US Ambassador plays Game of Thrones with pirates The United States of America's Ambassador to Australia has taken to Facebook to protect one of America's critical industries: the making of gory television serials. Jeffrey L Bleich, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, appears to have noted that Australians are very keen on the HBO series Game of Thrones. Vulture …
Piracy exists in gaps in markets... and it's how entire digital industries have been born.
Sure, you might have it out on iTunes... that will hit your Apple using demographic. It's also $3.49 for the HD version. Or you could download it now, and buy the DVD/Bluray when that comes out and use the download for mobile devices, including i[Pad/Phone]... prices between digital products from some vendors are too high. Sony, Steam and iTunes are all guilty in some way... you can often pick up a physical version of the same thing for less. I'm sure this reason is shops complain that it's not fair, but sorry... if I want a disk and box, I'll happily pay a bit extra. If I don't, I won't and there is no excuse for this practice.
Does that mean because you have no iDevice that makes it okay to steal it, rather than wait for it to be released in other formats? Cool, so you'd be okay if I grabbed a TV from your house if I don't happen to have one of those.. After all its wrong of you to have something I want and not give it to me for free. BTW I like your car better than mine too, I'm taking that as well.
He does seem to be going about this in a much more enlightened way than some. There is no point issuing threats you cannot enforce on even a 'shampoo Advert' sample of the population, far better to speak to people as though they are real people and ask them politely to be good about this.
I feel similarly. For music I pay $0.99 for a song that I listen to over and over again. $2.99 for a television episode I'm only going to watch once just feels like a lot. $30 for 1 season of 1 tv show could actually buy me a month of cable TV for probably about 50 channels (though to be fair, it wouldn't include HBO).
Still, it just doesn't add up.
The show doesn't air "mere" hours after the US, it airs 10.30am on Monday in my local time but it's not usualy available to download from iTunes till Tuesday evening. Plus the playback through iTunes is terrible, if they want people to stop pirating they have to make a platform that is better than what people can get for free in terms of automated downloads (without having to give your password every 5 minutes to apple till it locks your account for logging in too often!) and video quality, plus playing in iTunes has annoying audio/visual syncing issues so you have to pause the episode every 15 minutes so the video can catch up.
Hmm, I think your comments say more about the shitty state of Australian broadband than any intrinsic issues with iTunes (which for the record, delivers HD quality at least as good as any torrent you're going to find).
The Australian situation is an interesting test case though; one of the reasons people in the UK claim they torrent GoT is that they otherwise have to buy a full Sky subscription (not always possible, never mind desirable), and that HBO don't make box sets or legit downloads available for a full year after first broadcast. It seems fairly obvious that even if HBO made GoT available on iTunes or LoveFilm the day after release, people would still pirate it, because lets face it, free trumps every other price point.
(NB. I wonder how many people are like me, have a Sky sub and Sky+ it, but still download each episode for their library anyway?)
" I wonder how many people are like me, have a Sky sub and Sky+ it, but still download each episode for their library anyway?"
Quite. SkyHD sub here, so I could get stuff like GoT without having to resort to the legally dubious world of torrents, but I don't like my viewing interrupted by ad breaks at the best of times (i.e. when watching some throwaway programme that requires minimal levels of concentration), let alone when I'm watching something as immersive as GoT, so being able to get ad-free copies of such shows is a pretty big deal for me.
Watched series 1 months before it was made available in the UK. The same for season 2. And again for season 3. I didn't want to wait. I did, however, think the show was SO utterly amazing that I felt compelled to fork out for the blue ray releases of seasons 1 and 2, and I will do the same again for season 3. So, have I been dishonest?
I really can't be arsed to wait out the glacial pace at which these show get released. I look forward to the day when shows like GoT get released worldwide on disc and on day 1.
What's the big damn deal?
Apple and Sky can go die in a fire, they're crap, for different reasons but both still offer too little for what they cost (Apple takes your soul, Sky takes your dignity, both take your money).
So the alternative? Wait a year for it to reach British TV? Erm, no ta.
Yeah, we acquire the episodes in a less than legal manner. But by the same token, we also have both box sets, and will be getting the other box sets when they EVENTUALLY get released. HBO wants more money from the product? Release the damn box sets a month after the season ends, instead of a week after the new season STARTS.
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In the UK GoT is only available on Sky Atlantic, which is a subscription channel only available to those who have signed up to Sky. Many people do not have (or want) this channel, so the only legal method for them to watch the series is to buy the box sets which come out long after the season ends. Or buy it on iTunes episode-by-episode for a lot more than the cost of the box set.
So in these days of immediate gratification, it means that people are going to use alternative methods to watch it. Which means illegal downloading.
The only way around this is to make it available through more widely accessible channels (BBC, Channel 4 etc) or stream it for a reasonable price.
Finally, if I buy the series via iTunes and then download it via a torrent in order to have it on physical media, does that still count as piracy?
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