Take my money, HBO
takemymoneyhbo.com
takemymoneyhbo.com
1) Premium price, instant gratification. If you're willing to pony up for cable TV + a HBO subscription, you're able to watch Game of Thrones the instant it comes out. Yes, you're paying a lot (~$100) - but - sometimes that's the price you have to pay for a premium service.
2) Pay a reasonable price, get it digitally, but I have to wait. If the $100/month subscription is a problem for you - no problem! You just have to wait. You can legally gain access to Game of Thrones on iTunes or BluRay for ~$40 for the whole season... about 10 months after it finishes airing.
When I hear someone say, "Why can't I just pay HBO directly for access? They're dumb! I'll just pirate it instead." - What they really mean is, "HBO charges too much for my tastes, and I don't want to wait... so I'll just download it." If that's your mentality, fine... but please don't think you're doing it for some higher reasoning. You just want the show now, and you don't want to pay what HBO is selling it. In every other medium (physical goods, food, dinner, cars) - you'd be SOL. But.. just because it's digital, you can copy it for free.
However, there seems to be a significant amount of people who want a third option, which HBO considers itself structurally prohibited from providing.
It is precisely no one's fault but HBO's that HBO has painted itself into a corner.
To assure you I'm not trolling... read this first: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
However, just because they may (or may not) be making a poor business decision, it doesn't excuse what people are doing: illegally pirating content.
Look at it from the other direction. Pirates are gonna pirate and there is fuck all anyone can do about it. Moralize about it all you want, it doesn't change the fact that people will get the content for free, and MORE people will get the content for free if they feel ripped off or cheated (regardless of how legitimate those feelings might be)
HBO can make a relatively simple change to capture a good deal of that market, or leave money on the table. Currently they're pursuing option #2 due to poor positioning.
>Our content, exclusive. It's the only place you can get it. And we believe there is value in exclusivity.
You say value, others say needless and overpriced hurdles. And there's nothing exclusive about the average torrent site :)
Also , if you watch something 10 months later you're going to have to find a way to navigate the internet for 10 months without tripping over spoilers everywhere.
Buying it via cable, assuming there aren't other shows you want to watch on cable , you are looking at $25 per episode.
Worth reading before spouting the typical "I don't understand why HBO doesn't want my $5 a month."
Edit: This is a summary of one of HBO's arguments. The dcurtis post examines a couple of other arguments. Positioning is an interesting one: How does HBO convince viewers that $5/mo is reasonable for just a few shows when Netflix is $8/mo for far more content? There are some really tough issues here.
How much revenue does HBO get from that marketing?
Also.. their largest carriers also serve a lot of cable internet, for most it wouldn't be adding a competition so much as adding another way to get at subscribers money. I'm not so sure they would be in a huge rush to drop them.
The status quo is that the typical HBO sub has a cable bill over $150/mo, because he already has broadband. Helping that subscriber cut the cord and go Internet-only (while unbundling HBO) will therefore result in a lower cable bill for the subscriber. A portion of the money the subscriber saves comes out of the carrier's pocket. This is the classic trading of analog dollars for digital pennies, and carriers will resist it as long as they are able (in the absence of a new big revenue source).
Regarding positioning: HBO is very good at producing content, but so are a lot of the organizations that provide content to Netflix (e.g. CBS, NBC, TNT, Showtime, Disney, etc.) $8 gets you access to all of those vs. a hypothetical $5 to get the output of a single studio. It's going to be very hard for HBO to hold the line on pricing in that environment.
What I took away from it is this: A lot of our paying subscribers don't actually watch HBO, and we don't want to compete against the sources that deliver those subscribers to us.
(Every single discussion about this should always include a mention that Time Warner owns HBO, saves a lot of mental hamster wheeling.)
They forced a bad deal on competing networks via those networks' own customers. The prize was capturing margin and exporting cost of business.
The language about controlling the examples that consumers use as a frame of reference is telling. This is a business that has mastered the game of baiting 1st parties against 2nd parties while negotiating price as a 3rd party.
I would guess there's a lot of businesses that make money by charging people for things that they don't use.
Case in point , services that allow you to subscribe online but can only be canceled by telephone. Making a telephone call is not exactly difficult , but there must be a significant quantity of people who can't be bothered to do it in order to make it worth their while implementing that policy to begin with.
And then you don't watch HBO (or at least not as often as warrants the money you spent on it). It's like all those 'options' you get when buying a car (Only $200 for floormats? that sounds like a deal!). I think it's called the bundling effect or something similar.
Yeah I am not associating myself with that. Perhaps something like "We don't currently pay to see your content".
Honestly as an Australian I don't see this happening here, the cable here is an effective monopoly and unless they get a cut of the profits they're not going let HBO do this. It might be completely against their business model as well due to the fact GoT has received more publicity here than any other cable show in some time. This has likely been driving sales for them and so would be bad for their business.
To assure you I'm not trolling... take a look at this discussion before replying: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
I never understood this thing about "easily copy-able" being a reason to strip a business of their distribution rights. Yes, the actual string of 1's and 0's is easy to copy. But physically making a 60 minute episode of Game of Thrones is not so easy. I think the work they have put into making their product has earned them the right to control the distribution of their product just as much as any other business. If you don't like the way HBO distributes Game of Thrones... you don't go pirate it... you go film it yourself (although I suspect that would not be allowed either).
HBO Go puts the technical infrastructure in place to eliminate the cable companies as customers if this ever changes, so they have some chance of surviving the likely collapse of the cable industry
The piracy angle, or those particular programmes?
Could be because it's $3/episode or it's only standard def or it's a week late. My guess is people find it just as easy to torrent it so don't even bother to look at paid options.
So if Australia is being used by HBO as a test market (quite common for US companies in the past), the stats on offering a paid online option in parallel to cable to reduce piracy don't look compelling to me in this case.
A week later is one week too late - you need to be looking at hours after screening. Australia has a huge pirated TV culture because of how awful our free to air is (pay TV is only really starting to catch on due to exclusive sports licenses, and in terms of getting US content it is almost as terrible as free to air), and everyone just torrents what they want to watch.
The other thing is that on iiNet (Australia's #2 ISP), iTunes downloads aren't counted against download quota. So there's some incentive to buy for people on the basic plans.
You really would be paying the 'gold price' too as the $AUD is pretty strong due to the price of gold and other commodities mined here.
The quality fluctuates wildly. If its $60 unlimited from a good ISP like iinet then it's a good deal, if it's with TPG or Dodo then it's not worth the hassle.
Dubbed, too.
In much the rest of the world, it's already pretty much game over. A whole generation has learned to "pirate" these shows because it's the only available option.
This is the reality in 2012 outside the US: ordinary people in offices and on schoolyards are discussing TV shows that aren't legally available in those countries. It's not considered anything special anymore, it's no longer just a small "secret" club of geeks. It has become so common it's hard to imagine "legal" services will ever get a foot in the door after over a decade of neglecting these markets.
I have been willing to pay HBO anywhere between 10 and 30 a month for years to get access to all of their content on demand on the web. Really glad someone took the initiative to let them know about it. Not that it will necessarily do anything, but at least the customer desires will be very visible.
HBO is actually now starting to enter the local cable market. Great offering: "pay a premium price to see shows your friends talked about 6 months ago at an inconvenient time". I suppose there's still a market for it, just like there's still a market for getting yesterdays news printed on dead trees...
You have to remember that the practice of pirating TV shows started about ten years ago now. That's a whole generation that grew up watching their favorite shows that way. Any time, anywhere, and for free. Try selling those people premium cable subscriptions that offer no practical advantages whatsoever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuevana
My coworkers which aren't especially tech-savyy watch movies from Cuevana and similar sites, many of them get their children to configure it for them :) .
Edit: thenextweb went so far as to call it "the new Napster"
http://thenextweb.com/la/2011/11/25/is-the-argentine-online-...
and their owners have been in legal trouble several times
http://thenextweb.com/la/2012/03/13/the-noose-tightens-aroun...
- HBO drives a lot of cable purchase
- Some of that money goes to the cable companies for data carriage
- The cable companies know HBO sells cable
- Any alternative distribution means risks the cable companies losing income
- Cable companies losing income means that HBO risks either being dropped from the cable companies or having to offer them a bigger slice of the pie (since distribution is now non-exclusive)
It is a huge risk for HBO to jeopardize their cable subscriber income with a direct-to-market model.
That being said, I won't pay $100+/month to watch just HBO so do the math on that.
What really annoys me is that this goes so far as affecting, say, iTunes releases. HBO only releases shows on iTunes (if they release it at all) just prior to the next season starting to drum up more interest. That's a trap and I'm not falling for it.
This all goes back to why a la carte cable will never happen (given the current power structure and regulatory environment). It either means people will spend less on cable or things will be more expensive so it won't be worth it. Either way the cable companies lose. Content creators also lose because no one wants to take the risk of losing what is otherwise guaranteed income (a slice of every cable bill).
Years ago, Hollywood went through a shakeup splitting content creation from distribution [1]. It's really time for the same thing to happen with all content industries. We need to separate:
1. Content creation: studios like HBO;
2. Distribution: cable companies like Time Warner and Comcast; and
3. Infrastructure: the actual last mile, cable or fibre infrastructure.
Of course the political likelihood of that happening is essentially zero.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict....
EDIT: to clarify this point, I don't believe cable companies would pursue the nuclear option of dropping HBO. However what the cable companies have now is essentially an exclusive arrangement with HBO. With implied or otherwise, HBO earns a premium for this in terms of how big a cut the companies get. Providing a means to bypass the cable companies would sooner or later result in a higher cut being paid to them, less marketing of HBO by the cable companies to its customers, etc.
Basically there is an economic cost to breaking exclusivity whether it is explicit or not.
Here's a question- Cable channel AMC makes Mad Men available for purchase on Amazon Instant Video the day after it airs. As far as I know, no cable systems have dropped AMC as a result. Why not?
The AMC network owns AMC and a few artsy channels I've never heard of. Time Warner owns HBO, TBS, CW, TheWB, WarnerBrothers, Kids WB, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN, and a little more. I've heard that HBO gets $7 per each of it's 29 million subscribers. The parent company, TimeWarner, gets an even larger number per cable television subscriber.
If TimerWarner could sell it's content ala cart and make more money than they currently do off subscriptions I'm sure they'd do it! They have wisely invested in the creation of HBO Go such that if the day comes where that's a more profitable venture, and there are no contractual roadblocks, they'll flip the switch in an instant.
This clarification does not change your point, however. A conglomerated cable channel owner benefits from any one of their channels driving access to all of them. If HBO did circumvent the cable operator, they may be hurting their brothers and sisters in the process
Netflix dropped $100 million for a season of House Of Cards, so it's entirely possible we'll see more of this kind of thing out of them.
And I'm firmly convinced the right people could raise GoT scale budgets through crowdfunding. The right time and talent just have to come along. It'll happen in the next couple of years.
which suggests the question, how long will the current power structure and regulatory environment be able to last?
If a lot more people made this decision, there would be no problem here.
Also, here's a moble MVNO which does a lot of things right:
Now if only you could easily bring your existing phone onto their service...
I should have said, "delivered over internet protocol such that I could get the service through my choice of internet provider". Decouplable, in other words.
Yep, regulation. There was a tiny movement years ago to get the government to force a la carte cable, but lobbying ended that.
Want a la carte cable? Call your senators and representative.
My argument: with bundled cable you can segment the market by selling the same product at different prices. If I offer a bundle of sports + movies for $100, I can sell to a subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for sports and $10 for movies, and also to the subscriber who is willing to pay $90 for movies and $10 for sports. I get $100 from both in this scenario.
If I wanted to sell sports à la carte and movies à la carte, both the avid watcher and the casual fan would have to pay the same price for the same content. In my simplified case above, each product would have to be priced at either $90 or $10, and I either lose the casual viewer or leave money on the table from the diehards.
If this is true, then regulation effectively decimates the profitability of content, meaning less good quality content (though you would be paying less for it). I think the best way to get à la carte is to preserve market segmentation by adopting some kind of tiered pricing structure--maybe time delayed releases, maybe different quality levels, or maybe Priceline-style auctions. But none of that may work as well as bundling.
I still pay the cable company for my data connection. They will change their business model, the only question is will they survive the changes brought on by new technology. There current business model has very little chance of working in the long term.
I know you were talking about a direct service but this argument affects HBO's current cable delivery model too.
I am a cable cutter. I made the decision two years ago after realising that the only shows I watched through my TWC/Tivo subscription were on HBO. I enjoyed them a lot, just not enough to justify spending $112 a month on the TV portion of the service. Worse, I only really watched HBO originals (the movie selection is slow to rotate and doesn't even begin to compare to Netflix). I'd get perhaps 40 hours a year of viewing from HBO (two originals, at most), which makes the net cost per hour viewed over $30. That's twice the rate of going to the cinema, never mind all the other stuff I could do in front of a TV with my time for far less (like gaming: $50 for 100 hours of Elder Scrolls, anyone?)
I ended up in this situation because I already had instant, on-demand, (mostly) ad-free access to an enormous range of current and classic TV through Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and miscellaneous network websites. I was deriving absolutely no utility from my cable subscription other than HBO. That suddenly made HBO seem inordinately expensive. It was a simple economic decision to ditch Tivo and TWC, buy a Mac Mini and a decent remote and stream everything. My bill went from $180 (including internet and streaming services) to $70 and the hardware paid for itself in under a year. (Were I a sports fan I'd be in a very different position, as no doubt I'd view $112 a month as worth it for access to live sports on ESPN.)
I pirate nothing. I miss out on none of these phantom 'water cooler conversations' people talk about. I learned patience. I have more money. It's been a good decision.
I said this had implications for HBO; I am sure I am not alone in my pre-cutter profile (streaming a fair bit, not watching much cable TV, enjoying some HBO originals) and I'm not the only one who's figured out that HBO-over-cable's cost per hour viewed makes it one of the most expensive forms of entertainment available. I don't believe HBO can compete under their current model in the long term.
Instead I'd suggest fellow cord cutters just skip Game of Thrones entirely, don't pirate it, don't even watch it. Instead spend your money and leisure time supporting content that's provided online.
When your friends talk about GoT you'll need to have a few canned response-pivots like "is that about orcs? Lawl, hey did you guys see Lilyhammer? It was totally not godawful."
(Am I the only one who still doesn't give two fucks about four fucks about television shows?)
I can't disagree this is relevant to HN's interests, as a specific instance of a broader trend that gets talked about a lot here.
(I don't watch TV, but the above is my best attempt to explain the greater phenomenon behind posts like the GP's — not a personal statement.)
TV is for people who can sacrifice something else for the sake of a show. I can't and I won't because my time is worth doing something else. And when I need entertainment there are other things that fill that need.
Its like the radio, I turn it on when I need it. If something interesting is playing I hear, else I have a whole hard disk full of songs to hear to.
Also the ads and breaks between shows, movies and songs. When uninterrupted entertainment is available at dirt cheap prices. Who likes to waste their time watching/hearing ads.
TV is becoming the new radio, basically.
But I have nothing against tv shows per see.
I respect Top Gear a lot, and Jeremy Clarkson was on 60 Minutes last year. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something similar to "if we paid attention to everybody that got offended, we'd make a bland show". I'm sure HBO is completely aware that you are offended by their distribution model. I'm also sure that for them to continue being as successful as they are, they simply cannot care. There's a lesson in that for entrepreneurs.
I still wish DRM wasn't a thing, but I enjoy the pants off of TF2 and most Steam games. I think you can be both, and it's not a binary world view.
Is there money to be made here? Sure. I might even say that companies who don't offer popular shows on demand are making a dumb move. But nobody has the innate right to take whatever they want right now just because they can't wait until it's available legally.
You aren't taking it. You are copying it. The only reason not to be allowed to copy it is if it damages the copyright owner.
But since the product has zero economic value to the owner from you (they refuse to sell it to you), you are not causing them any damage, and therefor you can not make any argument about why it's wrong. (i.e. it makes no difference to the owner whether you copied it or not.)
One of the criteria for fair use is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work".
And if you also include "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes" you have met 2 out of 4 of the criteria for fair use, so you could make a strong argument that it's actually fully legal.
1 - But since the product has zero economic value to the owner from you (they refuse to sell it to you) -- In the case of Game of Thrones, you are refusing to buy it (either via HBO subscription, iTunes, physical media, etc.)
2 - Fair use is a legal defense used when you get charged with copyright infringement. It is not an excuse you give upfront. You can only claim fair use after you have been charged.
2: Fair use is most definitely an "excuse" (as you call it). Fair use lets you decide if you are allowed to do something. You don't have to go to court before quoting a passage from a book in a review - fair use lets you do it without even asking.
If we want to get into semantics we should really pick some words that are more neutral. So.. you consumed it and did not compensate them for it. Better?
It is kind of funny when you think about the term leech used in the torrent world. If you download something and don't make it available for upload, you are leeching. You are taking but not giving back. So to consume someone's product and not compensate them for it... I guess that makes you a leech?
Not really. Why do I need to compensate them? You give a creator money to encourage them to do more, not to compensate them. Compensate implies they loose in some way and you have to make them whole. That doesn't apply here.
In this case the author of the post want to encourage them to do more, but they refuse because they believe they can do better without his money. At that point his moral duty is complete, and they have no right to complain if he consumes (I hate that word since it implies destroy) their product.
You don't seem to get the point of copyright. You have it reversed - you think copyright lets creators prevent people from doing stuff - not so. The idea of copyright is to encourage creators. (It's right in the US constitution - check if you don't believe me.) If you try to encourage them, and they refuse, then you can do what you want and they can't complain (morally anyway). The restrictions only exist to serve the purpose of encouragement. If encouragement isn't possible then the restrictions are meaningless and are ignored.
A leech is only a leech if he doesn't try to give back, but in this case the author of the post tries, but his offer was not accepted. Even in the bittorrent world that is not called a leech, it's called a seeder.
Compensate only implies that if that is the only way you choose to see it. If you have a job, the money you earn is compensation.... paying (someone) for work performed. Compensate means so much more. Also, consume means more than to destroy. But since those other definitions do not serve your purpose, it is convenient to turn a blind eye to them.
> A leech is only a leech if he doesn't try to give back, but in this case the author of the post tries, but his offer was not accepted.
But the author does not have the authority to dictate what offers must be accepted. If a creator is offering you a product and gives you Option A or Option B. It is not reasonable to assert that if you counter-offer him with Option C and he refuses that it gives you a right to still accept the product and neither of his chosen options.
Also, I didn't bring up anything about copyright. So I'm not sure how you know I have it all reversed.
It's compensation for the time you spent - they give you money, you give them time. The relationship to creative work is you give them money, they give you more. You do not pay for the existing work - you pay to encourage more work (not necessarily by them, also by someone else who sees that it's possible to make money this way). That's directly from the constitution of the USA.
If they don't want your money, then you can use the work (morally). What reason would there be to prevent you from using the work? People do not own creative works despite a lot of people really really really wishing they could. People simply have the right to demand encouragement, but if they refuse that encouragement then that was their choice.
I am well aware of the current usage of consume - I still don't like the word for this purpose (using something, where the original continues to exist). Check the dictionary - I will quote: "To destroy, as by decomposition, dissipation, waste, or fire; to use up; to expend; to waste; to burn up; to eat up; to devour." That was the only definition given, if you have others feel free to quote them.
> But the author does not have the authority to dictate what offers must be accepted.
Missed my point. Why does the creator of the work get to dictate that I can't watch it? He can't. He can only expect money as encouragement to create more. Once that is refused he doesn't get to tell me what to do.
> Also, I didn't bring up anything about copyright. So I'm not sure how you know I have it all reversed.
So do tell, besides copyright what give the creator of a work any right at all to tell someone else what to do? It was a reasonable assumption, if it's wrong then I have no idea what you are talking about.
There are 2 types of pirates out there. Some really feel they have the right to do so. Some do it knowing it is wrong but they have no other way to access the content and if there were a Paypal set to donate to support the show would do so.
Not watching the show or waiting for the DVD to come out really is not an option. Waiting is not the point we're discussing.
Waiting for the DVD to come out is also an option unless you know for a fact that it will never happen (which neither of us does). It's not going to kill anyone to wait 6 months to see a show. Maybe they would lose interest in the show by then and not buy the DVD, sure. If that's the case, then who's going to care? Maybe it's not an ideal option, but it is an option nonetheless.
HBO should get paid for its viewership but it is not. With the whole HBO being part of Time Warner thing, I can agree that this issue really isn't solvable in an ideal way.
There are plenty of shows out there that I can wait until it shows up in the 5$ bargain bin and I'll pick it up and watch it. There are some shows that because I loved it I'll buy the entire collection edition.
But this conversation is for television watchers that watch things as they air. If there is a show that must be seen the moment it airs, there status quo is not a win-win situation and is a constant struggle between overpriced cable and cheap consumers resorting to piracy.
Hurting 'Game of Thrones' Through Piracy Won’t Change HBO’s Business, It Will Just Get the Show Cancelled:
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/hurting-game-of-th...
Pirating, of course, won't change their business. But even if I really want to watch the show (I don't watch it), I wouldn't sign up for Cable TV, and sign up for HBO on top of it just for one show. I see this as less of an ultimatum and more of a "hey your business model is fucked so you're not getting my money" thing.
Or is it just a bunch of geeks trying to get hbo for cheap? I know anti-piracy is not always popular but they are creating popular and original shows, why not support them?
If you look at the current tweets, people are offering up anywhere between $8 and $20, which I imagine is considerably more than HBO's take based on their current revenue model.
The whole point of this website, I gather, is to convince HBO that their product is worth considerably more to the end user than what they're currently making, and that they can tap into a lot more revenue if they let people subscribe to their products directly, without the cableco middleman.
[edit] My impression of HBO pricing is completely wrong. It doesn't seem like HBO would stand to gain a huge amount based on how much people are "pledging".
At the same time they don't provide an option for legitimate "over the top" Internet video users to watch their programming without a PayTV subscription.
I am pretty sure HBO charges money such that they hedge for losses that happen through piracy.
Few days back, I met a guy who runs a cab fleet. He pays his drivers once a week for the fuel they need. On further inquiry on home much he pays, it turned he always pays for atleast 4-5 litres of extra fuel a day. The drivers cheat, they say they need more fuel for lesser distance and cite mileage problems. But he was dead sure, that was not the case.
How did he hedge for all that. He takes fuel theft into consideration while billing his customers. Drivers don't loose out, the cab company doesn't. But consumers pay a little extra.
Overall, I think the TV license is brilliant considering it provides us with an ad-free TV and news network. Plus, you only actually need a license if you watch TV "as it is aired." I.E. DVDs, recordings etc. don't require a license. It's less of a TV license, more of a live TV license. It always struck me as odd however that watching streamed live foreign TV on your computer counts under that however, and you need a TV license for that, to help fund the BBC.
But keep in mind that content production is a fixed cost, so if you increase the number of subscribers you can lower the cost per subscriber.
And is a black and white teevee cheaper?
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/media-centre/news/black-a...
Compare this to movies. Is it the responsibility of studios to make sure you can watch the movie at home the very instant it comes out? No. You go to the theater and watch it if you want to see it as soon as it airs. Otherwise, you wait.
HBO is following the same path: use cable subscriptions as the avenue to get the content immediately, On Demand available soon thereafter, buy the DVDs or download at a later date.
I'm really tired of this self-righteous attitude that you are owed something from HBO. If you want to watch all of your TV through the internet, that's fine. But you have to live with the tradeoffs. HBO is one of them.
While statistically these were all guaranteed to be true for at least some users, in aggregate they were red herrings. The industry was in the process of significant decline due at least in part to online infringement. Over the course of several years mainstream services that more or less broke down all these barriers appeared but they failed to reverse any of the macro trends.
While many of the reasons are nuanced and disputed, a number of observations are relatively uncontested. Online sales severely cannibalized physical sales but failed to significantly cut down on online infringement. ASP dropped much faster than production and distribution costs. New, powerful intermediaries formed that dictated sales practices to the labels instead of the other way around.
Anecdotally, among friends and colleagues no one I knew significantly shifted their behavior. Everyone bought at least some music, and I don't think I knew anyone who refused to touch anything pirated. 12+ years on that really hasn't changed much, I still get emailed songs from rights holders or people who sell music and my friends with shared raid 5 arrays with all_the_music still buy downloads from their favorite bands.
The thing that did change is the reasons for piracy. Instead of the previous concerns people were now unwilling to support the majors, or wanted higher quality encodes, or simply thought that IP sales were outdated and believed that music acts should shift to solely making their money through touring and merchandise sales.
Whether these are reasonable new barriers or not I'm not at all interested in debating. I've thought many of them were compelling at various times. Rather what I think is interesting is that some number of objections always seem to exist.
There was an interview with a researcher on NPR yesterday that I caught. The discussion was on cheating (on things like taxes, etc.) and how in controlled settings almost all of us are small time cheats but few of us are huge cheats. The researcher attributed a key part of this to the idea that we all want to be the good guy - and that cheating within a tolerance allowed us to continue to view ourselves that way, but cheating too much made it hard for us to view ourselves that way.
While he didn't make any connection to reasons or extenuating circumstances, it seemed to jibe well with my own unscholarly impressions. That many of the reasons for intellectual property theft are constructed to allow a person to continue to see themselves as the good guy while doing something they consider immoral.
"Well, I want to pay them, but [barrier X] won't let me" is almost the perfect storm of this type of mental construct - pretty much unassailable, at least until barrier X is removed.
I used to pirate (all of my) music. I have bought a grand total of one CD ever. Now I happily consume most of my music through a paid subscription to Rdio.
Similarly, I pay for netflix. I (grudgingly) go to theatres occasionally. I don't own and have no desire to own a dvd player, and pirate movies occasionally when they're not conveniently available.
Similarly, I pirate Game of Thrones, but would happily pay up to $5 per episode if it were an option. I will not buy the DVDs, as I have no desire to see it again. If I could buy the DVDs at the same time as the show airs (without getting off my couch), I would happily do so.
It is quite literally all about convenience for some people.
My reason is simply this: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music...
If I buy a song off iTunes, the artist gets $.09
Every time I listen to it on Rhapsody, they get $.0022
Some quick division: .09/.0022 = ~41
What this means is that, if I've listened to a song less than 40 times, the artist makes more if I buy it off iTunes. But once I've listened to it 41 times or more, the artist is making more profit if all those listens were on Rhapsody.
Now I don't know about you, but when it comes to songs I like I listen to them a hell of a lot more than 40 times. You say you buy the records you find yourself listening to more often? Then you are taking money out of the artists' pockets, because every 40 listens through the album on Rhapsody is equivalent to buying the album anew on iTunes.
To make it even more lopsided, consider just how many times more you would listen to those songs throughout your lifetime. Buy the CD once, and the artist will never see another cent from you, whereas the streaming services continue to pay them, forever.
Issues: the marketing blitz and news don't wait for a few months, and the various communities around the show don't wait either, "waiting for a few months" means ignoring the marketing blitz (easy), deftly skipping all news of the show to avoid spoilers (annoying), being completely split from any possible community built around the show (annoying, and often a significant loss) and finally avoiding significant interactions with colleagues who watch the show, because they probably won't remember that you're not watching it yet when discussing the episode which just eared (downright shitty).
Meanwhile pirating the episode has none of these drawbacks, it's available hours after the broadcast on every country on the planet in high quality.
Really?
The rationale that someone wouldn't buy it anyway doesn't hold when the argument is that they want it so much they can't wait for it.
In the way that they are taking money out of their own pockets by not catering to this sizeable crowd.
Intellectual Property does not fit neatly into our existing socio-economic framework. This is one of the areas where that really shows.
When it aired, sure I wanted to see it. People I know were talking about it. But I didn't want to pay what it cost to see it then.
So you know what choice I made? I waited.
And now it's available in a format I want at a price I'm willing to pay. So I paid and I'm enjoying it.
And, in a development that would evidently be quite shocking to some in this thread, I'm finding that I have plenty of people to talk to about it.
Look. I would love it if they made the show available online the next day, like Mad Men does. I think they're mistaken not to do so. I think they'd make more money if they did.
But they don't.
So I wait.
I will be watching season two without ever paying for HBO, again I am watching it via a DVR. How is my watching it on someone's DVR not the same as downloading it and watching it? In neither case did I pay for it, someone else did in both.
The true issue is that HBO sees more money at risk than they see to gain.
>The rationale that someone wouldn't buy it anyway doesn't hold when the argument is that they want it so much they can't wait for it.
The point is that customers wouldn't buy the show under the conditions it's currently offered to them anyway.
I know this is a popular justification for piracy, but surely you can see that a lost opportunity is in fact lost value.
I know this is a popular justification for curtailing liberties, but surely you can see that this makes no actual sense.
Right.
Also, your comment was idiotic and I was spinning it the other way 'round to demonstrate this.
I do support content creators being compensated in the manner and amounts they choose to ask.
These are different things.
No, it's an argument. And it's got nothing to do with "watercooler discussions", people can talk without involving you, people can talk at the bar, people will talk, art is not just a personal experience it's also a social one and the social part is actually important — hell, there are a number of cases where it's fundamental.
It's especially the case for TV series (with significant and/or cult followings) as they become shared/group cultural artefacts and values and a significant section of social interaction.
> That's a reason to take money from the pockets from the 1000s of people who worked months or years to make something you like?
No, but I should not be surprised by your mis-representation since you seem to have no interest in discussing this.
It's a reason why "waiting a few months" is not an acceptable alternative.
And by the way, pirating does not "take money from the pockets of [people]" any more than not watching at all does. That doesn't even remotely make sense.
It's entirely possible to compensate them if the experience is valuable to you. Not doing so is wrong. Sorry, but that's how I see it.
No offense, but this stuff is not a complicated moral dilemma by any means.
"No offense, but this stuff is not a complicated moral dilemma by any means"
Well, I agree to some extend, but moral != law.
Still illegal, but.. my conscience is at least clear.
No. But yet again you're intent on strawmanning your way to feeling good about yourself, so I'm just going to stop this worthless "interaction".
> Not doing so is wrong. Sorry, but that's how I see it.
Sure, and you're free to do so, but — again — this has no relation to "tak[ing] money from the pockets [of people]".
Rdio, Spotify, and other 'legal' solutions give pathetic amounts of money to the artist. I'd rather have a copy of the music in whatever format I want, on whatever device I want, played with whatever software I want, and spend a little extra time figuring out how to compensate the artist fairly for their contribution to my human happiness.
Your logic works if you only are going to listen to a song a few times, but after a certain threshold, the artist would receive more money than from a CD or iTunes purchase.
How about when you pirate the episode, you put the $5 aside, and when it's released on DVD, buy the DVDs, regardless of whether you want to watch it again? This has essentially the same result as buying the DVD "at the same time as the show airs".
This is what I have done with shows that are cable-exclusive. And as a perk, I end up with the DVDs.
This is why we can't have nice things.
We started with language then writing, then the printing press then telegraph radio, and phones and now digital information.
We'll eventually get to the point where all of the worlds digital information will fit in devices the size of dice. And we're not far off either.
I actually do agree with you that we tend to rationalize our actions, but that's not some kind of epiphany.
Edit: If you're going to down vote the least you can do is rebut.
One problem is that sensor sizes are increasing at similar rates to storage sizes, for mostly the same reasons. Same goes for our ability to process data into novel forms, and in general to create new data.
Moore giveth, and Moore taketh away. Good for our line of work.
As far as cheating goes, I would put it this way: humans seem to have an appetite for risk. The irony of cars becoming safer is people drive faster and more dangerously. Every person has a different tolerance level. I see cheating as being in that same dimension, at least to some degree.
Part of it is also social constructs. Divorce once had a huge stigma. Now it doesn't. Now people get more divorced. This is of course a simplistic example and by no means demonstrate definitive causation but fundamentally it's reasonable to assume that the difference between being ostracized vs "nobody cares" has to have a significant effect.
It's also I think why law and order is such a tenuous thing. In the West where there are strong states, relatively low corruption and relatively strong enforcement (compared to, say, African countries). This keeps most people honest as the risk of getting "caught" is sufficiently high to stop such behaviour. In more lawless countries there seems to be a tragedy of the commons in play where many more people think to line their own pockets at the expense of the state because everyone else is doing it.
How you get above the line to sufficient conformity is a bit pf a mystery once you're below the minimum threshold.
No need to try to find cheap pseudo-psychological explanation to why people cheat just so you can justify why you feel comfortable calling piracy "theft". It is what it is, trying to oversimplify the simple with pre-made labels, will just end up making the simple look complicated (as your explanation) for no good reason. Because your oversimplification is throwing variables away, you end up having to make stuff up to explain the gaps, which will always be an imprecise bandage. Which will have more gaps, and need more bandage. So you end up with these Frankenstein hypothesis that won't get you anywhere. All of this mess can be easily avoided if you accept people pirate simply because the pros outweigh the cons.
Now I'll just go back to building a solution instead of whining.
That isn't even a remotely realistic worry. Humans have been creating art and "giving it away" ever since they've been humans. There is a risk that more "expensive" art will stop being funded (though even that is a stretch right now), but there is no possible realistic threat that art will cease to exist short of a mass extinction.
Many people can't afford/don't want to pay for a Rolls Royce, they aren't their target market, but they don't feel entitled to drive one. So they don't go out and steal one and then say "if only you had made the Rolls Royce available at the local dealership in Randomtown, USA instead of Manhattan and at a more reasonable price of $30,000 I wouldn't have stolen the car".
Probably true. But it seems like it's shifting to some degree; A lot of normal people I know pay for Spotify, for example.
I also feel parts of the industry brought this upon them-self and are just reaping the fruits of their own decisions the last 12 (?) years.
Someone put it well recently: "We don’t want everything for free. We just want everything"
Personally, I think it is easier for an industry to paint its customers as a bunch of vicious thieves, rather than people expecting content delivery to change with the times. This seems indicative of industries that are a monopoly and are out of touch with their customers, but I fear I would be painting them with an equally broad stroke.
Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/94722096/Sandvine-Global-Internet-...
For example, pick some otherwise random date a few weeks after the DVD set will be released and organize a concerted buying effort amongst "pirates" on that specific date.
The packaging of the videos is SHIT... there are ads, I have to sit through FBI warnings, I have to sift through bad menus to get to the content I want, and I have to deal with trying to find features when everything I select says "please insert disc X"
I paid $70 CND and with the exception of the actual quality of the picture (blu-ray is fantastic), the whole experience is VASTLY inferior to the piracy route.
That said, I'll still be purchasing the Season 2 Blu-Ray when it comes out, because I very much want to support the production of this series.
I spent good money on the fucking thing? Why couldn't they have given me a BETTER experience than the people who steal it?
Even a trial run, like pay $5 and watch S03E01, would be a really great test to see if the market is telling the truth here. (But the availability could NOT lag behind HBOGo or broadcast, it'd have to be simultaneous.)
Is there any legal precedent for this, i.e. attempting to pay for a product or service, being ignored and then paying and taking it anyway?
Obviously it's illegal.
The GP's example was bad because he mentioned taking a product or service, rather than making a copy of something and keeping it. I'm assuming he didn't mean it the way it reads.
Wrong. In your scenario, the DVD in question is for sale, and is clearly listed as such with a price and all. You know exactly how much it costs, and you give that much money. And the transaction occurs in a place that is designed for this very purpose. There is no confusion or grey area here.
What would be done with the money should be specified upfront and held to high transparency levels and of course involve the artists.
Since people who are paying a sub are way less likely to cancel than people who make a 1 off purchase are willing to come back?
Perhaps they don't even care that much about piracy because their money is already in the bag from cable subscribers?
Once everyone stops using cable they will change their tune.
There are mentions of HBO having to foot the infrastructure if going away from Big-TV providers, but the above can handle that now. Charge an extra $5 over Big-TV, if these other services want you to foot some of their transport bill; I'd be willing to pay more, while still paying less than needing a cable sub.
I'm already paying those other guys. Are they not playing ball? Tell us so, and we can start focusing some of our internet hate at those greedy suits, as well.
Volume wins?
customers that pay for cable + HBO > customers with internet only.
Hence why they have no current desire to alienate big cable to cater to the small number of users who loudly complain they can't watch HBO online when they want.
The other reason is that Time Warner wont risk their other channels being unbundled from the basic tier such as TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon, etc. They make more on some of those channels (Ads + subscriber fee) than HBO.
I pay $0/month to watch Game of Thrones, Veep, Girls, and True Blood. I will continue to pay $0 until there is an option that does not involve enriching evil cable executives.
Your move, HBO.
Wouldn't a standalone HBO GO subscription enrich cable executives? Wouldn't any paid solution enrich cable executives?
Even if you manage to perfectly align your beliefs with your purchasing habits, how do you ensure that those who profit from your purchases don't give their money to the evil cable or oil executives?
> Choosing to pirate Game of Thrones is a win/win. I get
> the content I want and I don't enrich cable executives
If you don't agree with their distribution methods then DON'T CONSUME THAT CONTENT.
I think this is what goes through most people's heads. When it's a choice between benefiting nobody and retaining moral high-ground and benefiting nobody and watching the show, they choose the latter, because they don't see any real rational reason not to.
Now, how about pirating the show, then buying the DVD when it comes out? Gets trickier, doesn't it...
I've had to learn this the hard way, unfortunately ...
Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers.
How is this a product or service similar to what HBO is offering..? Merely invoking the name of a product/service is hardly a trademark violation -- otherwise every single HN commenter who has griped about Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook products would be infringing.
i hate twitter.
my voice shall go unnoticed.
I would, on the other hand, pay $40 via iTunes per season of Game of Thrones.
Networks are outdated. Stop trying to change them and adapt like the rest of us.