Perfect picture of an out of touch media executive.
For the first time in my life, I can say with almost complete assurance, that the reason the majority of the people I know are torrenting, is because the rights owner isn't willing to sell in format that they want to watch it in.
Don't call him out of Touch though - The reality, though, is that the CEO of HBO is a highly informed profit maximizing individual and the reason we don't get Game of Thrones on DVD/iTunes, is because of the huge revenue stream represented by the other 95% (99%?) of the population who is more than happy to Tivo GameOfThrones. He'll forego the 5% of us who won't purchase it on Cable, in order to make money on the other 95% The Reality is, that some percentage of that 5% would have Torrented it rather than paying the $50 for an iTunes season.
They know how much they can make through iTunes, DVD Sales, and, most importantly, their Cable Customers (Comcast, etc...).
And, if SOPA goes through, it will provide a platform for attacking the Torrents. First the entertainment industry will DNS blackhole "piratebay.org", then, when people avoiding that in numbers enough to matter, they will pass SOPA Part II, and start blackholing IP addresses. SOPA Part III will come out once people figure some way of connecting to dynamically assigned IP addresses.
It will be a legislative game of Cat-and-Mouse driven by the massive $$$ that the entertainment industry is paying the lobbyists.
The market for the DVDs is still good (True Blood S3 was the #1 TV show DVD for 2011) and I'm sure they're research tells them they get more from conversions then they lose in DVD sales by opening it up 2 months earlier. And if they started selling DVDs 6 months earlier they'd lose current subscribers like you say.
The only reason I'd resume cable service, incidentally, would be for Game of Thrones season 2. Since I travel so much its likely I would just wait for other options. I don't download torrents.
HBO is a golden goose. Its an exception. They produce exceptionally high quality shows. The things that will work for HBO won't work for the other guys. HBO may be able to sell subscriptions directly to users. Their HBO Go app is exceptional, better than Netflix's to a degree.
When I travel and sit in a hotel room I wonder why any of us ever paid for this garbage. The amount of advertising sandwiched in to amateur level programming is akin to a 1998 porn site full of pop ups. Its not pretty.
Golden geese can become arrogant. If I owned a cable company, any exec who blamed the economy on a drop in subscriptions would be immediately fired.
Home Box Office, Inc is owned by Time Warner. Because of that, I have a feeling the golden goose will ultimately end up going down with the ship it is caged in.
I did, and I just finished watching all 10 season one episodes of Game of Thrones in HD.
And you know what? It was worth it. I love that show. :)
The fact that Game of Thrones is available on BitTorrent though... that is itself a problem. HBO is within its rights to prevent its content from being published for free to anonymous Internet users.
SOPA will be incredibly destructive to a _vast_ range of internet properties, and it's not clear how effective it will be long term in protecting the entertainment industry.
Re: Game of Thrones on BItTorrent - Everything is available on Bit Torrent. People with money are typically honest, and turn to Torrenting only because they have no other avenues to purchase these things honestly.
[edit]: I used to think that Torrenting was unethical/immoral in addition to being illegal. Now that I pay for pretty much 100% of everything I watch - I think Torrenting plays an important role in motivating rights holders to make their material both competitive and broadly available. $50/Season for GameOfThrones is fine, as long as it's available (a) in a format I can download onto my MacBook Air, and (b) on a timely basis. HBO would have close to zero motivation to make this content available in downloadable format on a timely basis if there weren't alternatives.
Remember - Consumers are _customers_ - all we really want is to be able to read/play/listen/purchase the content that is created in a format compatible with the tools/systems that we use.