Who's Pirating Game of Thrones, and Why? 1004
TheGift73 writes "In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release. Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why? One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead. And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode). But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn't help either."
The Internet Sucks outside the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A week? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A week? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A week? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can download the show before it airs here in Seattle, and often I do. I don't watch it till later that night though.
Why don't I watch on on Comcast Cable? I can, I have HBO, but the quality of Comcast HDTV is lackluster at best, and artifacty at worse. If I paid for it, I would be bummed out. The copies I download are almost always of better quality.
Here's why I think people download it:
It's a good show, but has a limited view range. Meaning, you have to have HBO to see it. So, people don't want to wait to see what everyone else is talking about. Honestly, I can't blame them, who wants spoilers? We live in an instant world now. While I can wait to see stuff, the mentallity seems to be everything now. Which is probably why people watch cams of movies.
In this day and age, making something that can be digitalize, scarce to make more money, is going to back fire on you.
Re:A week? (Score:3, Interesting)
A serious problem that cannot be sorted by the "antiquated methodology" is that the US primetime slot is far removed from the Australian and European primetime slot. A network is not to going to the air the episode when HBO do, just to get it "live". It would be on at 10:30am over here if they did.
Re:Watch it when you want to (Score:4, Interesting)
Soap Op--er-a
Noun: A television or radio drama series dealing typically with daily events in the lives of the same group of characters. The plot in "Soap Operas" tend towards the melodramatic. The writing is often open-ended, with plot threads rarely being resolved. The story centers on the feelings and emotions of the various characters to the exclusion of almost all else.
Yep. To which I would add, most of the characters are an absolute waste of skin, and the only reason they're still breathing is that nobody has yet bothered to put them out of their misery.
Re:The Oatmeal (Score:5, Interesting)
If people download the show it tells HBO that people like their Content, but not their delivery method. Even if Time Warner isn't willing to change their delivery method, perhaps those Huge traffic numbers are telling other more responsive companies that there's a huge demand for content and they can make a bucketload of money if they can just figure out the sweet spot between on-demand viewing, price and availability.
Here in Australia, we have the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is Gov owned and paid for out of our taxes, something like 13c a day or something silly and small per person. They produce/license Huge amounts of content, and make the vast majority of it available online on iView, which lets me stream shows to any net-connected device (with probably some region-locking). So we collectively (as Australian citizens) pay for the content, it gets delivered to anyone with an Australian internet connection (with certain week/month availability after the airing date limits), and it's sweet as all get out. I know the BBC does something similar (which the ABC may well have copied, go them, and I wish I could buy access to the Beeb's content). It's technically possible to do all of this, NetFlix, whatever, just some managers/execs/whatever can't get with the low-cost/high-volume model.
Not available in P.R. China (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not available in P.R. China through any authorized channel. Even if it were, it would be edited to nothing. The real odd thing to me is that it has recently been featured in the national student newspaper (21'st Century) in a two page spread . The article was mostly an attempt to explain the program and to help students understand the names.
What I found interesting was that there was a full two page article on a program that is not even officially available and contains a significant amount of material that would be censored even if it were available. All that being said, it is not popular with the Chinese students that I know. The plot is too complicated for the male students and it is too violent, and overtly sexual, for the female students. However, it seems to be popular with many of the westerners here; further, considering that the article was written, I expect it is popular with some Chinese, just not here.
Re:Offer people what they want (Score:5, Interesting)
So basically they make a lot of money by being dicks. Some people respond to them being dicks by getting their show without paying them any money. But they're still better off for being dicks. So what's the problem? Everybody wins.
Time-Warner can whine about stealing and piracy and all that, but since they abandoned the moral high ground by being total dicks, no one should listen to them. What they really mean by all their pissing and moaning is they want the state to back up their right to be total dicks. That's a bad move; that just makes gives them more incentive to be total dicks.
Summary: Want to promote unbundling and shows seen sooner in foreign markets: pirate away. Want more bundling and longer delays for shows in foreign markets, DVD releases, etc -- respect copyright.
Re:A week? (Score:0, Interesting)
It's a goddamn medieval soap opera. It was a shitty, long-winded, repetitive series of books and it's a shitty TV show.
Re:A week? (Score:2, Interesting)
Odd because here in the USA it's more like:
1) DVR - $10/mo rental (Free with the larger cable packages)
2) Cable - $50/mo
3) HD Service - Usually free with the bigger cable packages, $10/mo if not
4) HBO - Usually free in the larger cable packages, or you can usually get it free if you threaten to switch to dish/at&t u-verse etc, if all else fails, it's $15/mo
Worst case, it's $85/month.
Re:A week? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A week? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me do the math for my own little facet of the gem here.
I generally like a few shows at once. I am currently interested in Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, Fringe, Walking Dead and Falling Skies.
As these are shows that are aired at different season times, I will calculate the costs for a year of viewing.
To get access to both BBT and GOT, it costs me around $90 per month [foxtel.com.au]. Fringe WAS aired on Free to Air, although it was at a 10:30pm timeslot. Walking Dead was finally aired around a year and a half after the US release. Fox8 is airing Falling Skies season 2 "fast tracking" it to Australia just three days after an episode airs in the US.
So, for a mere $1080 per year, I do get access to these shows, if I watch them in their timeslots and most with commercials. Now, lets say that I don't want to time my life to these shows, I can get a Foxtel IQ and record these shows, it costs me $10 per month. That's now $1,200. Now, I do understand that for my money I get a LOT of other channels and shows. But where my frustration comes in is that I am simply not interested in them. Would I watch some of them if I had them? Sure. But that's no different to saying "Would I watch a DVD if I had it?" Yeah, probably, but would I buy it if I saw it at the store? Probably not.
I simply can't justify spending that sort of money for the few shows that I am interested in, furthermore, I am offended that the majority of the money I spend would go to subsidizing all the shit programming that is aired on all these other channels. I don't mind voting for shows with my wallet, but I feel violated knowing that a portion of my monthly fee is going to Jersey Shore, American Pickers or any other horrific mind throttling series.
Re:A week? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a difference between waiting a year or longer for a released DVD (game in your example) to come down in price, and waiting a year (or more) for it to be released at full price, and start that year or more discounting process.
When you're waiting on, for just one example, someone who bought the game at full price to put it up for sale used, any time involved will depend on what are genuinely free market factors (such as how many other people evaluate that product as worth more than you do and snap up used copies before the average price gets down to your amount "X"). But waiting on the initial release itself seems to have little or no correlation with such market factors.
I'm a bit of a fan of Fringe. I'm waiting on the DVD sets for season 4 and eventually 5, and have bought all the others. I'm rather glad that Fringe is getting that 5th season, a thing which was far from certain. However, I have no way of knowing if my choosing to buy seasons 1, 2, and 3 at full price when they came out had any effect at all on whether Fox decided to go with the 5th season. That's literally an anti free-market situation. Good old Adam Smith's very definition of what a free market is says that parity of information for all parties is what improves market efficiency and results in the greatest good for the greatest number. Fox chose to deliberately not give out information that would help fans know if they were encouraging the show to continue if they bought the DVD sets new rather than buying used or downloading them. So, add to the physical price, and to various other prices imposed such as region encoding, that I don't know if buying at full price and before a certain date will actually encourage the creators to keep the show on the air, or have no affect at all.
Now Fox treated the fans of Fringe with considerable respect in the end - much better than in several past cases such as Babylon 5. For that matter, in the end, the situation for Fringe has involved more mutual respect for various parties than we've seen for literally hundreds of other shows with mediocre to poor ratings. But that means for the more typical show, any problems the fans have in being able to plan for DVD releases and similar are going to be much greater. That's an additional price for waiting on legitimate channels to play catchup. That says the cost of doing things by the book isn't just a year (or whatever), but a year and uncertainty penalties about whether the wait will eventually terminate, and when.
Re:A week? (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep it up HBO!
Re:Yes, you can do that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, I'd rather have the on-demand stuff over the internet without all sorts of strings attached. I'll happily pay to for on-demand HBO if I can watch it from within XBMC without having to install windows. Untill that happens Sabnzbd + XBMC is simply far more convenient then any legal option.