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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

A few people torrent, and then buy when available.

Just a like a few people actually wait to buy when it's available.

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.

There is an important social element to watching a show. When a new episode comes out, you can chat about it with friends and coworkers. That isn't true if you have waited weeks or months to watch it.

The problem is, that's your mentality that is infantile.

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)

I see your perspective, and I don't want to hold myself up as a morally superior grown up. I was trying to have a serious ethical discussion about something I don't completely understand. I don't think HBO is doing the right thing (from a customer service or business point of view) by restricting their content the way they are, but should it be within their rights to do so?

But I am sorry for my unhumble tone. Using words like "entitled" and "infantile" was counter-productive to a real discussion.

From my perspective, we should not talk ethics because we can talk business.

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.

The ethical discussion is, to me, more interesting because there is a big gray area. A lot of people are framing something as a dichotomy (get HBO or pirate) when there is (to me) an obvious third option, which is waiting until the content is available.

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.

Okay, they've made their choice to not engage certain markets.

How does that make consuming their product at those markets morally wrong?

I don't think it's morally wrong but it is at least ambiguous. I find the gray area interesting. Other people don't see it that way and I don't think they are moral degenerates or anything.

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".

As I'm telling you, they're sitting on their rights of Maybe releasing, and Maybe profiting. But I get Real wealth, not a Maybe one, from torrenting their series. Real wins over Maybe.

> "I deserve to have something RIGHT NOW"

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?

Region coding is a really interesting thing to me. As I understand it, a lot of the intent is to be able to set content prices differently in "rich" countries than in "poor" countries, the same way that prescription drugs cost more in the US than in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

I cannot understand why it is not acceptable to torrent then buy a DVD, but it is acceptable to buy from a different region.

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!

Upon thinking about this a little more, it seems that the possible ethical problem with torrenting now and buying DVD later makes me think of exclusive availability windows. When a big movie comes out in theatres, there's a delay before you can get it on DVD. For good or for bad, this is a time-tested way to squeeze extra money out of people who don't want to wait until they can get it on DVD.

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.

"I deserve" may be infantile, but I don't believe "I can watch it right now, and it hurts nobody to do so, so I will" is infantile. It's just reasonable.

Or, you know, this is a trend on how consumer markets have evolved/are evolving.

Or as you know technology is evolving.

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