HBO: The Key To Combating Piracy Is To Make Game Of Thrones More Available... Except Here

from the ah,-right dept

We've had a number of stories concerning the hit TV show Game of Thrones and the issue of people downloading unauthorized copies of the show. Due to a variety of reasons mostly centered around HBO's cable relationships, HBO has not made the show available online, for the most part, unless you already have a cable TV subscription that includes HBO. The math here is a bit silly (due to the ridiculous nature of how pay TV works these days), but HBO more or less has done the math that says it's better off losing out on people who are willing to pay and who will inevitably infringe instead, by not pissing off the pay TV folks who pay them a much bigger lump sum. I think this is short sighted, because while the math works out today, the trend is in the wrong direction, and if HBO doesn't get in front of that trend, by the time the math "catches up," they could be in a lot of trouble.

Indeed, HBO seems irked that Game of Thrones is the most "pirated" show on TV. And while it has tested out a standalone version of its HBOGo online offering, the reviews have not been great.

However, it appears that HBO is trying to do something about all of this, admitting that they need to and intend to make the show more widely available online:

According to Jeff Cusson, HBO’s senior vice president of corporate affairs, “We think the key to combating piracy is to make content like Game of Thrones available worldwide within the smallest window possible…to 176 territories within the week of the U.S. premiere.”

Cusson said, “HBO is also rolling out HBO Go internationally,” which means many viewers in Europe, Latin America, and in other locations like Hong Kong can watch Game of Thrones at their leisure on their iPad/iPhone, Roku, Xbox 360s, their Android devices, and selected Samsung Smart HDTVs.

First off, it's great that they recognize that the key is making the show more widely available. That's a step up from blaming fans who want to see the show but can't. Of course, it's still ridiculous that HBO Go can't work on other TVs other than "selected Samsung" TVs. But... none of this seems to apply to the US.

When pressed on doing more in the US, Cusson begins answering by not answering.

When asked about the prevalence of piracy in America, Cusson said, “We utilized various tools to protect our copyright in 2012.” I countered that they didn’t work, because it was still the most downloaded show that year. Cusson responded, “We think the success of our business shows that our approach is relatively successful.”

Of course, at one level, he's absolutely right. There's no reason to "stop" piracy if it's not actually harming the show (and, in fact, may very well be helping it). But, at some point, HBO is going to need to realize that it has to make the jump to providing authorized access to Americans who don't have a traditional cable connection. And the longer they wait, the harder it becomes to get people to invest in HBO, because they'll get used to unauthorized alternatives.

Filed Under: accessibility, game of thrones, hbo, piracy, windows

Game Of Thrones Director: I'm 100% Opposed To The Piracy I Just Said Helps My Show Survive

from the getting-it dept

You know, sometimes content creators can be really confusing. Take Game Of Thrones director David Petrarca, for instance. Remember early last year when we mentioned that the show was on track to become the most pirated television show of 2012? And how the success of the show might actually be a result of piracy, rather than its cause?

Well, ChurchHatesTucker writes in to tell us that Petrarca recently opined that piracy is at least partially responsible for the success of the show, providing an avenue through which more people talk about it and comment on it within greater society.

Panel mediator Rosemary Neill noted Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012 and that 10 per cent of the downloads came from Australia. But Petrarca shrugged and said the illegal downloads did not matter because such shows thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalised on the social commentary they generated.

"That's how they survive," he told the crowd gathered at the University of Western Australia.

Yes, in addition to allowing late-comers to catch up on episodes in preparation for new seasons, piracy helps keep the show in the societal bloodstream, keeps the buzz going, and generally creates more excitement and awareness of the product as a whole. If HBO could manage to provide a more innovative method for delivering the show to those that want it, likely the boon could be even greater. Still, Petrarca noted that HBO is doing well with their subscriber base.

He said HBO alone had 26 million subscribers in the US and 60 million worldwide, which meant there was plenty of money filtering in and allowing the channel to produce high quality content despite any illegal downloading.

While this all sounds reasonable, I wouldn't want to be accused of not presenting the other side of the argument on whether or not piracy helps or hurts this sort of media. So, here to present a rebuttal to David Petrarca... is David Petrarca. He recently had a Twitter exchange with our own Glyn Moody, including these highlights.

I am 100% against illegal downloading. I said that downloading creates buzz but def am NOT in support of illegal downloads. The issue is a distribution system that gets content to viewers legally in a timely manner. People want to pay if made available.

While it should be noted that he certainly isn't being belligerent here, and he in fact notes that if a great distribution option is available fans will pay for content, it's difficult to square the first part of this statement with what he said in the article. Remember, he was specifically responding to a question about piracy (not authorized downloads) and then responded that it helped create social buzz for shows like his and "that's how they survive." But he is "NOT in support of illegal downloads?" I think I understand this to mean that he simply thinks the ideal solution is the kind of distribution platform that would drive nearly everyone away from piracy, by providing widely available, authorized downloads, and with that I'd agree. Still, in the absence of that great system, which HBO certainly doesn't offer, why staunchly state that you're 100% against piracy when you've already said it's helped you survive? I assume that Petrarca likes surviving, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Or, perhaps, the sudden attention that the original story was getting created pressure for him to walk back those statements. Glyn was not the only one that Petrarca reached out to with identical statements: Perhaps it's possible that, like many in the entertainment industry, Petrarca recognized that infringing copies were, in fact, good for his show, but that actually saying that leads to backlash from within. We've asked Petrarca whether or not he heard from anyone at HBO regarding his original comments, and will update this post accordingly should we hear back.

Filed Under: david petrarca, downloads, game of thrones, hbo, piracy, retractions

MPAA Points To Its Roster Of Crappy Online Services And Asks What We're Complaining About

from the nice-try dept

In response to Jimmy Wales reiterating the fact that Hollywood's own failings online are a major cause of infringement, the MPAA has hit back by saying: that's crazy! After all, the studios do Hulu and Netflix, so how can anyone complain?

Wales had used everyone's favorite example these days: the difficulty in finding a legitimate way to pay for Game of Thrones online...

Wales also argued that the entertainment industry needs to continue adjusting its business model so it offers people the content they want. Citing a personal example, Wales noted how he can’t watch HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series at home in London even though he’s willing to pay for it.

“I think that he media industry needs to say, 'Look, why don’t we sell people what they want to buy,’ and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,” he said.

A smart and consumer-focused MPAA might note that they're trying their best but they realize there are still gaps and they hope to continue to improve. But, you know, that's not how the MPAA rolls. Instead, they send out spokesperson Kate Bedingfield -- who just recently joined the MPAA from the White House -- to insist that Wales was crazy for suggesting they need to make more efforts to please customers. You see, in the mind of the MPAA, as long as they've done something, they've clearly done enough.

“Our studios are constantly partnering and innovating new ways for audiences to watch the movies and TV shows they love: Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Crackle, UltraViolet, Epix, MUBI – and that just barely scratches the surface,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman at the MPAA. “There are more legitimate avenues available today to watch movies and TV shows online than ever before, and our studios are continuing to innovate every day to bring audiences even more options.”

“At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,” Bedingfield added.

In other words, don't actually address what Wales said. Don't respond to his specific complaint. Insist that because you're doing something, even if it doesn't solve the problem he noted, you're clearly doing enough... and then revert back to talking point numero uno: oh, poor us, we're harmed! So harmed. Harmed into our best years ever at the box office... (oh wait, they leave that last part out).

Seriously, the MPAA needs to hire communications people who actually deal with consumers, rather than politically-focused ones. They seem to have absolutely zero sense of how to respond to the public on anything without making themselves look worse. The last two decades of RIAA/MPAA communications have been a long-term case study in exactly how to do everything wrong.

Filed Under: game of thrones, hollywood, jimmy wales, piracy, ultraviolet
Companies: hbo, hulu, mpaa

Game Of Thrones On Track To Be Most Pirated Show Of 2012; Pirates Still Asking HBO For Legitimate Options

from the blame-matthew-inman? dept

Much like the North, Game of Thrones cannot be held—it's too big and too wild. Matthew Inman warned HBO that they should make their content more accessible or risk driving people to piracy, but that isn't really HBO's style. Now jilocasin points us to the news that Game of Thrones is well on track to be the most torrented show of 2012, and nobody can deny that HBO's foolish subscriber-only distribution is a primary reason for that. Approximately 25-million times have people decided to pay the iron price for the show, and as the comments on Reddit attest, it's often because the gold price wasn't even an option. Others pay for the show but still pirate for the sake of occasional convenience:

Sometimes I just want to fire up an episode and watch it on my laptop immediately and with mobility as I'm wandering around the house, and not worry about streaming/quality issues or finding a disk, setting up the DVD player etc. I am truly lazy.

Meanwhile, Game of Thrones continues to have great ratings. And the torrent piracy count doesn't include streams, which are also hugely popular, so it only represents a fraction of the pirate world. Why not create new ways to legitimize some of those viewers, especially considering so many of them have said they want to be legitimized? I still contend that HBO-style shows owe a lot to piracy for their cultural dominance, because, if they were actually as exclusive as HBO wants to pretend they are, they would have had a much harder time gathering fans. But HBO co-president Eric Kessler thinks cord-cutting is a fad, so like most characters in the show, he's fighting silly battles while ignoring what's really going on.

Filed Under: eric kessler, game of thrones, piracy, television, torrent
Companies: hbo

Just How Much Do Shows Like Game Of Thrones Owe To Piracy?

from the more-than-they-like-to-admit,-I-suspect dept

The HBO show Game of Thrones has become something of a symbol for TV piracy as a response to lack of availability, ever since it was used as an example in a comic by Matthew Inman (which was then reprised as a post by MG Siegler, minus the jokes). This is probably because it's ridiculously addictive (once you start watching, there's no way you're going to stop before someone stabs that Joffrey kid). This month the second season began, and after all the criticisms of their distribution scheme, HBO accidentally threw frustrated online viewers a bone by leaking the second episode nearly a week ahead of schedule—someone working on the Dutch edition of HBO Go must have accidentally flipped a switch, and winter came early. But before that happened, the season premier aired to a massive ratings jump, which most people anticipated. Why? Because, they reasoned, the nine-month gap between seasons gave new viewers a chance to catch up with (and get hooked on) the series by watching season one on HBO On Demand and HBO Go.

It's a good theory, but only some are prepared to mention the elephant in the room: plenty of people (quite possibly the majority) caught up through unauthorized streams and torrents, just like Matthew Inman. And that brings us to the bigger elephant lurking in the whole house: how much has piracy contributed to the rise of HBO-style television? Would we have complex, high-concept, critically acclaimed shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones without it? Many people attribute this fundamental shift in the nature of popular television, from episodic towards serialized, to DVDs and legitimate digital sources—but I'd wager that piracy is a much more significant factor.

There are two main reasons. Firstly, the ability to watch any episode any time makes such can't-miss-an-episode shows less of a commitment. This, alone, is the single biggest contributing factor to the popularity of heavily serialized television, and it is impossible to explain it entirely with DVDs and sources like iTunes. Many cable subscribers turn to piracy as a way to catch missed episodes, and that safety net prevents serialized shows from alienating viewers and losing momentum. Secondly, unauthorized sources are especially popular with the fanatics—the people who evangelize "must watch" shows to their friends and coworkers, and who create memes with screencaps to spread on Tumblr and Facebook. That's not to mention the amateur critics and TV bloggers who generate buzz (in fact, there is a bit of a back and forth going on over the ethics of piracy in the critic community).

Of course, as digital offerings get better, more and more of this kind of activity happens through legitimate channels instead of piracy (not like anyone's been saying that all along, or anything). But services like Netflix got to the table once the serial television trend was in full-swing, so they don't account for its inception. Some people fear that television piracy will put at end to such ambitious undertakings in the medium—but they should stop to consider the hand it played in making them possible to begin with.

Filed Under: game of thrones, leak, piracy, television
Companies: hbo, netflix

How To Turn A Legitimate Buyer Into A Pirate In Five Easy Steps

from the ip-in-the-oatmeal dept

As we've mentioned before, it's interesting to watch copyright issues break into the mainstream and get attention from bigger and bigger sources. This time, Matthew Inman used his famous (and widely read) webcomic The Oatmeal to recount the moral quandary he was placed in when trying to watch Game of Thrones. It's hard to get the full effect without the whole comic, so you should really go read it—but here's a preview:

Of course, plenty of people have been saying this for years: the biggest driver of piracy is a lack of legitimate offerings. Unfortunately, the legacy players think (or at least claim) that they are being innovative with their offerings, even as their customers tell them otherwise. Hopefully, as people like Inman continue putting all-too-common stories like this into the spotlight, they will begin to get the message.

Filed Under: copyright, game of thrones, ip, piracy, purchases, the oatmeal