I think the mistake is in thinking a corporation can act like an individual. An individual can disregard most contractual agreements with impunity, a corporation has to navigate a myriad of byzantine international contract law because they have real assets that could be at risk. No conspiracy needed.
I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
21–30 of 101 posts
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#22People have always been, and always will be, willing to pay for good products. We have always understood Return on Investment, even if we don’t call it that. Which is why World Of Goo[0], a fantastic indie game that was priced at $20, that has a 90 / 100 Metacritic score[1], that has absolutely no DRM is a game that had over 80% piracy rate at launch? The "People want to pay it's just the companies stopping them" arg…
I don't know about you, but for me $20 is a lot of money for such a simple game as World of Goo.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#23I pirate all the shows I watch. I know of no legal on-demand service that is available to me. I guess that if there were such service available it would be way too expensive (it's international market, highest price is usually the global one). But it would be something...
I wouldn't watch them in TV if I had the chance (I don't) either, because of all the ads. So if I want to watch the shows (I know I don't have to), I pirate them. Luckily it's not illegal for me, but it's still not the best thing to do I guess.
For now, I'm glad that I don't have to pirate software (games included) and just have to restrict myself (prices, see above). Though sometimes I wish I pirated a game instead of buying it (GTA IV for example - never played it thanks to their DRM mindset).
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#24I agree with all of sentiments in the blog post but this: “Why should almost 40% of my time be taken up by adverts for something I am ALREADY paying for?” Your cable subscription is a partial payment for viewing the shows. It's works in the same way as buying a newspaper or magazine: the revenues from newsstand sales are a fraction of what it costs to create and distribute the publication. The rest is paid through ad…
This comment falls on the fallacy of assuming prices are defined by the cost of goods. They aren't. Prices are defined by what the market can bear. If the market is perfect, prices will fall down to zero Economic Profit[1], and are thus highly correlated with the cost of goods. However, if the market is not perfect, then the low limit of price will be higher than the point of zero Economic Profit.
Alas, the cable TV market is not perfect. Not by a long shot. Too many barriers to entry, too few players for competition.
The end result is that consumers are certainly overpaying for cable TV, be it through the subscription price or the advertisement time price.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#25The argument of "I paid for it so I can pirate it" is especially funny when coupled with "Too many ads!" When you watch a show on cable, you're not just paying with your subscription but with your eyeballs. Advertisements, shockingly, aren't designed merely to irritate the viewer but to bring in more revenues. (What do you think is going to happen when Sky realizes that their viewership is down even if their membersh…
That's addressed in the article. And Sky get this. If you wait another 24 hours, the show appears on “Sky Anytime”, and you can watch it with no adverts and at any time you please. The adverts are an additional tax on the consumer for having the audacity to watch the programme when Sky decides. Are you playing by the rules? Yes? Are you paying for the show? Yes. Are you watching it when we say? Yes? Are you watching…
I read that. I was addressing this:
> The adverts are an additional tax on the consumer for having the audacity to watch the programme when Sky decides.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#26I did too. I would happily pay a reasonable price for the show, but HBO doesn't offer an option to do that. I cancelled my cable subscription months ago because there's really only a few shows I want to watch and they're on HBO. Paying an extra $50 a month ($600 a year) to watch two shows is ridiculous.
I like the way Downton Abbey was distributed on Amazon. It was, I think, $2 an episode with a small discount if you paid for the whole season at one. New episodes became available to stream as soon as they aired. I'd happily watch every show I like that way If I could.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#27Pardon the middlebrow dismissal, but why is this remarkable? I mean,
Didn't we all?
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#28Pirating has become a much higher quality entertainment experience than any other. The pace of development is insane, and the things you can do with pirated content these days are, in a word, wonderful. Let's say I pirated a show called Fest of Kings. The hour Fest of Kings aired, it would already be on my home media server. It would have downloaded at about 6MB/second (that's MegaBytes) over a secure SSL connection…
> If there was a legitimate content source that did all this well, and gave me the content I wanted when I wanted it (right when it airs), I would be paying for it.
I won't be available for everyone and for a fair price. So piracy will still exist.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#29Pirating has become a much higher quality entertainment experience than any other. The pace of development is insane, and the things you can do with pirated content these days are, in a word, wonderful. Let's say I pirated a show called Fest of Kings. The hour Fest of Kings aired, it would already be on my home media server. It would have downloaded at about 6MB/second (that's MegaBytes) over a secure SSL connection…
I'd rather pay the content producers than the content providers.
In my case I can't pay either producer or provider to see the same content my brother saw last night so it's a moot point. He's my brother and I'm going to do whatever it takes to be able to start a conversation with him.
Re: I pirated Game of Thrones season premiere
#30People have always been, and always will be, willing to pay for good products. We have always understood Return on Investment, even if we don’t call it that. Which is why World Of Goo[0], a fantastic indie game that was priced at $20, that has a 90 / 100 Metacritic score[1], that has absolutely no DRM is a game that had over 80% piracy rate at launch? The "People want to pay it's just the companies stopping them" arg…
> For me a consequence of media piracy is knowing I did not pay for something I have
If you don’t engage in media piracy, you often end up paying for something you don’t have – be it because the DRM servers got shut down or because you moved from company X to company Y without being able to export your music collection or because you have to sit through N minutes of advertising/FBI warnings to watch 2N minutes of a movie.