"We've recently discussed the fact that HBO severely limits the availability of its shows to non-subscribers..."
Really?! How dare they!
Really?! How dare they!
It's just that I really have no time for this entitled attitude that content owners are obligated to sell their wares to us when we want, how we want, at the price point we want.
It's like a bum complaining it isn't enough when you give him your spare change.
edit: accidentally a word
I just take my business elsewhere. Monopolies are bad, right?
What I won't consider is a cable subscription, and lots of us feel that way. I don't want all those other channels. I just want HBO. Or better yet, just certain shows. I have money, they have content. Let's trade, yes? If not, torrenting episodes as they're aired is an attractive proposition while we're waiting for the season 2 DVDs to go on sale.
Because you can't, you know, just wait until they are legitimately available?
I could order a blu-ray, but then again it would be region protected!
If there is no way for me to pay them the damn money, how can it be if I'm a doing anything wrong by pressing "play" button and conveniently streaming it the same day it was aired? Brought to me by people who actually deliver.
EDIT: Before 1967 or so the copyright laws were built to explicitly combat this problem by NOT protecting foreign content with copyright by default. Then they believed the world went global and now they should. Guess what? In 2012 they failed to figure it out again so we should demand the roll-back to pre-1967 situation.
That's morally neutral. It is my basic human right to be morally neutral.
Now, copyright is not a basic human right. So I'd argue they get no copyright unless they distribute.
And yes, that ought to extend to all intellectual property ever created. Imagine that suddenly anyone in Iran reading, watching or listening to american "intellectual property" becomes morally wrong because somebody in USA decieded to put an "intellectual property" embargo. Doesn't sound right, does it?
I've seen that argument when people pirate expensive software, saying "there's no way I could afford this, so it's morally neutral for me to use it without paying for it"
The thing is, if they actually put effort at making it available, the offers are usually okayish. The problem arises when they simply don't bother.
The publisher saw the high price as proof there was still a demand for the book and produced another printing. We paid full price for it, around 15 bucks, I think. It's a cute book, I'm glad I have it, I wouldn't have wanted to pay $300 for it, though.
One could make the case that if everyone could just "pirate" the book because it was financially unavailable, then the publisher would never bother doing a re-issue.
More broadly, I think that respecting copyright holders (and the rule of law) means that sometimes you don't get exactly what you want exactly when you want it.
But your win in wealth is real. You can't compare Maybe losses with real wealth gain. Real wins.
Secondary market brings the copyright holder nothing, so it's a bad example.
As has been said before, the "I deserve to have something RIGHT NOW" entitlement mentality is just infantile. If something is worth watching, it will still be worth watching in a few weeks/months.
You're going to tell us how we are infantile, how we feel entitled, how we are morally wrong in doing that we do. By doing this you implicitly show yourself as being grown-up and morally superior. And how you can go without watching the tv series as it gets released.
And that's lame. That's unhumble. That screams "I want to tell the whole world how right I am". "My values - right. Your values - stupid" (c)
But I am sorry for my unhumble tone. Using words like "entitled" and "infantile" was counter-productive to a real discussion.
Our purpose, obviously, is increasing the amount of wealth available to each and every human being on the planet. For that, we want HBO to exist and produce content. We want people who consume that content to pay HBO to make sure it exists. But that to do with people who want to consume the content but HBO behaves as if they didn't exist? What about letting them watch the content for free? The upside is, they have more wealth, and the downside is, I struggle to figure out any.
As far as a business decision goes, HBO is making a choice that may or may not be the right business choice, but it is well within their rights. Maybe they will fail, maybe they will win big. Whatever.
How does that make consuming their product at those markets morally wrong?
they've made their choice to not engage certain markets
They've made the choice not to engage in that market at the moment, but as legal copyright holders, they have the ability to engage that market later. Having that market eroded by people getting the content for free might be counter-productive, as in "we're not going to release in Russia because everybody pirates everything" leads to "I'm going to pirate this because nobody releases anything in Russia".
Is it acceptable for someone in Region 2 to buy a Region 1 DVD?
Why is it different to buy grey market product (which may well require law breaking to be able to watch) than it is to torrent something and then buy it legally for my region?
If you were deliberately getting extra-cheap off-region content, I could see that as maybe a little ethically ambiguous.
As far as buying out-of-region content to get it sooner? I have a hard time seeing any problem with it. Maybe there's an angle I hadn't thought of.
Content providers think that buying from another region is "bad"; that's why they forced region controls onto DVD hardware producers. See ridiculous controls in some OSs restricting users to a certain number of region changes.
But thanks for not ranting!
It seems that HBO wants to squeeze the extra money out of impatient GoT fans by requiring that they buy the whole bundle if they want to watch anything without waiting a few months. There is extra value in getting it now, as other people have pointed out, because you can take part in discussions now while it's still part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Is it OK for HBO to require that you pay a premium for that extra value? My instinct says "yes", but I concede that it's a gray area. I also have a hard time calling fans "pirates" or "thieves" for torrenting ahead of making legitimate purchases.
thanks for not ranting
The world needs fewer rants. Thanks for not ranting back.
How dare the executives lose shareholder's money by refusing to allow new customers to pay for the content and so make profit.
Preferring instead to stick to cozy little cartels where they sell content only to the same cable stations that they used to work for, and will go back to when their bonuses clear.
Remember it's not 'their' company - the company belongs to my pension fund - 'they' are supposed to be working for me.
From the consumer side though, HBO has no obligation to do what a bunch of people on the internet who think they understand HBO's business better than HBO does think they should do.
They have no legal obligation. Currently, anyhow.
But you forget who makes the laws, and how the content gets delivered, and what people make this content out of.
Copyright is a temporary and limited monopoly granted by the people to encourage the production of intellectual property. The laws we have are an artifact of the economics and politics of their time. Information technology has radically changed both the economics and society's views. The laws will likely change as well.
HBO didn't invent dragons or kings or sex. They didn't create the Internet. They don't own the public airwaves or the public land over which the cables run. They don't own the fans. They didn't make the social media sites and bar tables where they get their word-of-mouth publicity.
HBO and all involved should be fairly compensated for their hard work and creativity. But the property rights you treat as absolutes are just convenient fictions we created together. People shouldn't feel entitled to the Game of Thrones. But neither should Time Warner executives feel entitled to use the public courts and police to ruin people's lives for sharing things they like.
We're living in the greatest revolution in information production and distribution since Gutenberg. Things will change.
True - but any company that refuses to listen to existing and potential customers has to raise concerns.
unless you are Apple of course and then you can do what you want ;-)
I don't know if I am a shareholder. But most shares are held by pension funds so when the boss of a company like RIM/Nokia/Sony do something stupid it's not the CEO that suffers.