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The Hobbit and Game of Thrones Top Most Pirated Lists of 2013
DavidGilbert99 writes "Fantasy fans are clearly among the most prevalent downloaders of pirated material if the 2013 lists of most pirated films and TV shows is anything to go by. The Hobbit beat Django Unchained and Fast and Furious 6 while on TV, Game of Thrones saw off competition from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead as the most pirated TV show. While this is clearly losing money for both industries, the US box office doesn't seem to be suffering too much as it is about to record its best year ever."
... and then stating their high profits?
Okay. Explain. How are they "clearly losing money"? Prove it.
The only exception is Thrones. HBO's refusal to let that out via alternative means in a timely manner is probably costing them. However, fans of the show will soon buy it on blu-ray when it eventually hits the shelves.
I haven't figured out why they won't just sell you an HBO Go subscription as a separate entity. They have a digital content distribution system in place. It has support on many different devices. Yet they still require that you buy their channel through a cable/satellite provider and THEN get access to it.
Why not just have an HBO Go subscription for $10/month? They can cut out the middle man (cable companies) and get a lot more customers that only do internet based TV.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
To start with a disclaimer: I haven't pirated The Hobbit (or indeed any other movies since my student days many, many years ago) and have no intention of doing so.
But on the other hand, after sitting through the first one, there is no way on Earth I am going to sit through the second one in a cinema. If I ever do watch it (which is a bit 50/50 given what a bad adaptation I thought the first one was), it will be in the comfort of my own home in a format where I can pause and resume at will, breaking it up into more manageable chunks.
I don't actually dislike going to the cinema; I'll happily sit through 2 hours or so of movie. But if you want me to go for a 3 hour+ bladder-bursting ass-numbing epic, then give me the opportunity to pause it for a while and go for a walk around in the middle.
Hell, I can still just about remember when longer films used to have an intermission during showings in a cinema. I know that's not an idea that's popular in the days of cram-'em-in multiplexes, but it might be worth bringing back for films like these to lure people like me back to the theatres.
Simple solution: Stop hiding your TV shows and films behind a wall of artificial scarcity. We have the internet which gives us instant access to whatever we want whenever we want. That has spoiled us and you (studios) haven't capitalized on this yet or are too damn slow.
Put your film in theaters. Once it is no longer profitable at the box office then put it on youtube (not some proprietary bullshit site that only runs in IE or some other nonsense) for a discounted rate and allow multiple viewings. Don't rent me a fucking film for $2.99 and then only give me access for a few days at most. That is a rip off. Let me pay a few bucks for a month or two or three. Honestly how much money will you lose if you let people have the movie for three months? How many times in one month is someone going to watch a movie? This is especially important for childrens shows/movies where they might want to watch it a hundred times.
TV shows, do what South Park does: Release the episode on both TV and the internet AT THE SAME TIME! Put a few commercials in there just like a regular TV episode and people will watch it. Or give them the option to pay a cheap monthly or yearly fee to watch commercial free. Id pay southpark studios a few bucks a month to watch their shows if I could see them all commercial free. If you are a premium show like Game of Thrones then do the same damn thing but for a fee. Let me watch an episode for a dollar and let me have access for a month or more. Or let me pay a few dollars to watch as many episodes as I would like for a month or so.
People have enough of a burden trying to pay bills/make a living and you expect us to spend hundreds on cable TV, tickets and DVD/BR *every month*. No thanks, we have better things to spend our money on. Your content is simply a time waster when we want to relax for a bit or go out every now and then. We dont need it and I am not willing to pay the exorbitant amount demanded. Adapt or die.
Are they 3D printing the CDs or what?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
There's nothing "clearly losing money for both industries" about it.
Of course not. That's the standard line. First you complain about piracy, how it's so bad for business, how you obviously lose billions, and next you post the best revenue and profits ever, showing that, on a per-person basis, people have actually spent MORE on movie tickets, CDs, DVDs, online services, etc, than the year before. Despite all that piracy. Or should I say, thanks to all that piracy?
Because in the US they want to be the middle man for others, they want to use HBO original series as the hook to get people subscribing to HBO so they can sell network time. In the nordic countries we have HBO Nordic which is a pure Internet solution similar to HBO Go, funny thing is that I subscribe but I still use my one-stop torrent shop to watch those shows as well.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
> Why not just have an HBO Go subscription for $10/month? They can cut out the middle man (cable companies) and get a lot more customers that only do internet based TV. Because they are the middle man; HBO is owned by Time Warner whose entire business model is packaging tons of crap you don't want with the few things that you do and yelling at the top of their lungs about what a great value it is.
I haven't figured out why they won't just sell you an HBO Go subscription as a separate entity. They have a digital content distribution system in place. It has support on many different devices. Yet they still require that you buy their channel through a cable/satellite provider and THEN get access to it.
Why not just have an HBO Go subscription for $10/month? They can cut out the middle man (cable companies) and get a lot more customers that only do internet based TV.
HBO doesn't want to cut out the middlemen, because doing so would actually lose
them money (or at least not make them as much as one would expect, while at the
same time seriously pissing off their current revenue sources):
Why Doesn't HBO Allow Non-Cable Subscribers To Subscribe To HBO Go à la Hulu?
The old saying was wrong. Old hobbits are not hard to break. Smeagol is as Smeagol does.
Netflix does carry GoT, that's how I watched the first two seasons of it. I will watch the third season as well once they get it.
what would have made you happy? Michael Bay directing The Hobbit as a two hour explosion fest? You want to see shitting all over a beloved short novel? Try the Starship Troopers movie. Now, maybe 3 movies is a bit long, but at least it's being done by someone that cares about the source material. Did you ever think that sometimes the only way to sell this stuff to those sleazy execs is to give them a way to milk it?
It's incredible that people will sit around and bitch about getting too much entertainment at a time when most studios would be happy to give you a 90 min stinker like the latest Conan remake for the same price.
You can't buy GoT on Blu-Ray where you live?
just a counter point, back then people made things for money, now we copy things for money. the economy has changed and the rules changed with it. However i think its time for the rules to change yet again.
You have to cancel HBO with your cable company. Yes, you have to call up to cancel it, but it is by no means "nearly impossible". People do it all the time. Subscribe for the show, cancel when it's over. You may even be offered a couple extra months to not cancel.
And couldn't you buy the Blu-Rays when they come out? Sounds like you have options, you just don't want to pursue them.
So not stealing stuff is considered too old-fashioned? (Just how many lame excuses for piracy are in this forum today??)