this is all g.r.r.m.'s fault, anyway

[rone]

Let's be clear: i don't like The Oatmeal.  I found Matthew Inman's humor juvenile but inoffensive at first; even in the cartoons that had material that i liked, his delivery seemed off in the way that the dorkiest of nerds have when they overtell or overexplain a joke.  He finally lost me with his issues-revealing Utilikilts cartoon, and that's colored everything else that i've had the misfortune to witness (and you'd call me an idiot for continuing to follow links there, and you'd be right).  His approach to things in his life is relentlessly adolescent, and his current comic about how HBO has forced him to torrent the "Game of Thrones" series, which has been pounded across my social network with much delight by my so-called friends, is a prime example of this: entitlement and rationalization in the face of unenlightened self-harm (and, yes, the fact that it's about the much overrated "Game of Thrones", which book many of my friends inexplicably love and consequently turned them into morbidly obsessed fans of the HBO series, doesn't help).

Here's the thing: HBO doesn't owe anyone the "Game of Thrones" series outside of the terms in which they make it available (i.e., pay a shitload of money a month to the local cable monopoly and be glad that they deign to convey their munificence to your hovel).  Is Inman truly advocating that we should we bend or break the rules every time an incompetent business doesn't offer us their product in a timely fashion after we've declined to adhere to their idiotic terms and conditions, simply because we really, really want it?

If you're going to torrent it, torrent it, but don't waste time rationalizing it.  Just because the MPAA is acting like Javert doesn't mean that you're Valjean, and "Game of Thrones" isn't a piece of bread.

Comments

[thorfinn]

North America isn't the world. Both cable shows and paper books have major regional distribution issues. Stuff arrives a half a year later, if we're lucky, or a year or two later, or never, if we're not.
ETA: Incidentally, where are most of these torrent sites? Mostly not located in .us. Causation? I dunno, but I think it's an interesting correlation.

The whole argument is really about convenience. I want the content in a convenient format at a convenient time. As it happens, 99% of the time, if I can't get it in a convenient format at a convenient time, I'll just go engage with something else instead, whether that's eBooks, or movies, or music, or whatever.

It isn't that difficult to provide that convenience - and actually be more convenient than torrenting, as well as get paid. The book and video publishers, for some reason, just don't wanna.

Audio publishers seem to have mostly wised up, and are happily rolling in their continuing fat piles of cash.

[eagle]

Oh, okay, yes, sorry. I wasn't thinking of the regional distribution nonsense, and should have given that I was replying to you. Yeah, I'm somewhat more sympathetic towards the attitude that people refusing to sell you things until years later are forfeiting some of their right to complain about them downloading it in the meantime.

I still don't think that's a particularly ethical position. At least until we come up with a better model for this stuff than property, one of the points of property is that people aren't required to sell it to you. But you weren't arguing that, you were arguing whether the content providers have any right to complain, and on that front I think you've got a very strong point.

I will say, though, that while some of these online debates are sparked by people who are in a regional distribution black hole, most of them are started by entitled US residents who just don't want to pay for the content in the form provided even though they could and could get it. So one starts to develop a real knee-jerk reaction against the entitlement.

[thorfinn]

*nod* Getting hold of the content by torrenting, even if you can't obtain it any other way, it is still definitely a copyright license violation, and not 100% ethically clean, you'll have no argument from me about that. :-)

And yes, my argument is not at all that they should be required to sell it to me, it's that since it would be actually quite simple for them to sell it to me conveniently (via a number of possible digital marketplaces), they're just choosing not to, therefore they are idiots who apparently don't want to be given money.

[eagle]

Yeah, we're really in violent agreement. Sorry about that!

The regional distribution thing has never made much sense to me, even knowing the background of it. I have some degree of tolerance for weird business models based on history (international publication rights, for example, do make real money for the author of the book, and most of the fixes would make them less money in the short run). But there's a limit, and the regional limitations on DVDs and games have passed that limit a while back into just seeming dumb.

[thorfinn]

I figured. :-) Wasn't worried.

Besides, I'm a professional software engineer, have been for nearly 20 years, and 99% of my software authoring has been closed source. And even the open source stuff is still copyright protected. I'm entirely fond of copyright.

I just happen to think it's extremely stupid to put roadblocks in your potential customers' way when they want to pay you for a license to a copy. :-)

[tskirvin.livejournal.com]

My ethical pivot lies around the "they haven't released it in my region YET" problem. For example, Sherlock Season 2 just finished airing in the UK. I've seen it. The main reason I don't feel guilty is that I'll get access to it as soon as it comes out in the USA, which (as I understand it) is fairly soon.

Anime is its own special area in this discussion, of course.