Oatmeal about difficult of watching Game of Thrones: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
and how I feel as a non US resident: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/game_of_thrones/nz
and how I feel as a non US resident: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/game_of_thrones/nz
before torrents he'd just show up at some friend with hbo. Today people don't mingle irl, so he downloads.
People on 4Chan age group are found of watching streaming with chat on the side. It's pretty much the same shinding concept of yesterday.
I'm pretty sure he's in the group of more money then time these days.
I am a giant theif, I take so much revenue from companies all the time, I need someone to sue the shit out of me for the following (to teach me a lesson and put me in my place):
* I loan out my $1000 worth of rototillers to friends all the time, the manufacturers and rental agencies are losing piles of revenue from me.
* I let people use my truck, and/or help them move things regularly. That is dozens of car purchases or rentals
* I help my family and friends with computer issues and build them free websites occasionally -- dirty dirty hippy crap, poor companies are losing service calls all the time.
* I cook meals from my garden, and invite people over to eat with me, grocers and restauranteurs probably should lynch me for denying their revenue.
Stupid sharing and human kindness. Obviously we are just a bad, evil species.
Reality is still that HBO is simply taking away the incentive to purchase the product. Right or wrong, that's the end result. So do they want to continue complaining, or actually try to make more sales? (And I'm sure HBO is aware of the tradeoffs, and feels like protecting their current model is more important than a few more digital sales. That might be a correct assessment, for now.)
The parent is right that pirating content and not paying for it is not morally defensible if you believe that intellectual property has value.
You are correct that people often do immoral things. A refusal to believe that people often do things which violate their own moral code is a denial of fundamental human nature.
A smart distributor will say, "if we make barriers too high to easily own this content piracy rates will rise" while a smart pirate would say, "my actions are morally wrong but I don't care because it benefits me."
Because I won't argue the point any more, but piracy is theft when people loose something.
We all get value for free; life would be impossible if we didn't. So either you're like Andrew Joseph Galambos, who changed his name to not infringe on his father's, and who put a coin in a box every time he used the word "liberty" (to pay its supposed inventor, Thomas Paine), or your position is inconsistent and ad-hoc.
A pirate is no worse for a creator than someone who simply abstains from the content. So in my opinion, either the two are wrong or none of them is.
(Note to everyone else: ad-hominem trolls will be ignored)
Copyright violation is not "sin" like theft, respecting it depends entirely on actually making it work. If copyright is the only thing that actually stands in the way of that, it is being abused.
To paraphrase the author: The world doesn't OWE the copyright owners enforcement at any cost. If you can't distribute it under your 100% terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not publishing it at all.
I don't see anything wrong with the approach though. Noone's saying that people won't buy the series on netflix once it's finally available. Although we know how likely that is...
It's not a matter of cost or wait time. It's that torrent networks provide a better, faster, easier, more portable, and simpler experience than the legal way.
Recall this famous image: http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/pirated-dvd-vs-legal-dvd/
People get too hung up on small points in this discussion -- "it'll be out in 3 weeks, that's not very long" or whatever -- and miss the larger picture. The larger picture is that there are a lot of unnecessary barriers between consumers and content they're willing to pay for.
Torrents are straightforward, they work right the first time, and they continue to work. Whereas some providers/distributors seem intent on processes that are slow, convoluted, annoying, frustrating, and that might eventually not even deliver the desired content (say, in the language of choice.)