1397

Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content (www.forevergeek.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Terramaris@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

300 comments fedilink hide all child comments

At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.

The middle of the article however, destroys the author's case.

Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.

“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”

The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.

Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it...

Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 191 points 2 years ago

Zero sympathy. If they wanted to reduce the amount of illegal streamers, all they've got to do is make their content more accessible.

Release it on multiple streaming platforms, not just their own. Ensure its released globally at the same time. And get rid of the geo-blocking.

The lack of reasonable legal alternatives is what drives piracy.

[-] squaresinger@feddit.de 68 points 2 years ago

As evidenced by the brief moment in history when Netflix was all that and it drove video piracy all but to extinction.

[-] ashok36@lemmy.world 43 points 2 years ago

This is the case still with Spotify, apple music, deezer, etc... Multiple services with few if any exclusives means almost all music piracy has stopped. Somehow, the record companies continue to survive.

[-] Metacortechs@lemmy.stellarvortex.com 6 points 2 years ago

I think we're going to start to see music services going that way soon, for the first time I've started to see that songs in my primary play list are now not available in my region.

I admit I dont know what songs yet, am on a road trip at the moment, but it makes me worry that it's going to get worse.