I am going to assume that you are an older person who has no real experience with "piracy" because the tone of your comment suggests a misconception about how it works. "Pirates" absolutely will pay. They pay to get the content as soon as it comes out and in high-definition.
There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube.
His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal.
As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing.
Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use.
Rather than running about insulting old people by assuming they have "no real experience with piracy" you might want to change your argument to "old people have a different experience of piracy than the one I am trying to replace".
Last time I checked the backbone of the early release scene was still Usenet - clearly the playground of the hip, young & funky - no old people there.
Usenet is very much not the backbone of releases. The majority of releases happen on [0]topsites, with a growing portion of releases happening through large private torrent communities.
I don't see how what I wrote is any way insulting to old people. I am drawing a distinction between how young people use the internet and how older people use it. This distinction exists in reality. It also appears to account for much of the huge difference in tone one hears coming people in different generations when discussing this issue.
I don't have a link handy, but HBO has come out and said that they are not being ignorant or stubborn regarding GoT. They are completely aware of the market opportunities they are passing up. But, they have run the numbers and at the current time it is still more profitable for them to tie GoT to cable subscriptions than it is to open it up to a wider distribution. When the numbers change enough, so will their business plan.
The fact that you decided to make this into some sort of young versus old thing is rather hilarious.
Piracy is older than the internet. Some of us don't have the moral flexibility -- or quite honestly the time or the inconvenience -- to pirate. If you do, good for you, but the notion that it's new is utter hubris.
It took me less than two minutes to get the latest episode of the walking dead from a torrent site in 1080p quality about 20 minutes after it aired on cable tv tonight (commercial free).
I think your argument really highlights your advanced age and disconnect with modern technology.
I think your argument really highlights your advanced age and disconnect with modern technology.
I think your argument really highlights that you are an obnoxious, ignorant prat, with an extremely loose sense of morals (people trust you with their business? Tell them that you proudly thieve. Worse, on a completely public network that literally screams your identity). There are a lot of people whose time is much more important and valuable than yours, so your experience differs. Exult in your worthlessness.
This is exactly my point. If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
I made the age distinction because many older think piracy means that these people are using filesharing and bittorrent to watch these shows. These technologies are obsolete when it comes to television and movies. You can do it all directly through the browser. It is as easy and convenient as YouTube.
If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
That takes me to a site that has endless scamware ads, tries to get me to download a hilarious dubious "codec" from a third party site, has various false-starts while it solicits memberships, etc.
That is easy? In contrast if I want to watch GoT on my cable box, it's right there under on-demand (included with premium services).
After having dealt with the fallout when people "easily" watched videos online, I have become suspicious of any notion about the easiness of piracy.
Obviously I am not going to link you to sites where you can watch without these issues, but the third link that comes up on Google is one of them. Visit it with Firefox with Adblock installed and you'll have no problems. This is extremely common practice.
Maybe it's regional, but third site here is another B.S. site that tries to get you to install their custom "downloader", etc.
It is hardly a common practice, and such sites usually operate on the edges of criminality, with all that such entails (scamware, trojans, etc. There is no honor among thieves and all). Now there are a lot of very ignorant people who think it's great, completely oblivious to the fact that they've completely compromised their PC.
Which really is the point. You can talk about how "easy" it is if you have all the time in the world to filter and find appropriate sites between take downs, and avoid all of the bullshit that comes along with them. I'd rather just watch it on HBO, and have zero troubles with that. The other guy referred to a show that you can buy an iTunes season pass, which is how I watched the last season of Mad Men. Zero risk or hassle, and episodes appear after one ten second purchase. Time is money.
There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube.
His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal.
As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing.
Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use.
Here's Gabe talking about piracy, so don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk