> Alternatives include:Frankly, I do not believe those are viable alternatives. Suppose I put food in front of a hungry man. Formally, his options are eat or don't eat, but it's clear that they are not equal from his point of view. He might not eat if his conviction is strong enough (say a hunger strike) but this doesn't change the fact that the options are not equally balanced.
It is not fair or reasonable to assume that TV show aficionados have a strong enough moral conviction that copyright infringement is bad, compared to their desire to see more of the show. After all, in a way, the show is designed to make us want to watch more.
Okay, now on to the former alternative -- paying for cable and only watching GoT. The first thing that needs to be said that this alternative is not universal -- there are countries where HBO is unavailable. Even this simple fact has implications -- a non-trivial market for torrents, for instance. But let us ignore this and assume cable is available.
I think most people inside a capitalist society are trained to evaluate objects. This means that if you want to sell me a bundle, I divide the price based on the objects in the bundle. Usually, this is used by marketing in a devious, but smart way -- for instance by adding free modifications to a car, washing mashine, cell phone plan, what have you. In our case, it is detrimental -- people who only want to watch GoT and nothing else hardly see value in the entire HBO bundle. In fact, they actually see negative value in it, especially if they do all of their TV watching via their computer.
The reason why I say they see negative value in the bundle is this: If you are asked to buy a fairly pricey bundle but all of the things in it except one do not interest you, you again divide the price... and note that you pay a lot of money for something you don't need. That's not a feeling a seller should promote.
I think the smart move by HBO would be to offer individual shows for purchase on their website, and alongside them offer the HBO subscription as a discount on all the shows. This way the bundle feels like a discount again.