At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case.
Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it…
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
Zero sympathy. If they wanted to reduce the amount of illegal streamers, all they’ve got to do is make their content more accessible.
Release it on multiple streaming platforms, not just their own. Ensure its released globally at the same time. And get rid of the geo-blocking.
The lack of reasonable legal alternatives is what drives piracy.
As evidenced by the brief moment in history when Netflix was all that and it drove video piracy all but to extinction.
This is the case still with Spotify, apple music, deezer, etc… Multiple services with few if any exclusives means almost all music piracy has stopped. Somehow, the record companies continue to survive.
That´s so insane, right? I mean, they practically had us in the bag with netflix. People either had their own account or chipped in to use someone elses one BUT EITHER WAY, THEY PAID FOR IT! And then came one of the rare moments where more competition was actually bad.
I think with digital content platforms in general, competition means more headaches for customers.
The store front/streaming service is not what people sign up for, but the access to a certain movie, show or game. If the catalog of all available pieces of content gets scattered across multiple services you now have to use multiple apps, pay multiple subscription fees and search through multiple catalogs.
I’d say from a customer’s perspective, increased competition lead to a worse situation.
The thing here is that, for the most part, it’s not actually competition, but a collection of monopolies.
You want to watch show X? You have to go to the streaming service that has the monopoly on show X. It you want to watch that show, in many cases you can’t just substitute it for a different show.
If you have five stores selling all sorts of food, then that’s competition. If you instead have a butcher, a baker, a candy shop, a dairy shop and a fruits/vegetable shop, that’s splitting the turf. You can’t just substitute the ground beef for your burgers with skittles, because the butcher is more expensive than the candy shop.
Caveat to this argument: If you really don’t care about what you watch, then these different streaming services really are interchangable competitors and then the competition is good, because e.g. a shared Disney+ account is much cheaper than the now-non-shareable Netflix account.
Yeah, It´s kinda fucked up since normally, competition is good for the customer. It´s a good thing to have different stores you can go to. It´s a cood thing to have different car or moobile phone brands to chose from.
With streaming though, I can´t really think of any real world situation where the customer actually is worse off with more variety to chose from.
It’s not the competition that’s bad! It’s the anti competitive laws that allowed it to spoil. Companies saw how profitable Netflix was and pulled their shows from the platform to artificially create a reason for consumers to use their own shitty services. Netflix was no longer able to purchase those titles.
What does this have to do with laws though? I find it pretty reasonable for a film company to be able or allowed to run their own streaming platform and just not sell their shows to say netflix. If I create something that I want to sell my self, in my own store, there should be no law forcing me to also hand it over to that supermarket down the streat to sell it there. And if I want to charge a monthly fee for even being able to enter my own little store, that should also not be prohibited.
Imagine there would be a law that said, every studio would also have to sell their stuff to netflix. You think, Netflix wouldn´t immediately abuse this power to drive any competition out of business?
Don´t get me wrong, I HATE that to be able to watch all the stuff I might be interrested in, I´d have to subscribe to like 5 different services. I just don´t see how laws would be a good tool to deal with that.
I don’t think HBO was even available in my country when GoT started. Towards the end it might’ve been. But you still had to also have the TV service from a specific ISP, not JUST the Internet service. Now there are more options, but it’s still always bundled with some other shit you don’t need.
THIS. I remember, when I started watching GoT, it was a shitshow to actually get the content in ANY way, not even speaking about getting access legally. This changed with time, but the show often was exclusive to Sky, which is one of the most garbage paid tv services I know of. I can buy it, but I REALLY don’t want to support Sky for their bad service. There really should be no exclusivity to those things.
Instead it was destroyed by two greedy fucks rushing the ending two seasons early so they could move on to their next cash grab flop!
What WAS their next cash grab though?
It was supposed to be Star Wars but they messed up GoT so badly they lost the Star Wars bid.
I believe they’re doing 3 Body Problem next, another adaptation but for a Chinese sci-fi this time
That´s on my “want to read” list.
Its such handwaving bullshit, I wanted my money back at the end of the book.
You are aware that we are in a piracy group here, right? We don´t want our money back. Because we didn´t pay for it in the first place!
For a while there it was nigh impossible to legally get access to GOT in certain countries. Not to mention, when your only option is an insanity expensive streaming service, and the only thing you want there is one specific show, you’re likely to look for alternatives.
Yup, I would have had to subscribe to sky for at least two years to watch it. Their weird monthly streaming service did not even include GoT and it was 720p max and it would not allow you to watch anything, if you got a 2nd monitor connected. That shit is as anti-consumer as it gets.
movies can get your credit card stolen
joke’s on you i’ve never had a credit card
Incredibly relevant: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
It’s been said a million times, but piracy is an accessibility issue. Chasing your favorite shows across streaming platforms is exhausting.
I’ve always lived by lord GabeN’s “piracy is a service issue. You have to offer a better experience than the pirates”
That dude is one in a billion. I am kinda scared what will become of valve once he retires or even dies. I swear to god if I lose access to my steam library I will never buy a single damn piece of media ever again.
