How To Turn A Legitimate Buyer Into A Pirate In Five Easy Steps
from the ip-in-the-oatmeal dept
As we’ve mentioned before, it’s interesting to watch copyright issues break into the mainstream and get attention from bigger and bigger sources. This time, Matthew Inman used his famous (and widely read) webcomic The Oatmeal to recount the moral quandary he was placed in when trying to watch Game of Thrones. It’s hard to get the full effect without the whole comic, so you should really go read it—but here’s a preview:
Of course, plenty of people have been saying this for years: the biggest driver of piracy is a lack of legitimate offerings. Unfortunately, the legacy players think (or at least claim) that they are being innovative with their offerings, even as their customers tell them otherwise. Hopefully, as people like Inman continue putting all-too-common stories like this into the spotlight, they will begin to get the message.
Filed Under: copyright, game of thrones, ip, piracy, purchases, the oatmeal
Comments on “How To Turn A Legitimate Buyer Into A Pirate In Five Easy Steps”
Frustrating
This drives me crazy about so many software download sites. You think you are hitting a download button then it takes you to some page full of crap to download that you don’t want and you have to search for the buried link to the actual download link. I don’t mind other offerings but don’t try and fool me by having me inadvertently download your “free” registry checker etc or other stuff that will just junk up my computer.
Easy vs Hard
Gabe Newell from Valve says the best.
“If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
If it’s easier to pirate than to purchase, then obviously people will pirate.
You think it’s easy to figure out all the codecs, work torrent programs, find torrents, have enough bandwidth to download the files, and wait for the files to download?
People want to watch them whenever and wherever they want.
Stream is a great service but if you can’t find it, some are going to get it anyway they can.
I guess the Queen isn’t the only Cunthammer around.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
I was actually looking to see how to take care of this. Last year I had HBO, and the uber package bundle whatever the crap it is, and so I got to watch Game of Thrones. Now I was hoping to see the second season, but there is NO way that I can legally do it without signing up for a full on cable package. Its crazy that I cannot see it online as a non cable customer.
Game of Thrones
Knock, Knock.
Who’s there?
Reality calling.
All of funny, sad and true.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
If they don’t want your money or my money, then we can certainly accommodate their request.
yOU ARE CLAI MING THE aRTIST GOT PAID.
Who is claiming the artist got paid?
IF’ the artist was paid, the odds are, ITS a derivative ART..Every Fairy tale MADE
ITS NOT THE BOOK.
Its the “Last Supper” and Christ Pukes in the middle of it.
Its Promises of a movie SERIES that stops at the first chapter.. Night BREAD
Its a FLOP of creation, the book SHOULD of taken 2-3 movies to make, and they CRAM it into 1.5 hours…ERAGON
And 99% of the time, the ARTIST has nothing to DO with the movie….80% of the time the ARTIST disclaims the WHOLE movie..The Artist gets PART of the revenue which ends up as SQUAT or the price of buying 1 of his books..
yOU ARE CLAI MING THE aRTIST GOT PAID.
Movie:
I Robot…
HAd nothing to do with the Book.
Had nothing to do with the Author.
ANd NOTHING to do with ANY of the Asimov Series.
Easy vs Hard
codes are easy, as is torrents, bandwidth is lower for torrents then stream, the wait is less then the time it takes anyone to upload something to a stream;
the fact is they haven’t tried at all to make using to internet easy at all, while pirates made a process years ago that is so dead simple no one wants to replace it
But still...
But still… why didn’t he purchase an HBO subscription like a moral-compliant person?
yOU ARE CLAI MING THE aRTIST GOT PAID.
Did you forget to take your meds?
But still...
How does one subscribe to HBO with their cable or satellite provider if one does not subscribe to cable or satellite TV service?
The better question is why doesn’t HBO offer either online-only hbo.com subscriptions, or a la carte show purchases.
Actually, there was a connection.
The film did not use a specific story adaptation, but the plot of the central computer system taking the first law to extremes was an adaptation of things that Dr. Asimov raised once in an early story, and increasingly in his later robot stories/novels. To that degree, they did explore a question that Asimov himself raised, except that the movie brought the thread to a conclusion, wheres Asimov himself had left the options open in the last work of his that I am aware of.
Also the police detective with a distrust of robots was taken from The Caves of Steel and later novels in the series, although the distrust was not as extreme in the books. Susan Calvins attitude towards robots was also reasonably consistent with her portrayal in print.
I know, off-topic, but credit where it’s due. I’ll even say nice things about Microsoft on those rare occasions when they deserve it.
yOU ARE CLAI MING THE aRTIST GOT PAID.
crack is wack
They could make their shows available if they wanted to. Why can’t I stream shows from my cable provider to my laptop or ipod/ipad too?
I’m paying $20 extra on my cable for “on demand” and when I go to the website I can’t find anything. Maybe it’s me, but I can find it on the internet. So even paying for service, I still end up downloading it. It’s just easier.
The average age of a tv viewer is now 54. This example may explain why.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
I feel for HBO. They fund exclusive content that’s well done and costs a lot of money to produce. They need to make money off this to produce more content. The shows are good and people are willing to pay money, but the problem is that HBO’s business model appears to rely on gaining subscribers. By offering exclusive quality content they’ve no doubt gained many subscribers, but they can’t force everybody to subscribe to cable TV just to watch a certain show.
HBO, what are you going to do about the rest of us who will never again subscribe to cable TV? You’re not losing sales due to piracy. You’re losing sales because you refuse to sell to a sizable chunk of potential customers. It’s ridiculous that we have to beg a company to take our money.
God yes, never mind people outside America that have friends all over raving about a series and there’s no legitimate way to get hold of it. I’d gladly pay HBO and others to watch individual episodes or subscribe to individual series outside the US – if only they’d offer a way for me to do it!
Not understanding that the value of NOT selling it is higher than the value of selling it is pretty much key here. It’s a business, not a charity.
The “failure” of the company not to devalue their product rapidly isn’t a justification for piracy. Wanting the company to step over dollars to pick up your pennies is an arrogant, “gimmie gimmie gimmie” mentality that just doesn’t work out.
Re: Re:
Selling the content at the higher price isn’t the issue here. It’s the timing. Why wait 3 months for a copy when I can get it now?
Re: Re:
Selling the content at the higher price isn’t the issue here. It’s the timing. Why wait 3 months for a copy when I can get it now?
On-Line V Retail
The exact same forces work against on-line distribution in all industries. Retailers and cable operators represent huge income sources to manufacturers, so they try to negotiate an unfair market advantage by pressuring manufacturers into keeping their offerings OUT of on-line distribution. There’s obviously A LOT of money to be made in being as inefficient as possible by dragging out the death of legacy models for as long as possible.
But still...
A well indoctrinated consumer would promptly purchase a cable subscription.
Re:
Call it arrogance, but it’s not going away. They’re intrinsically linked with cable providers who will continue to lose customers. There has to come a time where they use cable subscriptions to augment their sales of online content rather than the other way around. The sooner they get ready for this the better.
Frustrating
Adblock or userstyles.org can auto-filter that stuff.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
Imagine all the crappy shows HBO distributes that you don’t want to watch. If they offered direct streams, they wouldn’t have to participate in the voodoo ratings system to figure out which those are. Costs cut. Your welcome, HBO.
Re:
Obviously stepping over dollars to save pennies is a bad idea. but this isnt the 1980s anymore. If they decide not to make their show widely available 30 million pirate sites who will. Companies dont have the option to lock their IP in “the vault” anymore. Once its out, its out. They can either capitalize on it or let the pirate bay.
Re:
Their product value has a half-life beyond their control. If you think NOT selling creates more value, you have no idea how to add pennies to dollars.
Re:
“If they decide not to make their show widely available 30 million pirate sites who will. “
See, that’s the bullshit. The pirate sites have zero costs to create the content, and they make money on selling “fast access” and such. They don’t make enough to pay for the content. It is disloyal competition at it’s finest.
Switching business models to counter this would pretty much spell the end of higher end content. There just isn’t enough money at the bottom to make it work. Consider the 150 million with mega… that was about 30 million a year, which wouldn’t pay for a single hollywood movie or even part of a season of CSI or whatever.
How do you think things are made? From pocket lint?
When you understand this, you can understand why piracy is a real issue. You cannot “capitalize on it” when you can’t afford to make it anymore.
Re:
“It’s a business, not a charity. That’s why it won’t sell you stuff.”
Hrm…
Re:
Tell that to iTunes, Netflix (when they actually had movies) and Steam.
Oh, sure, it works for music, movies and video games, but there’s no way it would work for TV shows!
Re:
Pay attention Marcus, stop being an idiot.
They won’t sell you something for $1 when the market is paying them way more. Simple as that. Why should they kill their exclusive markets just to make you happy? There isn’t enough people willing to pay in that manner to make it work out.
Pay attention, you could learn something.
Re:
So if they lock it away in a vault where no one can access it they can make billions. Cash flow problem solved.
Re:
Customers, not distributors, determine the value of the product. If the bulk of possible customers will not buy it at the price of an HBO subscription, then it is not that valuable and thus the refusal to release it to a wider market is living in denial that the distributor is overvaluing the content.
Releasing it to HBO subscribers only is like releasing an album on eight track. It’s an aging, obsolete medium. If you don’t release it when people want it in a medium they want it in, you’re losing out on a lot of sales. Cable is hemorrhaging customers. With fewer subscribers, you won’t be able to make up those dollars you claim to want to make.
Do the math. You can make 3 dollars from selling the product to 30 customers who are willing to pay 10 cents for it or you can make 2 dollars from selling the product to 2 customers who are willing to pay a dollar for it. 3 dollars is more than 2 dollars. You can make up the difference in volume since you have virtually no cost to reproduce digital content!
If piracy really is a problem, why would you feed it by being more obtuse? Refusing to serve customers who want to give you money only makes them pirate. Then you are creating your own problems.
Also, if you’re spending money you can’t recoup on production value, spend less money on production value. Paranormal Activity was made for about $15,000 and made $193,355,800. Hire better writers to make the story compelling rather than throwing a few hundred million into expensive CGI.
I do love the Oatmeal, read it on his site regularly, and this is a good one!
Matthew Inman needs to learn the difference between “theft/stealing” and infringement (see the bottom of his site).
I think that stems from him getting upset when some joke-aggregating site featured a lot of Oatmeal comics with his name/site removed from them, and no links or mention of the author.
Can’t blame him for not liking that, but the correct course of action would have been to post his own stuff on that site with links, sites and names plastered all over the place, instead of just complaining about it.
I suppose he would disagree, but it’s not too dissimilar from the situation in this particular comic: consumers wanted a particular piece of content (Oatmeal comics, as opposed to GoT) in a manner of their choosing (on the aggregate site vs oatmeal.com, as opposed to a digital download vs cable), so someone stepped in and filled the gap.
Re:
Why should they kill their exclusive markets just to make you happy?
Because those exclusive markets rely on a level of IP control that is unenforceable today. Basically, those exclusive markets don’t exist anymore. Sorry. Time to compete in the new market.
Re:
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/pya24/watching_game_of_thrones_online_courtesy_of_the/c3t92kd
Re:
CSI and lots of other high-cost shows still somehow manage to get made despite them being available on Hulu. We’re talking about HBO competing with streaming services, not MegaUpload.
When you understand this, you can understand why piracy is not the real issue but a symptom.
Take a look at Hulu’s numbers for 2011. Rapid growth in both profit and Hulu+ subscribers – despite all their shows being also available on various pirate sites. I’m sure the numbers look similar for Netflix and Amazon. Only if the pirate sites are the ONLY way to get the content it becomes a real problem.
Re:
Let’s take this from a completely 100% legal viewpoint. I can ether pay $250/month to my cable company who in turn pays a cent or two to HBO who in turn gets a fraction of a penny for one TV show (and fractions of fractions of a penny for one episode); or I can go to Revision 3 and watch shows there for free.
Since I don’t have the option of paying a dollar or two for an episode of Game of Thrones, nor do I have $250/month, I’ll just watch something else… legally… for free.
But still...
Because HBO signs deals with cable/satellite which specifically say they can’t do so.
The end.
Re:
That’s true, but even if it were enforceable the genie is already out of the bottle. Customers know it’s technically possible to get everything they want, at any time, on any medium. You can only dangle that carrot in front of a mule for so long before it bites off your entire hand.
But still...
And what if HBO won’t sell you a cable service.
The internet is bigger that one companies cabled area. Those of us in other countries may have no choice but to download or not watch at all.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
Not just sales, but eyeballs. I don’t watch enough TV to make it worth paying the ridiculous prices for cable. If they can’t be bothered to offer me their product in a way that is convenient for me I don’t need to watch their shows (I think the only newer show I’ve seen any of in the past several years is Big Bang Theory) and it is not even worth my time to bother to pirate it.
So not only am I not buying their shows, I am not discussing them, recommending them to friends, or otherwise helping to promote their shows (I have, though, helped increase the viewership and subscriptions for a number of people who produce content for YouTube).
But still...
Another reason to dump cable.
Re:
Not sure that this logic is sound.
The customers who got rid of cable and looking to purchase TV on DVD aren’t purchasing HBO.
HBO costs approximately 7 dollars per month for their shows, movies, and HBO Go. If they sell the first season of GoT for $50.00 a piece, they’re making the equivalent of 7 months of what they’d pay for cable. For one show.
Not giving your customers access to content when they’re willing to pay top dollar for ONE of your shows – again, not even the whole library – is the very definition of a poor business model.
But still...
Spot on. But that means that’s the real problem they need to address. Who’s their main customer – the cable companies or the consumers? If the consumers keep running away from cable/satellite they need to adjust their strategy eventually. They can probably find a way to live without the middle man, but they can’t live without the end consumer.
Re:
$250 for cable? What planet do you live on?
Re:
What you are missing is as those exclusive markets are killed off by piracy, nothing is replacing them that will finance these projects. Piracy is the ultimate goose buffet, with no concern about where the golden eggs will come from tomorrow.
There is no “new market” to compete in. Just pirates, and you cannot compete against them at a price point that will work out. Sorry!
Re:
I’m not disputing your number but I find it interesting that at my home the over 50 crowd watches 1 show OTA a week when it is on. The 20 somethings have the TV on whenever they are in the room and sit there is a semi vegetative state.
Re:
Why are you industry apologists all such whiny, unambitious businesspeople? Technology has created a massive new landscape full of economic opportunities, and even though you’ve only made quarter-assed efforts to embrace them, you’re ready to write them all of as dead ends. Sad.
Re:
So then make content that costs less. Problem solved.
Re:
Marcus, it is understood that there are plenty of new economic opportunities out there. Sadly, so far none of them show anywhere near the sorts of income required to keep providing you the nearly unlimited content you seem to demand.
It’s not being whiny. It’s being realistic. Nothing gets written off as a dead end, it just gets looked into, and if there isn’t a viable business model to be had, they are not used.
You also say “you’ve only made quarter-assed efforts to embrace them” as if I am the one doing it. Can’t you grasp that I don’t work in that industry at all?
Re:
Bullshit. Look at the release date for the season 1 DVD of Game of Thrones. It’s set to come out about one month before the second season starts. It utterly screws over people who didn’t have HBO to start.
It’s just like going to see a summer blockbuster knowing you aren’t going to see it in video until the Holidays.
Piracy is not the issue. The issue is control.
Re:
Let’s stick to the story instead of attacking straw men. The story is HBO not making their content available to people who are willing to pay for it, and eventually losing these customers to piracy.
There is a “new market” to compete in and they’re not competing. That market is Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc. A rapidly growing market I should add.
There probably are many reasons and contractual complications and I’m sure they’ve crunched the numbers, but the story here is not that they’re competing with pirates so let’s stop with this “you can’t compete with free” nonsense.
Re:
“Let’s stick to the story instead of attacking straw men. The story is HBO not making their content available to people who are willing to pay for it, and eventually losing these customers to piracy.”
Yes. Exactly. In order to compete in that marketplace (offering the content to make piracy a non-issue) they would have to price low enough to make obtaining it legally seem like a good option.
But to do that, they would have to kill the exclusivity that they have granted or created for their cable / sat channel(s). So the replacing market would have to have enough money in it to make up for what is lost.
But see, here’s the rub: That exclusive market is what is driving demand. It is the promotion, it is the advertising, and it is that very exclusivity that helps to create a perception of value and demand.
In the end, they would be specifically competing against pirates. Having to set your market price based on piracy puts the content producer at a major disadvantage. The models don’t work because of it.
Re:
No, that’s bullshit. Delaying access in today’s world is an idiot move. “Fast Access” as you put it is available ubiquitously. If they’d only embrace it. Companies like Netflix and Amazon are there if one day, they decided it would be ok.
I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to create new online services and spend quite a bit of money if you want to sustain this model of distributing “seasons” and “shows” online. Oh wait. Netflix, Amazon, iTunes. What the fuck? The entertainment companies couldn’t come to a deal for quick releases to these distributors? I wonder how much it’s costing the entertainment companies every day.
The only extent anyone has over initial distribution is its first showing. Once it’s out there, anyone can do what they like with it. Welcome to life. It’s unfair and it sucks. Deal with it.
Re:
They won’t sell you something for $1 when the market is paying them way more.
Right. So how long do you think is that going to happen?
Re:
Which is why it’s important to turn the internet into something more akin to television.
Because television.
But still...
And in neither of those cases does HBO get any money.
Re:
Well, if it was not for a monopoly those same companies wouldn’t have a choice now would they.
Why do we tolerate this monopoly?
We don’t, that is why those people are going down hard this time, it is the end of the monopolies, the wild wild west of screwing people is over.
Re:
And the creator after that one off cost has no costs distributing that shit.
I can cost a billion dollars to make it, but it only needs to be made once and it gets recouped over and over and over and over again multiple times.
If you want to bitch about the cost of production than ask for the money in advance like everybody else does.
Re:
Then piracy is not really a problem now is it.
C’mon you can’t argue that something is bad and then claim that people are still paying more for that same crap.
That is why people call you an idiot.
Re:
Last I checked, Aquafina and their ilk aren’t charging such small amounts themselves, and seem to be doing fine. Steam certainly sells games at similar values to what you would see in a retail store, and yet still thrives.
Steam, who actually stated that “Piracy is a non-issue”, competes with free constantly, and does so successfully. They moved into Russia, after being told by many sources that this place is bad for business, because no one legitimately purchases anything, and all their works will just be pirated. It’s one of their best markets outside the US now.
Competing profitably against “free” can be done. These studios merely need to look at those who have done so successfully, see how they did it, look at what the consumers responded to best, figure out what things they have in common, and incorporate that into their business strategies.
Re:
“But see, here’s the rub: That exclusive market is what is driving demand.”
No, here’s the rub: demand is not enough. The demand also has to be serviced. That’s where the industry is failing, and failing miserably.
People are either being refused access to the content completely, or being offered access that’s so convoluted, expensive or inconvenient that they don’t bother. The industry’s response to this seems to be not to service the demand, but to try and force people into consuming content in the way that’s best for them rather than the consumers themselves. That’s where they fail.
Yet again, stop trying to pretend that cost is the only factor involved here. Yes, the demand is there. The demand is currently only being serviced by the pirates. That’s the problem.
Re:
LMAO
“Not understanding that the value of NOT selling it is higher than the value of selling it is pretty much key here. It’s a business, not a charity.”
I’ve heard some really stupid bullshit before, but this one is AMAZING. The value of NOT selling a product????? Ummmmm not sure what the value is, but I know that if you are NOT selling the product then the price would be $0.
Thats not stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. That’s just stepping over dollars and merrily trotting along past the pennies.
Don’t get me wrong, NOT selling your product doesn’t justify infringement.
The problem is that you don’t seem to understand that value and price are two different things. NOT selling your product does not increase the value, it frustrates the consumers and lowers the value, which may or may not affect the price.
This is where the idea of legislation instead of competition comes from. I can already hear the chorus of “I shouldn’t have to compete with the pirates.” Not the pirates, the market in general. Put it on netflix or HULU, or just sell it on iTunes or Amazon for a price, before it loses it’s value.
Re:
Problem is, thousands of Youtubers are making money out of nothing and they can’t afford any protection so they live without it and they still can afford to do it.
How is that possible?
Re:
HBO has only recently started on Dutch TV, but still it is years behind on the American network, meanwhile a lot of their content has been aired on Dutch stations one way or another already, removing the need for an HBO subscription.
Unless they’re going to lock up their content from airing on Dutch tv stations. But I’m not so sure if that’s wise.
Re:
I am happy with Youtube content.
If you can’t deliver there I’m afraid I am not watching it anywhere else LoL
Now get your monopolistic tendencies and go die somewhere.
Hopefully, as people like Inman continue putting all-too-common stories like this into the spotlight, they will begin to get the message.
These are the same myopic idiots who complained about and tried to suppress every new media distribution system since the player piano. They never got the message at any time during the last century, and I sincerely doubt they ever will.
Re:
Implying that TV/movie theater companies will gladly dump shitloads of money into a new series before a finished product is available for them to preview first? If I was an investor, I’d definitely want some kind of preview first before forking over any dough. Hard to imagine that fatcat CEO’s aren’t the same way.
Re:
I hope Rebecca has copyrighted ‘cunthammer’, I’m sure there are plenty of under assistant vice presidential botoxbabe public relations interns at MPAA who will jump on it for their cvs!…(or Fox News presenters…)
But still...
Then they should syndicate with SyFy and other channels in places such as the UK. There was one channel where you couldn’t DVR it.
Re:
He lives on US soil, where there are maybe two choices.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
But as an HBO customer, you have already paid for the content. HBO should of course offer you free downloads of EVERYTHING that they air during the term of your subscription. If they don’t…then they’re stealing from you because you’ve paid for it and they’re failing to deliver.
This “pay for the same content over and over and over again” nonsense has got to stop, because otherwise those of us with any sense are going to not pay for the content at all.
Re:
Find another job then.
The biggest investor of all in the arts routinely gets the shaft and now that they are not willing to take it anymore some complain that it is not fair that the people now know how to pass the shaft to the producer.
It is not the public problem that someone can’t make it on a new set of rules, is not the public problem if someone can’t make a profit.
But it is a problem for the public when idiotic laws expand granted monopolies to life plus 95 years, criminalize behavior that was not criminal before, threatens democracy and free speech, at that point is time to end that granted monopoly and I urge everyone to disregard the law.
Maybe the problem for some people is that people are not that stupid anymore they can do things for themselves now, they got the knowledge they got educated and don’t need to depend on others to do it for them, that is some freedom shit that you want find in Iran or China at the moment where people depend on others for their living, to think for them and to produce something for them, not in other countries though, I don’t need you to distribute anything for me I can do it all by my lonesome and the only reason I can’t is because there is a stupid law trying to force me not too, fuck that, I am ripping all those companies every chance I get, I don’t negotiate with terrorists specially economic terrorists.
Frustrating
well just being careful what I click works for me.
Re:
If HBO can’t figure out how to make money doing this, then too bad for them: they deserve to be ripped off, to be mocked, and to fail.
Someone else — someone smarter — will learn from that failure and do a better job of giving us what we want, when we want it, the way we want it. Life will go on…without HBO, which is, after all, expendable.
Re:
monopoly planet – USA
Frustrating
Funny how one needs to be more careful about the links they follow in a website that charges for legitimate content. It used to be that piracy sites were the ones that put users in danger of harm.
Why be Honest?
Two issues. One that those who want you to be honest do not feel any obligation to be honest with you.
Second, no return policy. I recently bought a game which had all the ridiculous EULA crap. Well, if you declined accepting the EULA, there was NO pop-up screen on how to get a refund.
If companies that sell content want to complain about piracy, how about a little honesty from them. No misleading ads and the ability of the consumer to return content that does not meet their needs. Through their blatant disrespect of the consumer, it is the content industry that is promoting the creation of the piracy it is complaining about.
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I blame that dead/alive Cat video on Youtube. It was put up by someone calling themself Schroedinger.
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And? Why does everyone have to make megabucks? Why can’t they just make a moderate living?
Easy vs Hard
Whats really bad is how stupid they are with the DRMs on things such as Bluray. I recently make the descision I was going to go all legit. So I installed the new Ubuntu linux and was all happy. Then I try to play DVD, well that did not work until getting special stuff to decryt it. That even had warnings about how it might be illegal. Illegal to watch a video on linux?
So then little later I pull out a Bluray and try to play it. Well no luck with that so I go to trusty Google. I quickly find a page telling me how to play a Bluray. They explain how it is tricky because of DRM and then go on to explain that the EASY way is to RIP IT TO YOUR HARD DRIVE. So it is EASIER TO COPY the damn bluray then it is to PLAY it.
But still...
I cannot get Game of Thrones as it requires Sky Atlantic in the UK and I am a Virgin customer. Am I to get a totally duplicate service including getting a satellite dish installed just for one show???
But still...
According to these geniuses – yes, and you’re stealing from them if you don’t, even if you simply opt not to watch the show at all.
Re:
Can you please point me to where you said that you don’t work in the industry, and I failed to “grasp” it?
I don’t even know who you are, except that you’re one of the AC’s with a weird vendetta against me. Whenever I or anyone else attempts to hold you to things you’ve said in the past, you deny them. It’s pretty funny that you now expect us to know what you do for a living.
So fine, change all the “you”s to “the dinosauric industry you defend for no reason”
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hrm… htmlfail, it seems
More of the same from our shills
“But these new models WON’T WORK for 200 Billion Dollar projects”
The economy is changing. Everyone is being asked to do more with less. Businesses the world over are having to slash costs and reduce work forces. What makes you think Hollywood is immune to these effects?
That’s a serious question. Not trying to troll the trolls. Every year movie production costs go up to record levels. How is that cost structure sustainable in any market?
Ads
The best thing about that Oatmeal comic was the ads on the “pirate site.” MOAR TESTICLES!
I was doing this 4 hours ago
I don’t even think it would be so bad, but you can’t just order HBO – you have to order 3 other packages before you have the privilege of ordering HBO…
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That exclusive market is what is driving demand.
Exclusivity has never driven demand. Making a quality product is what drives demand.
You have a point about the price. At present, HBO does not create these shows so that the shows make money; they create them as added value for their cable subscriptions, which is their income source.
But if that added value won’t drive consumers to their main product, then they won’t spend the money on the added value.
So, you’ve got it exactly backwards. Exclusivity isn’t driving demand for the content. Demand for the content is driving their ability to exclude. And that’s the only thing their product is; their ability to exclude. Their service, in and of itself, offers nothing whatsoever to consumers.
Unfortunately for them (but fortunate for consumers), that exclusivity simply can’t be enforced. Now, the demand for the show stays where it is – as demand for the show – and doesn’t get translated into demand for their valueless, consumer-unfriendly product. In fact, the demand for their shows has to overcome the fact that consumers don’t want to pay for something that offers no additional value to them. Unless the content is especially in demand, this won’t happen – and, in fact, it doesn’t in the vast majority of cases. Most people don’t choose to pay for HBO (piracy or no).
That business model simply isn’t feasible anymore. If you want new programs to be produced, then you need to find another business model – because the one they have is failing rapidly. Given increased competition from other services that actually offer additional value to consumers – Netflix, Hulu, etc – the HBO model is bound to fail, even if piracy was somehow eliminated altogether.
DVD
Well, the DVD and BluRay is out now, so it sort of eliminates half of the argument!
Frustrating
Yeah, you’re just falling prey to fake ‘download’ adbanners, be more discerning.
How do you claim that the “biggest driver of piracy is lack of legitimate offerings”. That is such a cop out. If that were true the most often pirated content would be the content that WASN’T available legitimately. We all know that isn’t the case, the most often pirated content is the big blockbuster content that is offered by almost every media outlet around.
I was doing this 4 hours ago
They should really offer HBO GO to people without the cable package. I don’t want a movie channel but I do want some of their shows, just let me buy them please.
Also, WTF is with not releasing season 1 DVDs until a month before season 2 starts? Do you not want to get new fans who missed the first season as it aired? Get your head out of your ass HBO.
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Yeah I would have to agree with your logic. The average viewing age may be 50 but I would still bet the younger demographic watches more TV.
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Really? So I can go and see all the latest big blockbusters from my computer right now?
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“Switching business models to counter this would pretty much spell the end of higher end content.”
If that was true it would be gone already. The pirate sites already make it available for free. Would HBO be better getting 0 dollars from customers like the one in the comic or SOME MONEY. Sorry but “We made more money doing it this way in the 80s” is not a valid business plan anymore, the pirates are not going away and you have to compete on at least some level, even if that is only releasing a god damn DVD in a timely fashion.
Yes pirates don’t have cost but content owners dont have revenue unless they enter the space. People who didn’t watch the show last season are expected to wait until a month before the new season to catch up? How stupid is that? The last season ended people have been talking about how great the show is, there are a million memes and unless you are a HBO subscriber it is IMPOSSIBLE to give them money to watch the last season. So despite all this fan word of mouth and all the people that would like to watch the show HBO offers them no outlet to give them money. And I am sure all those people are patiently waiting until the DVDs are released.
” You cannot “capitalize on it” when you can’t afford to make it anymore.”
If they can afford to make it now, with pirates taking all their “potential digital customers” they can surely afford to make it after they are getting some revenue from those people. Sure its not as lucrative as an overpriced cable package deal but not everyone will drop they subscription to switch to an internet version and wishing it was still the 80s will not make piracy go away. Best to make some money instead of no money from these people.
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Um, I can’t watch it on Netflix or Lovefilm in the UK, due to location restrictions. I can’t buy the DVD or Blu-Ray sets, and I can’t buy single episodes except for 48-hour rental through iTunes.
Great job, HBO!
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So streamline the production process so it costs less.
Expand your potential pool of customers instead of just crying about your shrinking control over a market.
Stop blaming piracy for you lack of customers and start trying to give people what they want, people pay for things they want.
Realize you are no longer just competing with 6-8 other huge companies. Small companies and home ametuers can now reach just as large of an audience as you can, actually a much larger one if you refuse to come out and play.
OR get a time machine.
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“Yes. Exactly. In order to compete in that marketplace (offering the content to make piracy a non-issue) they would have to price low enough to make obtaining it legally seem like a good option.”
They sell the DVD. Make it a similar price to the DVD and stop trying to window it.
“That exclusive market is what is driving demand. It is the promotion, it is the advertising, and it is that very exclusivity that helps to create a perception of value and demand”
It has nothing to do with the successful book series, the huge amount of fan word of mouth, the large amount of fan based news being thrown about, the thousands of memes? The only reason people are interesting in the show is because of its marketing budget and because its really hard to watch the show?
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“But to do that, they would have to kill the exclusivity that they have granted or created for their cable / sat channel(s). So the replacing market would have to have enough money in it to make up for what is lost.”
Because the cost of running a cable channel is the same as offering a small amount of content online? If they offered their exclusives for download they would not lose all their cable subscribers, though they might lose some. But if they refuse to get any kind of foot in the digital space they will just slowly sink with the rest of the cable company. No HBO exclusive is so important that people will keep their cable just for that. Some people will pirate, some will wait for DVDs and some will just stop thinking about HBO.
“In the end, they would be specifically competing against pirates. Having to set your market price based on piracy puts the content producer at a major disadvantage. The models don’t work because of it.”
It’s not about being cheaper than the pirates. That is impossible. It is about offering people what they want. Most people would rather get the official version than the pirate version but if you don’t offer an official version….
I was doing this 4 hours ago
Now and then, I open up the HBO GO site and click Contact Us. I ask them to offer HBO GO to non-cable subscribers, so I can pay them for their content. If they hear from enough people like me, someday, we might get what we’re asking for. It’s always worth a try.
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How do you claim that the “biggest driver of piracy is lack of legitimate offerings”. That is such a cop out. If that were true the most often pirated content would be the content that WASN’T available legitimately. We all know that isn’t the case, the most often pirated content is the big blockbuster content that is offered by almost every media outlet around.
Perhaps I should have been more clear: the biggest driver of piracy is a lack of high-quality legitimate digital offerings.
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Sorry buddy your text is not available outside the US.
https://imgur.com/LZGE8
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Oh sorry this comment is not available legally in your region, but you can get access to it in a pirate website.
This and geoblocking have got to stop. Geoblocking is the reason why Megavideo was so huge.
Ghostbusters – Punk Covers
When it is not available who you gonna call?
The Pirate Bay!
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Grow the fuck up. No one deserves to be ripped off. Your attitude is disgusting and subhuman. What happened to you in the past that turned you into such a despicable and worthless piece of shit?
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EVERYONE deserves to be ripped off, and I am a disgusting subhuman with a paycheck, just like the rest of my generation. Cater to my every whim just like everyone else who survives off of my discretionary income. Bow down before me HBO!!!
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The same idiots that opposed the player piano? They must be getting pretty old.
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Woah, I think somebody just got laid off from HBO…
Codecs can be easy
Codecs may or may not be hard for some people but they don’t need to be. A program that is designed to “just work” and “play anything” is not something that will inherently run afoul of stuff like the DMCA. So it’s a solvable problem.
Using physical media that you’ve paid for it what’s hard. It’s hard because all of the tools that might help you need to keep a low profile. If you produce a program or device that the DRM cartel does not like, they will sue you.
So, any pirated media is bound to be easier for a n00b consumer to deal with. They don’t have to do the work themselves and they also don’t have to worry about DRM induced problems.
Actually, there was a connection.
There’s even a term for it coined by Asimov himself.
It’s called it the Zeroth law.
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…or you could just wait for the DVD.
Big fat hairy deal.
This is all about people having no patience. It’s not about legitimate options being completely unavailable.
Drowning in reruns
There are a wide range of “threats” that video faces today. The mooch is only one of them. Money is tight these days and there are plenty of ways to distract yourself that don’t involve Hollywood. People don’t even need to pirate.
Big Content has a salesmanship issue, not a piracy issue. They need to compete against ALL new technology. This includes their entire back catalog oddly enough.
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about cable, broadcast, or a pile of DVDs. People are drowning in reruns these days. You can enjoy all of the classics of the entire film and TV eras and never even touch new stuff.
All of the stuff that should be in the public domain can be an ample distraction. It doesn’t even have to be free. It’s cheap enough even if you’re “legit”.
The Pirate Bay isn’t stealing your lunch, Target is.
The DMCA paradox
The limitations imposed by DRM and the legal grey area created by making workarounds illegal ensures that people will choose the simplest option that meets their requirements. They won’t choose a more legitimate option because it’s actually more difficult to deal with and you’re already criminalizing them regardless.
On-Line V Retail
Twenty years ago, my cable provider experimented with offering a la carte channel selection at $1 per month per channel, and movies on demand, served from a hard disk, that could be paused and rewound from the TV. Let me say that again – TWENTY YEARS AGO. This was killed by ESPN, Discovery and several other (I think) Disney-associated channels, who wouldn’t provide any content at all unless the a la carte model was dropped.
I don’t have cable any more. The only way I would ever have cable again is if I could pick my own a la carte package – no shopping, religious or sports channels, no Hallmark, no BET, no Fox, no you-name it, just the channels I actually watch. As far as my household goes, the legacy model is dry bones dead already.
As far as I know..
Long ago, it was SAID..
That you had the RIGHT to buy your OWN cable/sat box..
I looked up those boxes about 10 years ago)cant find them now) and THEY were VERY expensive.
There is a strangle hold on these boxes. If we could get ahold of the TUNERS alone, we could do so much with them..but THEY dont want that.
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Huh? I know many who are 60+, retired, and either veg out in front on the boobtube (many still have old fashioned CRT sets) or leave it all almost all day, burning lots of electricity, just to have “something on”. Most of the 20-30 somethings I know have one or more jobs and are too busy to watch TV. Sure, I know some younger couch sprouts too, but not many. Then again, you’re unlikely to ever meet their kind out in public.
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Or I could go spend my money with a dozen other companies for a dozen other products that will entertain me a dozen different ways right now.
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Hint: No one believes you.
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Hi there, irony.
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Don’t know why you felt the need to go on a huge ass rant that didn’t even respond to my comment at all..lol. But copyright is a bit too ridiculous now. (coming from a musician btw!) However, that is the fault of the likes of RIAA getting in bed with the government to get laws passed in their favor. So rip off the RIAA and other assholes all you want by pirating/not bothering with their crap. Don’t do the same to the indies who do actually give a shit about their customers by producing QUALITY content, not to mention that they also had nothing to do with getting that ridiculous “mickey mouse act” passed.
Also, you say artists not being able to make a profit isn’t a public problem; if people can not make money from their craft, they will get other careers and most likely either stop creating completely, or have ridiculous turn over times. So I ask you this; imagine if all your favorite music/video games/whatever didn’t exist or took stupid amounts of time (like 5-10+ years) to create since it was only a hobby for the creator. Don’t know about you, but that certainly isn’t a world I would like to live in.
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What makes you think you have the right to dictate how much someone makes? Nothing is wrong with someone making megabucks if they actually EARNED it, and donate some money to their favorite charities if they make a ton.
Another thing to think about is that a lot of these “megabucks” people are the reason charities are even allowed to exist in the first place…
More of the same from our shills
200 billion dollars is definitely bs. But people do deserve to be paid well, especially on projects like movies that aren’t no 9 to 5 gig. (I’m sure you probably would want more than a “modest” amount of money for working 24/7 a month or two straight too…) 192148752039578 million dollars a movie for the actors though, is bullshit. Because these companies aren’t gonna cut fat from the top; they are just gonna hire less “little guys” such as composers or video editors to save costs.
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>
Whee for crack! If people were so immoral as to not pay for something with identical services (easy to get content), then our world is in a whole lot more trouble than idiots not having more $$.
Media distribution costs would go down from using torrents to distribute things, distribution nearly for free and paying only for the first few seeding servers (i torrent things that i’ve already bought for this reason)… The entire point of the comic, which is hardly a unique experience, is that someone is willing and even looking for ways to pay for something w/o paying a ridiculous amount of money for shows they don’t want.
Cable's Dying Days
There’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned much, and that is how the current cable/sat business model is one giant welfare system for literally thousands and thousands of jobs for middlemen, writers, actors, techs, etc. of thousands of unwatched, uncared about shows and sporting events on dozens of space filling cable channels that customers are forced at gunpoint to pay for. This includes the bulk of HBO programming that receives zero buzz.
GoT then is way to simply force more people to sign up for this outdated business model to get one show, and keep the gravy train going. HBO doesn’t care about the fact that there will be little to no market for DVD’s or reruns, once the show is played out; it’s just one show to get buzz to get people to sign up for cable/sat subs. In fact, now that season two has started, I don’t think people would be interested in buying season one shows; they’ll just catch up with season 2 now.
Given the economy, the price of cable (which is about ready for another shock due to upcoming sports rights fee increases), and people’s unwillingness to pay for this waste (and piracy being a tiny, tiny pimple on the butt of this problem), an occasional show like GoT won’t be able to halt the landslide of customer cancellations. HBO is nothing special, just another cog in this creaking machine (although the rise of serialized TV did kill the aftermarket).
Someone will figure out a way to cut the price required to make quality shows and get them on the Internet. Viewers will buy an episode, and if it doesn’t suck, will buy another episode, and tell a friend to buy it (assuming it’s not $10 for an hour episode).
The entertainment business is in for a law-of-the-jungle world (that the rest of us live in now)…make something good or perish immediately. It will involve less $$$ going to cable companies (you’re just the pipe now, guys), executives, middlemen, and performers, but welcome to the new world technology has wrought.