come up with scripts into it. What this results in is ATROCIOUS dubbing. Scripts the butcher every joke or simply make no sense whatsoever. And wooden voice acting that can actually make you think Keanu Reeves isn't such a bad actor because EVERYONE is about as expressive as he is. Not to mention this unspeakable urge to translate EVERYTHING, which leads to some rather ... odd situations until you finally get to see the original and why something "works". You don't even want to know what they did to "Soft Kitty" from the Big Bang Theory...

It's also a given that this dubbing takes time. To give you an idea, just recently the 11th Doctor reincarnated.

So, long story short, I want to watch the shows undubbed. But that's apparently some kind of sacrilege. I must be the heretic for wanting to bypass the "local culture" or something like that. There is exactly NO channel whatsoever, not even one I could subscribe to for extra money, that would present those shows in their original making. So my best bet right now are DVDs, even though I'll have to order them abroad since it's surprisingly hard to find undubbed DVDs or at least some with an original track. Though for some bizarre reason, the sound quality of the original track is by default inferior to the dubbed one.

So take a wild guess why torrents are so popular around this area.

Just give people what they want! Most people I know would gladly pay good money for a simple, undubbed version of a show, just broadcast the same content you broadcast in the US and we're very happy.

Re:Gimme what I want and I'll gladly pay

[ThePeices]

"What I have a problem with is getting what I want."

That pretty much sums up all of the worlds problems right there.

Re:Gimme what I want and I'll gladly pay

[FuzzNugget]

You don't even want to know what they did to "Soft Kitty" from the Big Bang Theory...

Actually, I kinda do.

Re:Gimme what I want and I'll gladly pay

[Opportunist]

There.

Remember, you asked for it! I told you that you don't want to see it, but YOU asked for it!

Re:Gimme what I want and I'll gladly pay

[Opportunist]

And despite the date, this is not a joke!

Re:Respect my property rights and I'll respect you

[Kohath]

You could use this excuse to rob anyone that voted to the left of you.

Sound like a plan. But it's not an "excuse". Anyone who hire politicians to steal from me has no respect for my property rights. I no longer intend to respect theirs.

By this logic, the actual Socialists could start robbing CEOs because they pay guys to lobby the government for corporate welfare.

Sound like a plan. Maybe they'd stop using the government to steal from people.

1992 cable act says you can get limited + Hbo

[Joe_Dragon]

1992 cable act says you can get limited + Hbo

Stream

[arthurpaliden]

OK, so where can I go to subscribe to stream the episodes on line....... Oh right I can't.

Bullshit

[Sycraft-fu]

Talk about total false equivalence. First not only are they completely different kinds of acts, rape has a real victim, piracy does not, but indeed the business model can very well induce piracy.

Let me give you an example: I discovered some little French cartoons called Minuscule. It is some funny anthropomorphic 3D rendered insects overlaid on live photography extremely well. I found it charming, and knew my mother would be delighted. That it was French in origin matters not at all as there is no speech, just sound effects. The rights were owned by Disney, by the way.

So I set out to buy her a DVD for Christmas. It was not for sale, DVD or download, anywhere in the US or Canada. Apparently it has never been redone in NTSC format, it was PAL only. Not a problem, I have the video software necessary to do such a remaster. So I found it in France on their site. No English anywhere, the whole site was in French. With the help of Google, I translate it and give it my info. It is going to be stupid expensive to get, like 10 Euro from the DVD but then 20 Euro to ship it. Fine, I'm ok with that, mom will love it.

I hit checkout and the first English ever pops up, it says basically "We are not allowed to sell this to your country."

So fuck them, I pirated it. I went out of my way to buy a copy, far more than was reasonable, and still got shut down. They had decided this "wasn't for the US market" and I wasn't allowed to have it.

That is what people are talking about. Now Game of Thrones is a somewhat lesser case, but still. To watch it, online or not, you have to have an HBO subscription. To have an HBO subscription you have to have cable TV, and a pretty expensive package at that. The minimum here is $60/month before taxes to get the package needed to have HBO, which is then an additional fee. That's a lot of damn money.

What if someone does not need or want (and maybe can't afford) cable TV, but would be willing to pay for an HBO subscription, or be willing to pay to get episodes of the show? Nope, sorry, they won't do that. You shell out a ton for cable or you go to hell.

So it is very realistic to talk about that pushing people to pirate. Compare that to, say, South Park. Here when an episode launches on TV, you can view it free (with ads) online. You can also buy the episodes ala carte at Amazon, or get everything but the most current season as part of a Netflix subscription. They make it very easy to watch it, even if you do not wish to have a cable plan that includes Comedy Central.

Some people pirate things just because they can, or because they won't pay for anything. However others pirate because getting it legit is very expensive, or perhaps flat out impossible legally.

You also can't really argue any harm when someone pirates something that they could not buy otherwise. There isn't even any theoretical harm: They could not spend money on it, so there isn't even a theoretical loss.

Re:Bullshit

[Dahamma]

So, this was already covered above before you posted, but analogy != equivalence. Go read it, no need to go over it again.

Second, it was hyperbole for effect. Look up the definition of hyperbole, I think it did its job here.

And third, it's completely incorrect to say piracy/copyright infringement has no victim just because you don't like the victim. I could make hyperbolic analogies about that, as well, but I think you get the point.

As far as your example, that's fine, you decided for yourself that it either did not violate your moral code or somehow "you tried hard enough" and didn't care. Not everyone would make that decision just because "my mom needs it". But don't blame the copyright owner for your action, have some balls and admit you made the decision yourself. I'm not even saying I'd make a different decision in your shoes, but I would not try to claim anyone else made me do it. I also drive over the speed limit sometimes, but if I get pulled over I admit I was driving too fast, I don't whine to the cop about how the speed limit is too low.

And yes, you can argue harm when someone can't buy something. Maybe they are negotiating the international rights. Or maybe, like, Disney (a real douche of a copyright holder, I agree, and I am in fact against 90% of the current copyright laws) they prefer to make their content unavailable and re-release it once in a while. Doesn't matter, it's just another case of blaming the copyright owner because you can't have something of theirs right damn now gimme gimme I want!

Re:Bullshit

[MacGyver2210]

And third, it's completely incorrect to say piracy/copyright infringement has no victim just because you don't like the victim

Ok, I'll bite: in his story about pirating a french cartoon, who was the victim? He made every attempt possible to pay(a rather excessive price) for their goods, and they refused him. Who is he hurting by downloading it in this case? They didn't lose a sale, because they wouldn't sell it to him. They didn't lose the show, because piracy is not theft - it is free copying.

If you really believe that piracy in this way has a victim, you are a brain damaged hypercapitalist shill, and I thank a deity of your choosing that you do not influence my life.

It is also readily apparent that you were not demonstratively using hyperbole in your original post, but that you simply dropped the comparison as a simple false argument to try to shock people away from logic and critical thought. Rape is not a tool for your argument, and they aren't remotely the same thing. You are a bad person, and you should feel bad.

Re:Bullshit

[Dahamma]

Well, at least I never made any personal attacks, which you just did, awesome for you! Ad hominem and all that. You are a bad person, and should feel bad... no not really, because I unlike you I don't in fact think anyone should feel bad from a hypothetical debate on a web site. I hope you have a great Easter/Ishtar/day off whatever it's called today.

But more to the point, if you read my whole comment you would have seen: "I'm not even saying I'd make a different decision in your shoes, but I would not try to claim anyone else made me do it". And if you had read any of my other posts on the topic, you'd see I am very opposed to most copyright laws (look it up, no need to repeat myself). But I am also pro-copyright in some form, no matter whether you think you "need" that content a person/group created themselves even if they made it hard for you to acquire.

And for your last point - again read the whole thread before commenting. Analogy != equivalency, and hyperbole is simply a device that served exactly the purpose it was meant to in this case. I haven't judged anyone in this thread on piracy itself, and understand why someone might do it (and in the past have downloaded tv shows myself!), but my point is YOU made that decision, so grab some sack and admit it - don't pretend someone else forced you to take their cookie because they wouldn't share it.

Re:Bullshit

[CodeHxr]

...don't pretend someone else forced you to take their cookie because they wouldn't share it.

And, by that, you mean "don't pretend someone else forced you to make a copy of their cookie because they wouldn't share it.", of course. Right?

That doesn't necessarily mean...

[Arancaytar]

That you will not get sued into the ground if you do get caught torrenting it. Because he didn't say that.

What he did say:

We obviously are a subscription service so as a general proposition so we try to stop piracy when we see it happen

And:

No, we haven’t sent out the Game of Thrones police.

(What does that even mean?)

It's nice of a publisher to admit filesharing doesn't hurt their business model, but it's a very far cry from actually implementing policies that allow people to share content without repercussion.

Re:Respect my property rights and I'll respect you

[j00r0m4nc3r]

"I pirate because the movie studios are democrats."

Way to completely fabricate a quotation. I agree with Kohath, though, but for slightly different reasons. If you're going to bribe my government to do shit for you, I'm going to try to subvert you because you are destroying freedom. Maybe I'll do it politically, maybe socially, maybe financially... Maybe all three.

HBO streaming service

[bl968]

I would love a legal option for buy access to all of the HBO content online. A HBO streaming video not tied to terrestrial cable companies would be the must have of streaming services. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, and I would be happy to add HBO Online to that lineup

Then I guess HBO doesn't like compliments...

[tmach]

Judging by the "cease and desist" type warning I got from HBO by way of Verizon, I'm guessing HBO just doesn't take compliments very well.

Its a Book.

[j-stroy]

Lets not forget the original media is a series of books.

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[Smauler]

There's a difference between blaming the victim, and telling the victim that their actions may have increased the chance of having a crime happen to them. If I go down to Millwall in a West Ham shirt just before a home game, and start spouting off about how shit Millwall in the local pub, I am more likely to get beaten up than if I have a quiet drink at my local and watch the game calmly. If you leave your valuables on display in your car, they're more likely to get nicked than if you don't.

Pointing out behaviour that increase the chances of a crime happening is _not_ blaming the victim. Pointing out that people not being able to watch GoT legally increases piracy isn't blaming the victim, it's a comment on the behaviour of the studios. It's factual, too.

Keep Digging, Watson

[MacGyver2210]

If someone wants to choose to 'cut the cord', they damn-well have that right. Piracy provides the customer an alternative to paying inflated fees encompassing a myriad of things they don't even want to get a minutia of things they do want. After how much money I shoveled into cable and satellite so they can provide things I don't watch like CourtTV and HGTV, I don't even feel bad ripping off the new shows. This is now something that competes with cable and publishers, and they should start adjusting their business model accordingly instead of whining and suing people over it.

If the publishers don't supply them an alternative to an antiquated and poorly-managed business model like subscription cable, then it's THEIR OWN fault when the customers pirate the shows. It is THE PUBLISHER'S FAULT that they did not make that sale, because they failed to meet the needs of the consumer. If I can go online and download a DRM-Free copy of the show the day it airs or within a couple days of then, I will happily toss up to a few dollars at a show I want to see.

It is an incredible waste for them, in an age where they can EASILY and really inexpensively do just that: provide digital viewing per-episode at a reasonable market value through the now-ubiquitous internet. It is not the pirates ruining their sales, it is their own incompetence and bullshit legal impasses. Simply put: Less laws and distribution red tape, along with embracing technology instead of fighting it, would allow them to make more money without being seen as assholes.

Here's a breakdown of what I pay and what I would pay if they did adopt a per-episode sale model:
Now:
Cable - ~$150/month
--$70 30Mbps Internet
--$40 Expanded Digital Cable(required for premium add-ons)
--$15 HBO
--$17 Showtime

New Model:
Cable - ~$70/month
--$70 30Mbps Internet
Publishers - ~$36 (at ~$3/episode, part of the year)
--$15 Dexter 4-5 episodes per month, some of the year
--$15 Breaking Bad 4-5 episodes per month, some of the year
--$6 A couple other shows that pique my interest, occasionally
(I don't like or watch GOT, or anything else currently airing on HBO)

This rounds out, entirely, my paid TV viewing schedule. Everything else I watch is available on free, OTA TV(hell, it's even in HD Digital now).

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[Dahamma]

Pointing out behaviour that increase the chances of a crime happening is _not_ blaming the victim.

If you are an objective observer before the fact warning someone of statistics, maybe not. If you are the person committing the offense or claiming the statistic somehow validates the offense, then yes, it is goddamn well blaming the victim. If you read the comment, it was the latter.

Glad you think that, because in 2 hours

[Nyder]

I will be pirating a copy of it.

thanks!

And if you are worried about the quality of what I am getting, please release an official version at the same time you air the program.

Re:They are showing the full S2 on of the free tra

[FuzzNugget]

Oh, wow, they'll give me "permission" to enjoy stuff on a device that *I OWN* after an arbitrary point in time?

Well shucks, how generous!

Read what I said again

[SuperKendall]

I'd buy Game of Thrones on iTunes - I buy a few other shows already - if it were current.

It is current when you download it illegally.

It's moral (to my mind) to download it illegally if you pay for it.

You can buy the first two seasons today and think of it as a down-payment for the eventual complete purchase, or buy as many episodes as you think may sense as reimbursement.

That way you pay them but still get immediacy.

The other benefit of paying them this way is you are explicitly telling them through money what shows you enjoy so we get more like them.

Re:They are showing the full S2 on of the free tra

[Rich0]

And you can DVR it and view it on your time even after the end of free trail.

Not if your DVR isn't endorsed by the masters of CableCard. Just another reason not to get HBO - it is one of the few channels that won't work with MythTV on FIOS unless you rent a tuner and an encoder (which is pretty expensive to just get one channel of re-encoded HD video)...

Yes, I know that it "just works" if you do it their way, assuming you don't mind having a DVR that can only hold 30 hours of HD video and which can't flag commercials...

Re:No money for HBO

[Alsee]

Wow, that hypothetical argument was really out there.

No, it's not. And the technology to make it a reality is arriving rapidly.

I take a high-resolution photograph of a car, and I use my 3D printer and I print out my own car using my own materials and I and drive cross country in it.... and you say that's fine...

I take a high resolution photograph of a GameOfThrones DVD, and I use my 3D printer and I print out my own disk using my own materials and I and stick it in a DVD player and watch it.... and you scream bloody murder.

In both cases I'm taking a picture of a physical object, and using my own materials to build my own identical item.

When..... not *if* but *when* people can download and print a car..... do you seriously doubt that the car industry - and every other industry - isn't going to have the same financial incentive as the copyright lobby, and the exact same economic arguments as the copyright lobby, to lobby congress to make printing out a car criminal? Downloading and printing cars is piracy, and who's going to make cars in the first place if anyone can just pirate a car.

And as 3D-printers advance with nanotech, the exact same issue is going to come up with a ham sandwich. Anyone can download and print out a ham sandwich. Or a pizza. Dominoes Pizza cooked a pizza, and then someone scanned it and posted it on ThePirateBay, and everyone can just pirate that pizza, download it print it out and eat it. It's THEFT.... and every pizza parlor is going to be driven out of business if anyone can simply download and print out a pirate copy of one of their pizzas.

Just imagine how many billions of dollars of theft would be involved if welfare mothers could simply go on ThePirateBay and download and print out gourmet meals copied.... STOLEN.... from the most expensive restaurants in the country. Just imagine what it would do to our economy if one pirate could buy one meal from a classy restaurant and upload that data to ThePirateBay for millions of people to print out their own pirated meals.

Whether it is a music CD, GameOfThrones DVD, a book, a car, or a nutritious meal, the argument is identical. Someone created the item in the first place, they want to be paid for it, and it's "piracy" if people upload/download the item data to print out their own copies. The only difference is what date the typical household is going to have the hardware-tech to print out a particular item.

Music... movies... cars... food . Physically, technologically, morally, there really is no meaningful difference. The tech is on the way, we're going to have to deal with it, and the law is going to have to face this reality. Food and DVDs are going to have to be treated the same. Either printing food is piracy, or printing DVDs isn't piracy.

And just a reminder, those Brain Surgeons Hollywood executives ran a particularly instructive publicity campaign. For a while, one of the pre-movie trailers they were running in theaters was one of those piracy-is-theft messages, with key line asking "You wouldn't download a car, would you?". And same answer was shouted out by viewers in theaters across the country... theater after theater everyone was shouting out "HELL YEAH! I would if I could!"

-

How about just READING THE BOOKS?

[DutchUncle]

. . . which you can pass around and/or borrow at the library for free?

Re:How about just READING THE BOOKS?

[Grashnak]

Yes, god forbid anyone should want to watch those "moving pictures" that kids today are so fond of. We all know that it's impossible to enjoy a story in more than one artistic format, that's why I only consume my stories via wandering minstrels who pass them along as part of our oral tradition.

Re:How about just READING THE BOOKS?

[DutchUncle]

No, you can't trust those wandering minstrels, you never know where they've been.

Re:Collusion with competing content owners

[Mabhatter]

Because like somebody pointed out the cost or "just HBO" isn't that bad. But HBO's PARENT doesn't allw your cable company to sell you JUST HBO. It has to be on top of the "premium tier" plans... Which they have very public fights over now with providers. So they really want $80 per month for their premium content... They force your cable company to take 20 channels of reruns before they will LET you buy ONE HBO.

A Way

[SuperKendall]

Had a link in my post, must have formatted it wrong:

Removing DRM from an iTunes file.

Re:A Way

[Phroggy]

Ahh, maybe that was it - not that it's difficult to do, just that it requires a $50 app to do it.

Re:A Way

[SuperKendall]

There's very probably a free way to do whatever this app is doing. I just don't care enough to find out. If it looked like Apple DRM servers might ever retire of if I had need of playing the video on non-Apple devices I would look harder.

Re:you can get limned basic and add HBO + HD to it

[Mabhatter]

But HBO is just one channel of dozens owned by the same company. They make cable companies take 4-5 shopping or rerun channels before they will let them OFFER HBO. The ad revenue from crappy channels ALSO pays part of HBO's budgets. As a separate example with CBS it's "the CSI rerun" channels that make them their money... That's how they afford to "giveaway" the show on broadcast TV.

So to sell you "just HBO" they really want $50 per month they get by forcing other bundled channels on cable operators.

That's also why we can't have "a la cart". Cable companies need the "lamer" bundled channels where they get more ad revenue... The more "premium" the channels, the less ads your cable company gets to balance the bills.... I think Ars figured ads are worth about $1.50 per hour your watching TV... Which is way more than you PAY for Cable.

I CAN'T subscribe to HBO

[slycer9]

No cable available at my residence and I don't have a clear view to the sky for satellite service (tried that after moving in).
Compounding issues is that I wasn't aware that there was NO high speed internet service of any sort here before I moved in, it never occurred to me that a new house a few minutes from Birmingham, AL would even HAVE that issue, but it is what it is.

I'd LOVE to be able to just subscribe to HBO Go on its own but I just switch between torrents and (increasingly, although I hate the restrictions) iTunes to get the television shows I want by leeching access from McDonalds and friends houses.

Can't even get DSL here, it sucks which is a rant I should reserve for another thread.

The same parent company's other channels

[tepples]

They force your cable company to take 20 channels of reruns before they will LET you buy ONE HBO.

So why can't I buy a package that's just the same parent company's other channels (CNN, HLN, TBS, TNT, TCM, Cartoon Network) plus HBO?

Try before buying..

[slashmojo]

I downloaded the first few episodes of firefly back in the day after seeing it mentioned here many times and not finding it on any tv channel I had access to.. I liked the show and proceeded to buy the entire series and the movie on dvd from amazon. I will likely do the same with GoT eventually..

In other Game of Thrones news the residents of Tristan da Cunha (a very remote island in the south atlantic) have apparently adopted Dothraki as an official language and are big into GoT LARPing.. they also don't have HBO.

Lots of Ground Covered in the Quest for Openness

[Shlomi Fish]

As I noted in a a post to the Creative Commons "cc-community" mailing list, while the software ("open source", "free software", "FOSS", "FLOSS", "open specs", "open protocols") industry and software users have (mostly) got the memo regarding the requirement to be open, and the music industry closely followed suit due to YouTube and other developments, there's still a lot of resistance from the film/movie industry. Nevertheless, I believe that whether they proclaim to currently like it or not, they will also embrace “openness” (also meaning honesty, transparency, lack of resentment, trust, etc.), and adapt to a newer business model based on the Internet, and other means.

One thing people should understand is that the fight for freedom and openness is not about getting rid of "big business". There will likely always be big businesses, because some companies are smarter than others and grow more, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with a big corporation, as long as it doesn't violate basic, objective, ethical principles such as initiatory force, threat of force or fraud against a person or their physical property, which corporations don't usually do (as opposed to many government agencies in the past and present). So if you were hoping that Walt Disney Corp. or Warner Bros or whoever will disappear, you will most likely be disappointed. However, I believe and hope we will see the day when the characters of them will be under the Public Domain or a liberal Creative Commons licence (at least in effect), simply because this makes business sense.

Naturally, there's still a long road to go, even in mostly won battles such as the software or music industry: YouTube ended up having to block all videos containing music for German IPs after a German musical cartel demanded they pay royalties; many YouTube remixes/etc. have been removed or made country-specific due to copyright claims; and it seems like a lot of content (Last.fm, Amazon.com mp3 sales, etc.) is only available to USA residents. We should try to convince the music industry and other industries that it makes perfect business sense to avoid such silly measures, which only encourage piracy. Most artists nowadays make most of their money not from selling actual copies of the songs, and the labels who signed them have adapted to this new reality, but given that I wanted to buy a song I liked from Amazon.com and couldn't and after a long time met someone one IRC who let me download it from his huge collection of mp3 (without paying), something here is definitely wrong. DRM and locality restrictions etc. end up hurting sales more than they encourage them, and the pirates don't care anyway, and it's time the media (audio, video, books, software, etc.) industries realise this.

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[asylumx]

What you said in your post is that it doesn't imply equivalent harm, not that "there is no equivalent harm" and those are two different things. It certainly does imply it. Whether it was intended to imply that or not, it does.

HBO GO standalone will come....

[SnowDog74]

HBO's CEO has hinted at the possibility of a standalone HBO GO subscription... It's probably coming. One of the challenges to this is the way that deals are structured, and this isn't a bunch of executives sitting around wringing their hands and twirling their mustaches. There are certain agreements that content providers have made with carriers because they didn't initially have as many options for distribution as the internet has made possible in today's world.

The other challenge is... so you've got these existing revenue streams out there. How do you structure your content distribution in a way that doesn't cannibalize the sales that will piss off the carriers who depend on a cut of the monthly fees they charge?

While Lombardo understands that "free" isn't an option, he's as shrewd as Steve Jobs in treating "free" as a competitor and trying to figure out what they need to do to make paid HBO as compelling. What the iTunes model did was treat "free" as a competitor and then go after a more convenient user experience and one-touch purchasing.

The point that's often missed in a lot of the moaning about "users want free so it should be free"... no. Free is not the thing that the users want. If I gave you a pile of trash for free, would that satisfy your appetite for Game of Thrones? It's the content they want. But all of these defined revenue streams instead of an ad-based model (which is the "free" alternative in the pragmatic world of content production) are a large part of why HBO can produce the extremely expensive-budget shows with fewer episodes and better writing than the ad-based models that have to appeal to the broadest, dumbest audience possible.

If those revenue streams are eliminated, there's no cushion for them to commit to shows that would never survive on network television. The only thing they need to do here is to research just how much their cable subscriptions would be affected by online, and perhaps make a deal with the cable companies to compensate their existing agreements the way Apple paid the content producers upwards of $150 million to secure unlimited cloud streaming.

Something will get worked out because every party has an interest... HBO could very well serve up a pile of crap and not care as long as they got their fees. That's how subscription cable works, and through advertising it's how networks work. But they're not the Wal-Mart of television programming nor do they want to be. If they were, none of us would be here talking about wanting TV shows that some nonexistent premium channel doesn't produce that you've never heard of.

I'd like to buy it today

[wideBlueSkies]

I really would. Last night's episode. I just checked iTunes. It's not there.

Hello!!!! ?? HBO???? I'm willing to give you a couple of bucks... even to 'rent' a stream for a day. I'd very much like to watch your show, without subscribing to your channel.

Get it? I have money. I want to spend it, by giving it to you to watch your show. But you don't give me the option to do so. You lose. And because I can't do it now, and be able to talk to other viewers about the premere this week, I'm resentful and will be less likely to buy your DVD when it does come out next year. Why should i buy it then? Season 3 will be old news at that time....

Should be a sign to make HBO GO International.

[Gel214th]

This executive should also see it as lost revenue because HBO Go isn't international, and perhaps if it were people would choose to watch the show in glorious high definition for a fee instead of poke around on torrent sites, start and stop failed transfers, open and close ports and all the other shenanigans that we need to go through...uhh...other people need to go through...ummm....

Unique

[DarthVain]

But it would have been easier to simply post this old link:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Re:Think of the Ladies!

[strikethree]

Doesn't matter what the illegal activity is, when the person committing it blames the victim it's wrong.

Is there really a victim here? I have never watched Game of Thrones. I have no idea what it is about. If I "pirate" an episode and watch it, I have committed a "crime" but was HBO really victimized? If so, how? I have no interest in buying it currently. I doubt that I ever will. Would me viewing an unauthorized copy hurt HBO in any way?

Re:"No we haven't sent out the game of thrones pol

[RivenAleem]

Well of course. The amount of piracy atm is okay. But just like a trademark, you have to at least put up some level of defence otherwise you lose it altogether. While the amount of piracy going on right now is not so bad, in fact a boost, letting it run completely unchallenged would lead to an explosion of it and will eventually affect their profits.

This is a big admission, and we should applaud them for it, but still in many jurisdictions, piracy is illegal, so they really can't condone it, can they?

Re:"No we haven't sent out the game of thrones pol

[Riceballsan]

True, but in my opinion they are doing the oposite of what is intended there... prevention to keep rates from increasing:

Tell people they are sending out authorities to crack down on it (whether you actually are or not is irrelevant, if the purpose is to discourage attemts)

Ways to get people into trouble if possible, without lowering the rates of people trying

announce that you are not going to get people in trouble, but then do so anyway