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this is all g.r.r.m.'s fault, anyway
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.
It's the ecology
Re: It's the ecology
But where the material simply isn't available I don't believe the torrent thing is damaging the creative ecology. It's demonstrating unmet demand, and the experience has been that when supply is made available, the demand shifts to the "legitimate" revenue-generating source.
The Oatmeal dude's thing is harmful, he has the option to subscribe to HBO. People outside the US mostly don't.
Re: It's the ecology
On the other hand, screen and text seem to be run by people who have never heard of the internet.
Re: It's the ecology
On the bright side, HBO/SHO are at least bright enough to not restrict sales of the box sets here just because nobody has broadcast the shows yet. That used to happen a lot -- a broadcast network would buy rights to something, never show it, and the DVD rights would be unusable.
Re: It's the ecology
Then you have Alan Dean Foster's Flinx series, in ebook in the US, but not beyond book 6 in the UK. Choices for the avid reader are either the freetard site, or a second hand book. In both cases, the publishers and author get zilch.
Re: It's the ecology
It used to be justified with physical goods on the grounds that we're a long way from anywhere, but on digital goods it makes no sense at all, and even on physical goods one can routinely order from overseas, pay the (sometimes expidited!) delivery charges, and still come out saving money.
It's All About The Story
After all, if they tried to hire some systems architects and software engineers and built their own internet sales delivery thingy, that's just difficult techno wizardry and magic, and they'll get hacked just like Sony. (Not a foregone conclusion, obviously, but certainly likely when you have clueless idiots trying to build something.)
Music doesn't have that fictional element to it as much, so the publishers are more reality based, and are happy so long as the cash rolls in, so they've just gone with the flow and are happily dumping everything onto every digital web shop that'll give them a reasonable cut.
Re: It's All About The Story
Re: It's All About The Story
I think there's more going on with books and video though - they *should* be pretty clear that the business model of "just sell the download" works. It's not like there's a lack of evidence even considering only evidence within that media industry, not just comparing it against music. But, despite that, there's still massive intransigence and resistance to the idea of just making it convenient to buy stuff. Very weird.
Re: It's the ecology
If HBO would sell me a subscription directly, I would actually consider it. But my so-called "HBO subscription" would actually cost me around $100/month – not worth it.
Which brings up that what really what we're talking about here is price discrimination – the very basic idea that you sell the same thing to different people at a different price based on what they're willing to pay. The main complaint I see here is that HBO isn't doing a sufficient amount of discrimination. They're essentially offering two options (in the US): 1) Subscribe to HBO via cable at $X. 2) Wait one year and get it on DVD/Streaming/iTunes at $Y.
The whole point of this discussion is that there are people for whom neither of those are good options, and that means HBO, by being insufficiently discriminatory, is giving up potential sales, and that's foolish from a business perspective – they're leaving money on the table.
One obvious remedy might be to charge $Y*2 for people to watch the show immediately, instead of $Y for waiting a year, and maybe $Y*1.5 after six months. iTunes has been playing with more of this type of pricing, as have movie studios, and with any luck we'll be seeing more of it (it's actually a good thing for consumers). It would actually be interesting to see someone release "lots" of a show, say X downloads/week and auction them off. (I suspect the price would fall rapidly after the first week or two when all the hardcore fans have satiated.)
In fact, if HBO execs would hire half-decent economists, they'd know that having a monopoly on a good is the best time to practice extensive price discrimination, as you can approach theoretically optimal pricing (practically speaking, transaction costs limit how close one can get to optimality, but transaction costs for downloading are quite low). (Note: I say monopoly because HBO has a monopoly on Games of Thrones episodes [the entire point of copyright], though substitutable goods do, of course, exist.)
Now, that doesn't address rone's argument, which is that it doesn't matter if HBO is stupid, it's still piracy, which is true, however I also think it's a rational, if not entirely ethical, response to a market failure.
That being said, I'm not sure that the right response to such a market failure is to throw up your hands and say "Oh, well, no sale for me" because that is actually removing price signaling from the market.
Re: It's the ecology
There's a point at which pricing and convenience need to be considered, and telling me I have the option of paying a minimum of $9 an episode and going through the hassle of subscribing and then unsubscribing to cable, isn't very persuasive.
(I suspect it's more than that, because I imagine the cable company charges connection and disconnection fees to discourage people from buying shows in this way.)