rone | 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.

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Yeah, but HBO want to offer the show on their ridiculous terms, which also isn't how life works.

Both parties have certain terms they want. His point is that he was prepared to try all kinds of methods to compromise and meet them part way, from monthly subscription to paying for each episode even though it's DRM-encumbered; but that they were utterly unwilling to compromise in any way. And that's why they are seeing their stuff pirated.

I'm the same way. What I *want* is go to a web site, pay some cash, and download some MPEG-4 files. But I'm prepared to compromise -- I'll rent DVDs, I'll pay a monthly fee for Netflix, I'll pay rental fees for an indefinite rental of DRM-encumbered content. I'm pretty flexible. I'm even considering buying yet another box of circuits so I can use Amazon Video as well as iTunes.

Unfortunately, I still run into stuff that is unavailable by any of those methods. Stuff I can't watch even if I were to subscribe to a cable TV package. Stuff that even if I bought it on DVD, it would (according to the TV and movie companies) be illegal for me to watch it, because it's region-coded for the wrong region. That's why I still pirate TV shows and movies.

Basically, compromise is a dance for two.

"Yeah, but HBO want to offer the show on their ridiculous terms, which also isn't how life works." Actually, that's exactly how it works; you control the means of production and distribution, therefore you call the shots. He wasn't prepared to meet them part way; he looked for alternative means of distribution and found none, other than stolen copies. That's only a "compromise" if you think that there's an existing contract that gives you the right, somehow, to their product. There is no such contract, unless you are an HBO subscriber.

They don't control the means of distribution, though. They only control the means of approved distribution.

Sure, I don't have a right to their product. But equally, they don't have a right to my money. If I offer them the usual industry price for the product and they refuse, what then? How does it then "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" to prevent people from watching the show?

You seem to be favoring the view that the consumer should be the only one who ever has to compromise. Companies go out of business that way.

I'm fine with HBO going out of business. And companies should certainly compromise, and they should certainly behave in a way that makes them more money and alienates fewer customers. But if your wife doesn't want to have sex doggy-style, does that mean you'll cheat on her with someone who will, because gosh darn it, there are women out there who love it doggy-style?

Well, Dan Savage would say yes, so that's clearly open to reasonable debate too. If you can't give your partner something they want in a relationship, then generally yes, it's reasonable to expect them to get it elsewhere.

For example, I just can't get excited about going shoe shopping. If my wife wants to go shoe shopping with someone else as a result, that's fine with me. This is the general case; things get different with sex because people are weird about sex. I don't think it's particularly useful to analogize between copyright and sex for that reason.

(Though I remember an old posting about RMS's Free Sex Foundation that was pretty amusing.)

In fact, Dan Savage would not say yes, unless you both agreed to it first; otherwise, you're a CPOS. As you say, you're fine with your wife going shoe shopping with someone else. HBO, however, is not fine with you downloading GoT.

You've got a contract with your wife, both explicitly in the terms of your marriage, and implicitly, in the mutually-agreed-upon terms of your probably monogamous sex-life.

With HBO, you don't have a contract. So you're not breaking a contract when you cheat on HBO. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying it's a bad analogy.

Also, the comic shows that even if HBO was a bit more forthcoming about the release of GoT on DVD and BluRay, perhaps that would be a satisfactory wait. For all we know, HBO is going to do a Disney thing and release the BluRay disks for 5 minutes every 10 years. Assuming he's bring truthful, the writer made heroic efforts to get the show legitimately, from the many outlets at which the show will one day be available, outside of the one thing that HBO's model counts on: that GoT is its Killer App and by fantasy nerds and boobie fanatics no choice (so it thinks) between SUBSCIRBing to cable + HBO, and waiting in limbo for an unknowable eternity. The problem for HBO is that you're not just out the HBO fee, you're out the cost of cable that more and more people don't have. And whammo, you've got a $40-140 bill every month for the duration of some commitment because you wanted to see Peter Dinklage fight with a sword. Worth lots, but not that much.

The viewers control the means of distribution! Help, help, we're being repressed!

*thwack!* *thwack!* Bloody peasants.

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

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