American Ambassador Lectures Aussies On Game of Thrones Theft

[RandV80]

I agree with your sentiment. If they were to follow steam's route they would be very profitable. Right now the problem with GoT is that it is a service issue. The only way to watch GoT legally is to go through their outdated draconian subscription service. While most shows are on itunes the next day, GoT takes several weeks to months to get on itunes.

I have no problem paying a reasonable amount per episode ($4-7) if I can get it either right after it airs or the following day.

All HBO is doing is training their GoT fanbase to just go the torrent route since they won't provide a better service. Of course there are those that will pirate no matter what but you would have to be pretty naive to believe that it wouldn't convert many people over (not speaking directly at person quoted fyi).

The 'Steam' route would certainly be the most user friendly method for watching Game of Thrones. I'm sure there are plenty of people like me who have been long time fans of the books but have never been an HBO subscriber, don't even watch that much TV to begin with, and could care less for there other shows. Game of Thrones is the only thing I want out of HBO, if I could buy it from them directly without having to jump through all the additional subscription hoops I'd do it in a second. I buy the DVD's but that takes about 8 months to come out.

HBO knows I exist, but like I said in my other post they've done the math and it doesn't add up to give me what I want. Think of them as something like World of Warcraft. They already have a large established user base using what has become an outdated payment model, as almost every other MMO out there is going F2P. But because of the establishment in place it makes no sense for them to switch to the F2P model, they may see a rise in players but the overall revenue would drop.

It isn't quite the same but that's sort of the situation HBO is in. Here's an article (Link) [http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/05/hbo-go-without-hbo/] that covers it a bit more. HBO has certainly been looking into it but they're not ready to cut the cord just yet.

 

[AstaresPanda]

remember when you need official permission to record and watch shows on tv when your recorded onto good old VHS ???? yeeeehhh Shut up dude, no one wants to payout the ass for ONE channel.

In england you gotta pay £100+ a year for a "TV LICENSE" and then £50+ a month just for ONE CHANNEL !? really, so many shows but lets make customers pay out the ass for constant repeats of the same hand full of episodes.

Take over the pirate market. Make your own download service like no one would pay for it.

 

[Zeriah]

Game of Thrones only airs on cable television over here, on a station that basically doubles the price you pay for your cable subscription. Not many people have Cable here and even less have Showtime (the channel Game of Thrones airs on). There's no other way that I know of to watch Game of Thrones legally, except waiting an entire year for it to be released on DVD for an absurd price, or two years for them to finally syndicate it to other networks (the first season of Game of Thrones is just now airing on another channel).

If they had streaming services, VoDs, or perhaps, a more reasonable delay in syndication (maybe a month or so), piracy would go way down.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

When will the nation that champions capitalism realise that the market has spoken? People are no longer prepared to put up with the bullshit that is 'you pay us a monthly subscription for fifty channels of crap so that you get to watch the one show you like, at a time designated by us'.

If they were to let you download on iTunes and other internet TV services as soon as it aired, the problem would largely go away. Instead the cable networks are dragging their knuckles to keep their dying business model alive.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

The piracy rate of GoT is high because, maybe, it's a good show? Did they not think that people Pirated it to check it out and liked it so they kept doing it? I don't know. Piracy can harm TV, Movies or Video Games Profits, but I doubt it's really affecting GoT that much, since people still watch it when it airs, and you have a massive market for it Worldwide, not just in Australia and America. This is just one of those 'I need to fill my ***** quota for the month' things with this guy, since it's not too big of an issue.

Edit: I thought I'd add another point. Netflix and All those other, legal paid services that provide TV shows or Movies for a cost; We don't have them here. Maybe if they fucking worked on getting that here, the piracy rate would drop. I for one, am eager for Netflix here, since it sounds like an amazing service.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Ridiculous, targeting students who wouldn't have bought it otherwise. I don't watch the show but I'm willing to bet if torrents for it weren't available or no one did it then this show would be far less popular, be talked about much less and would therefore make far less money. These politicians don't know how the visual art and music industries work, and it's not surprising that the show's producers do and don't mind.

 

[Abomination]

Seriously Mr. Ambassador, how about you have a talk to your companies that promote a culture of piracy here in Australia by charging us between two and four times the price for digital goods, huh? How about that.

"Stop pirating our digitial goods!"
"Stop selling digital goods with regional pricing!"

Reap what you sow, America.

"Charge them more, they can afford it." doesn't work very well when everything else in the country already reflects their higher valued currency and incomes. Isn't the mining bubble popping?

 

[Nazulu]

Sorry Bleich, for some reason many people need entertainment like it's a fix and must be smart asses about it as well. Though I can understand when you can't obtain a show as easy by any other means.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Adam is correct, you can buy Game of thrones through itunes for $3.50 per episode, a day after it airs. Stop being so entitled

 

[Sgt Pepper]

remember when you need official permission to record and watch shows on tv when your recorded onto good old VHS ???? yeeeehhh Shut up dude, no one wants to payout the ass for ONE channel.

In england you gotta pay £100+ a year for a "TV LICENSE" and then £50+ a month just for ONE CHANNEL !? really, so many shows but lets make customers pay out the ass for constant repeats of the same hand full of episodes.

Take over the pirate market. Make your own download service like no one would pay for it.

I think there are cheaper Sky packages that give access to Sky Atlantic, which is the channel they show GoT on...

...however, in any case, it means profit for Rupert Murdoch.

If HBO provided options for me to do business with them directly that would be great but I will not give my money to Sky and Rupert Murdoch as I don't like the business practices of Sky or Murdoch.

 

[Risingblade]

"Stealing is stealing"

Sure, if you don't care about definitions.

"and if people keep on torrenting quality content then those poor Hollywood artists will have to go back to waiting tables and parking cars to make a living."

Yeah, they might even have to live like the middle class. We should all feel bad for them

That sounds preferable to having to work working class jobs like waiting table and parking cars.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

In this day and age you expect people who don't otherwise have cable to get cable to watch one show. No online services, and the DVDs are almost a hundred fucking dollars for the first season, to say nothing of the fact that you shouldn't have to buy a DVD set to watch a show once. Entirely your fault for not making it more available.

Besides which, we're a nation of British criminals, hardly the gold standard of morality. ^^

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

Isn't media super-expensive down under? I hear Yahtzee complain about it all the time.

But over here (in the US) the cable companies have implemented six-strikes and have made it really clear that they don't care about the end-user quality-of-experience since they have a monopoly. Big cable and telecoms still suppress fiber-optic. They still use Hollywood mathematics to (grossly) exaggerate their losses. And they still bemoan that the industry will die due to piracy, even though they made record profits in 2011 and 2012. Oh, and they censor media so that it's palatable for the delicate sensibilities of traditional (white, Christian) families.

So I absolutely endorse piracy when the alternative is to give money to monopolistic companies who have been ruthless tyrannical custodians of the industry. A third alternative is to not watch their crap at all, hence not contributing to its cultural influence. And frankly, that's even worse for them than piracy.

238U

EDIT: fixed html tags.

 

[Simca]

Somewhat hilariously and ironically, Game of Thrones is the one thing I 'pirate' (technically) but don't actually need to pirate. I DVR it and own the HBO subscription year-round (other people here like to watch Bill Maher so we have it for that).

However, DirecTV does not allow its customers to access HBO Go for absolutely no conceivable reason, and their DirecTV2PC application is terrible (it forces its own connection priority to maximum, which essentially disconnects everything else), so to watch Game of Thrones on my PC while playing another game, I have to torrent it despite owning it less than 100 yards away.

/shrug

If HBO complained at DirecTV and Comcast (the last two major US providers not on board with Go, I believe), they'd at least see a bit of reduction in those piracy numbers.

 

[smashleigh]

To everyone saying that its not available in Australia, at a reasonable price, at a reasonable time, without subscription to pay tv you wouldn't use:
$3 per episode for the sd slightly more for the HD (which for comparison is less than half what even a student would pay for a movie ticket)
Day after the US

https://itunes.apple.com/au/tv-season/game-of-thrones-season-3/id611198334?showLC=true

 

[zehydra]

Piracy is not theft.

Piracy is piracy.

Politicians don't seem to care to understand what's going on here. The analogy to a shoe store owner is invalid.

 

[CCountZero]

If we had access to Netflix... Well people would still torrent, but at least that 'it's on a crappy hour/I want to watch it NOW' excuses wouldn't work.

I have Netflix, but having Netflix doesn't mean you have ALL of Netflix. There's a lot of stuff I can find via the search bar, but can't actually watch because it hasn't been released for the Scandinavian locale.

Not so sure they actually have GoT though. Seems like something HBO might wanna keep restricted to their own service?

 

[gLoveofLove]

When The Walking Dead season 3 was playing on pay TV here(Australia), I gladly watched it despite over a day delay. I would do the same with GoT if I could, however that requires upgrading our Fox. Seriously, even if they were like a couple weeks delay I wouldn't mind waiting. For me its about convenience, not money or waiting time. I'm going to choose whatever way is easiest.