Game of Thrones Most Pirated TV Show of 2012 | Hacker News Reader

Game of Thrones Most Pirated TV Show of 2012

torrentfreak.com

35 pointsPr059 comments

I have HBO and I still pirated every episode of Game of Thrones last season. It’s just a lot easier for me. I am not interested in my life revolving around TV schedudles so watching it on linear HBO is not something I’m going to do. I won’t make the commitment to be in front of my TV every Sunday night at exactly the same time. Just not interested. If that was my only choice I probably wouldn’t watch it at all. The DVR I get from my cable company should solve the linear TV problem but it really doesn’t because it’s such a low quality product. Sometimes it fails to record things. The UI is really clunky. It’s not uncommon to see digital distortions and other problems with the way it records. It also has very little space available to do much HD recording. It’s also not a multi-room DVR so if I record Game of Thrones on my living room DVR I can’t watch it in my bedroom unless I physically disconnect and move the box. They do offer multi-room DVRs however the cost is just too high. I won’t pay that much for the privilage to rent such low quality equipment.

I hear great things about HBO Go, and I thought it was free for all HBO subscribers. Have you tried it?

When I want to watch content the first thing I do is check to see if it's available to buy on itunes. If it is I pay, if not I go to pirate bay and download it, simple as that. I've just started watching The Killing season 3. I was only introduced to the series a few months back so I bought seasons 1 and then 2. Season 3 isn't available to buy so unfortunately I'm pirating it. To be honest, for the money, I'd rather have it on itunes, I don't have to search for a decent version and I can watch the first episode while it's still streaming. As a bonus it gets added to my 'collection' in itunes.

I'd actually like to reward good content with my money. I've often wondered what would happen if the pirate bay had a tip jar for each download. The money would go to the company that had created the content. Obviously it's complicated, HBO for instance, being tied up in cable contracts, would probably not be able to actually collect the money.

There's lots of talk amongst those who pirate about how they would pay for it if they could. I for one would like to put my money where my mouth is.

I know there will be a lot of people feeling extremely vindicated in their suspicions that if HBO offered Game of Thrones for legal download they would rake the money in. Let's take a second to work through the counter-argument though.

Instead of asking why they don't cash in on the clear demand, why not ask yourself how HBO & Co would operate if they did sell shows by the episode and direct to consumers. If you're looking for a proxy, the outcome probably wouldn't be a million miles from the networks, where audience levels translate into ad revenue, which means shows live or die very quickly. Look at Fox's 2010 series Lone Star. Despite having the best-rated pilot of any of that season's debuts, it was cancelled after two low-rated episodes.

Have you ever asked yourself why HBO, Showtime and AMC have the track record they do in producing great TV of movie-rivalling production value and movie-topping narrative chops? The simple answer is that they run a subscription model and that gives you a lot of freedom. In the first instance, a significant part of HBO's subscriber base is there for boxing first and foremost: money in the bank for the programming arm. In the second instance, once you're paying for something monthly, you're actually quite unlikely to cancel it even if you don't extract the full value from your subscription (see cinema all-you-can-eat memberships). Above all, it allows you to operate from a stable base of yearly income and that completely flips the consideration of which programs stay and which programs go. It's simply a consideration of opportunity cost; is there a better series that could fill this slot?

The subscription model is precisely the reason that HBO is able to swing for the fences on things like Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, which are both enormously expensive undertakings. It's entirely because the shows are able to prove themselves over seasons, and not episodes, that subscription-driven channels are able to make them. And even then the judgment of whether to continue is usually based on creative satisfaction and not cold, hard audience figures - both the Wire and Treme kept their places on the roster despite comparatively lousy viewing figures.

The problem with a subscription model is that it has to be all or nothing. If you start giving people a way not to subscribe, they won't. They'll just pay to watch episodes as they become available. That's not even to get into the practicalities of carrier relations and all the added considerations that throws into the mix.

tl;dr: Game of Thrones might be a no-brainer for selling legal downloads, but things like Game of Thrones don't get made by companies that use that business model for very good reasons.

"Piracy is almost always a service problem" - Gabe Newell

I understand that HBO has some sort of proprietary online video watching service, but speaking as someone with no TV and no desire to pay for basic cable merely to enable my paying for HBO, I do with HBO would take Gabe's quote to heart.

Is it your opinion that HBO is doing this just to screw people over?

From last year, a rhetorical imagined response from HBO: http://www.livedigitally.com/2011/12/22/dear-mg-a-note-from-...

> We love that you’d spend $19.99 (or more) to pay for our service, and we wish we could have you as a customer. But let’s talk about that for a second. First of all, we don’t have any direct relationship with our fans right now, so when you need customer service, you call Comcast or DirecTV or Cox, etc. So we’d need to get customer service up and running, and that’s pricey, since, as you know, we’d want our service to be top notch.

> ...But let’s get to the crux of the issue. There are about 30-40 million Americans who watch HBO shows legally, and we agree, a lot of them would be happy to pay us directly. If we went, as you put it, “cable-optional,” we’d be breaking our existing, mega-million-dollar contracts with our current partners, and from what we’ve seen, they wouldn’t be too happy about that. Second, we don’t really know how they’d change their billing relationship with you or other consumers. Which is going to put a lot of people into a precarious position of having to decide if they really do want to sign up with us and keep paying their cable bill.

Yes, this is the point that needs to be made every time someone rages at HBO. It's not that they are doing this despite fans "wanting them to take their money", it's that cable partners have made it financially unreasonable for HBO to split from them.

They are about to launch a video-on-demand service in the nordic countries, but with 12 months commitment and 3 months notice, so they seem quite capable of screwing up themselves.

I expect HBO will eventually be bought by or strike a huge deal with Netflix or Amazon.com to get them over the cable companies' deterrents.

I suspect if Netflix had the money to make it worth HBO's splitting from cable companies it would have happened when they were looking for content channels. I'm not sure if this is in Amazon's core business either.

It is true that acquisition is unlikely, but licensing is different. I think Netflix has to choose their deals carefully and in the right order. Disney is their biggest deal yet. HBO would be bigger, but next year, it might be manageable. They already did the StarzPlay deal which brought shows to Netflix the day after airing on Starz, and Starz is a poorer version of HBO. Starz didn't renew, which makes the value of the arrangement look low, but it's possible HBO intends to learn from that in their future deal.

Amazon's Prime Instant is a direct Netflix competitor and they pursue licenses just as aggressively. They are even publiahing original content, which is not their core competency but certainly is HBO's.

HBO can hardly blame cable companies just because HBO's crappy business model doesn't work without cable companies.

Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but I'm assuming they made the business calculations and the partnerships with the cable companies was much more profitable than splitting off and doing HBO GO on their own, at least in the regions that they are tied to. (Cable cutters are still a small portion of the population)

There are about 30-40 million Americans who watch HBO shows legally, and we agree, a lot of them would be happy to pay us directly. If we went, as you put it, “cable-optional,” we’d be breaking our existing, mega-million-dollar contracts with our current partners, and from what we’ve seen, they wouldn’t be too happy about that.

Kodak said exactly the same thing about digital photography vs retail film sales. The then-$17B/yr company just this month sold their remaining essence for $0.5B.

Remember who your actual customers are.

The transition from cable to internet for TV consumption probably has a while to play out yet. I'm sure HBO are exploring many scenarios for the future.

Kodak was exploring future options too. The actual future arrived a lot sooner than they expected.

The difference is that HBO are still making a product that people want. It's the distribution channel that's in danger of dying out not the producer. As long as HBO are making shows people want to watch they'll be just fine.

To which my response is, "Welcome to the local maximum, HBO. Make yourself comfortable, as you'll be here a while."

I know I'm pointing out the obvious but people can wait for the DVD or buy it via iTunes when it becomes available. The show is shown on different networks throughout the world at different times/dates so just putting on online immediately for everyone isn't really an option. It might take 12 months but eventually you can get it in a format you want for a fair price.

In Europe it's SKY that screens GOT. It's unwatchable because there is a long commercial break about every 10 minutes. Just recently I bought series 1-5 (65 episodes) of mad men for €55. I won't watch GOT again until I get it on a box set.

I recommend Sky+ to you.

That would be an idea, what's holding us back is when our house was built it had 1 satellite cable properly run through our walls and a sky+ box needs 2

Sky+ works fine with one feed, just with the obviously reduced functionality (i.e. you won't be able to record one thing while watching another)

I didn't know that.

When your friends are talking about the latest episode just after it airs, waiting a year isn't necessarily practical.

That doesn't make piracy OK, but it certainly makes it a lot easier for many people to justify.

This show is not aired in Russia. And I can agree that eventually it will became available in some format. Maybe even translated (I, personally, do not care much about translation).

What about Japanese shows?

For example: Bakemonogatari was aired in 2010. It is available in DVD in Japanese (maybe Korean/Chinese). In 2012 there is still no official English/Spanish/Russian/other release.

But there are a lot of fan translations. So, piracy is only way.

That's the thing though, they could make it available on iTunes immediately at the same time as the air it on TV. I'd pay for it. But they take too long to get it up there.

The concept of releasing in different parts of the world at different times is outdated. Release worldwide all at once.

>> "The concept of releasing in different parts of the world at different times is outdated. Release worldwide all at once."

But it's not that simple. HBO isn't a worldwide network. They need to make deals with lots of different networks in different countries and that takes time. Those networks then need to fit the show into their schedules.

> But it's not that simple. HBO isn't a worldwide network. They need to make deals with lots of different networks in different countries and that takes time. Those networks then need to fit the show into their schedules.

National networks are similarly outdated. This is the 21st Century, for crying out loud.

If a bunch of kids can propagate high quality 1080i/720p copies of television broadcasts around the world literally within half an hour of the show airing in its native market, the content owners themselves can manage the same.

It takes some time to do voice-overs and make the other small changes required for localization. They would have to accept a considerable delay to do a worldwide release at once. Given the amount of money HBO is investing in these shows upfront it's not unreasonable that they want to start seeing some revenue from the big English speaking market as quickly as possible.

Gee, that sounds like their problem, not mine.

Release everything in the original language as quickly as possible. Then screw around with voiceovers and such. There's people in other parts of the world that understand English, and people in the US that understand languages other than English.

How do you know people who pirate it are not buying it on DVD when it comes out?

How moral is it for someone in one territory to buy from a different territory? Because, to the business, that's just as bad as pirating. Which is why you can only change the region on your DVD player (Apple, MS) 5 times, and why there are laws preventing shops telling people how to make their DVD machine region free.

I don't have cable either, yet I've purchased the Bluray sets of Game of Thrones, Band of Brothers, and The Pacific; all HBO productions. External USB drives are pretty cheap these days (DVD and/or Bluray) in case your computer doesn't support optical media.

In this context, The Oatmeal is on point: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

I really love AGOT, and the only reason that I'm pirating it is because it's basically the only way to view it in my country. I'd love to watch it on the television the same day it is released in the US, but that's not gonna happen. Other countries are always later.

The second reason is that torrents just work really good and are very fast.

I have a DVD player, and a broadband connection. Without getting into something (cable, set top streaming, torrents) for which there are investments in time, energy, and money, there is no legal way for me to watch the second season of game of thrones.

Once I get into something, there's a lot of other content available. Cable is the least flexible. Streaming is buying into a walled garden which might disappear in a year, or change TOS, or some other distasteful eventuality. If some popular show drives me to piracy, and I make that investment of time and energy, then that's how I'm going to get all the rest of my content from then on out.

Honestly, I don't have a major moral problem with piracy. It's the lowest tier of price discrimination. The vast majority of people who pirate would simply not pay for the content if piracy were an option. There are content creators who encourage piracy because they have a better chance of becoming viral (and making more money) if it occurs.

I pay, when I can. I have enough money, and if I pirate, then I'm disenfranchising myself because, in pop culture, money is a vote. If I don't pay (vote) then I can't complain about garbage being produced because I'm a non-contributor. Piracy was OK when I was a college kid with very little money, but now that the cost of content is trivial in comparison to the time it costs me to watch something, I feel like I should take the legit route.

However, I don't buy cable. It's too expensive given that most of the channels I'll never watch, and Time Warner Cable is the epitome of Suck. Why should I pay so much for such terrible service? I am not going to "vote for" TWC just to watch Game of Thrones, which only requires a cable subscription because HBO was beaten into submission by the bad guys.

So I say: until HBO will take your money directly, pirate on.

Another "good reason" for piracy is being able to participate in the discussion going on in the US when its actually hapenning, instead of whenever the show appears on the rest of the world.

That certainly works if everyone pays for stuff they like. In which case you could certainly extend this pricing out to most products.

For example if I buy a meal at a restaurant I am only obliged to cover the direct costs incurred (and maybe something towards overheads) by the restaurant in providing me with that meal, any profit is discretionary.

Without a large enough test it's difficult to draw any conclusions about how successful such a model would be for any given market rather than specific things like Humble Bundles.

I certainly do still see plenty of people who can afford a new car and a holiday every year pirating movies etc and still complaining if something sucks.

Hmm, the torrentverse has surprisingly good taste,

> Game of Thrones

> Dexter

> Big Bang Theory

> How I Met Your Mother

> Breaking Bad

> The Walking Dead

> Homeland

Well, except for the last one ;) I kid, I kid.

You mean the fourth one.

Heh, I am sure everyone can find one in that list to dislike ;) But I still think the quality of the bittorrent top 7 is surprisingly good, compare to more typical popularity listings:

> Big Bang Theory

> Voice

> X Factor

> NCIS

> Two and a Half Men

> Person of Interest

> Dancing with the Stars

http://www.tvguide.com/top-tv-shows

Those are mostly terrible.

Different people have different tastes. Different demographics have different tastes. Just because the taste of the torrent "pirates" is more like your own taste does not mean it is good and the others are terrible.

Are you arguing that everything has the same quality? Or how are we supposed to argue about quality?

Quality is a very tough concept but we should find ways to tackle it.

How do you define quality? Cheesiness (or lack thereof)? Intellectual depth? Emotional depth? Ease of consumption (the opposite of intellectual depth)? Visual effects?

There are lots of popular movies that many would say have low quality, but score highly in some of the aforementioned categories. Many people I know really liked The Avengers, and loved the scene where The Hulk was tossing around Loki. They can't understand why I disliked the movie, or why was my least favorite scene in the entire show.

I don't know. But we've got to have some kind of scales.

It does mean they are terrible _in my opinion_, though :) My opinion does count for something, just like theirs.

Kind of puts the 'make better content and people will pay for it' argument to bed.

Or it could be the type of person who enjoys Big Bang Theory or Game of Thrones is more likely to know how to torrent or stream videos. I imagine that they have a slightly more technical audience than, say, The Voice.

Then again, TBBT and HIMYM are on that list.

TBBT is the only recent comedy I've been enjoying.

Have you watched Community?

I personally can't stand shows with laugh tracks.

Except for a lot of those you can't pay for it in certain countries until the Blu-ray and iTunes releases like 6 months down the road. The argument can be made that those people should just buck up and wait but when everyone is talking about it sometimes that is just not acceptable.

It's not necessarily "make better content" but rather "make a better product", primarily the distribution system.

How exactly do I go about paying for, say, Dexter?

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