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
If it’s true that pircay nearly destroyed GoT, that means that we as pirates have power. We’re a counter balance against ridiculous payment schemes and arbitrary limiting of content.
yeah, i torrented the first few seasons and subscribed myself for season 4.
making quality fucking television is how you make money, not by trying and failing to stop piracy.
Well, making something that successfully panders to an audience, at least.
I wasn’t able to access the show when it was around so I downloaded it. Sadly I also downloaded the last season which the show runners raped
That moment when you feel guilty about pirating something, not because of moral reasons, but because the show was so bad.
hot take: maybe Game of Thrones should have been destroyed
Instead it was destroyed by two greedy fucks rushing the ending two seasons early so they could move on to their next cash grab flop!
What WAS their next cash grab though?
It was supposed to be Star Wars but they messed up GoT so badly they lost the Star Wars bid.
What a shame that somebody else got the badly-messing-up-Star-Wars gig.
I believe they’re doing 3 Body Problem next, another adaptation but for a Chinese sci-fi this time
That´s on my “want to read” list.
Its such handwaving bullshit, I wanted my money back at the end of the book.
You are aware that we are in a piracy group here, right? We don´t want our money back. Because we didn´t pay for it in the first place!
Sometimes I pirate something that is so terrible that I still feel I’m owed compensation for the time I wasted watching it and the bandwidth I used to download it.
Highly recommend it, finished it earlier this year and have been blown away by how much I enjoyed the series
deleted by creator
I love those books. Good to know I won’t have to watch the show.
Yup. Money was never a problem for D&D. HBO was willing to give them all the time and money they needed. That is a very rare thing in entertainment.
I was gonna say lol. Damn, pirates almost spared us that ending. Too bad.
The correct way to put the title is “HBO’s Game of thrones was nearly destroyed by limiting access to it through high subscription costs for their platform.”
Radio stations in the US don’t have to pay artists for playing their works for money. They claim that this provides free advertising which increases record sales.
Not sure why this works for music and not other forms of media.
Most people don’t rewatch movies or shows like they do with music. And how often do people, who want to rewatch a show, actually buy the dvd or BluRay once they’ve seen it trough a pirated source that still sits on their hard drive?
Also artists do get paid when a song gets played on the radio. It’s called radio royalties, though only the people that have writing credits get paid.
I’m not one to defend giant media conglomerates, but to compare radio broadcasts - which are not on-demand for the consumer - to downloaded content (which is) is kind of silly. People also tend to listen to a song/album repeatedly and thus want to own it and have it on hand. Most people who watch a show as long as GoT don’t watch it again.
The US is one of four countries in the world - including Iran, China, and North Korea - that doesn’t force radio stations to pay artists royalties for using their music to make money. Seeding a torrent doesn’t even make money.
Not so long ago we had video broadcasts, akin to radio, which was called « television » I think…. Yet it was generally not free either.
Television was free. Network TV was broadcasted out for free and the shows were paid for by sponsors running ads. Then we invented cable and got double-charged for them providing the content AND we still got ads.
HDTV is still free with an antenna in the US
Here is an article that talks about how artists get paid for radio play. Not sure why you’d think they do not. The basics are:
- Radio acquires a blanket license(s) from its local PRO(s)
- A song is played on a radio, and the airplay is reported to a PRO
- The PRO distributes royalties and songwriter gets paid
The songwriter is paid the royalties due
Radio stations in the US don’t have to pay artists for playing their works for money
That’s false. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC is there so stations are obligated to pay artists for use of their work. Radio stations are supposed to submit playlists to them to calculate mechanical royalties.
There is a lot of fuckery afoot and these rules aren’t enforced, but stations are supposed to pay artists for their work when they use it
I became so eager to consume the show, that I paid for NowTV so I could legally stream it much sooner than pirates ha fit available, and I’d get up an hour earlier than I needed to for work just to watch it so I didn’t have it spoiled.
I would add the title of 'Most pirated series, but do to the utterly shit ending, also the most regrettable."
Didn’t the FTC just post new rules about sponsored content.
Classic bait post. Can we leave this bs on reddit?
Did you even read OP’s post? Don’t think so 😘
People only reading the headlines? That is the real typical Redditor BS here.
I read the article and it is clickbait.
Nobody is denying that the article is clickbait. The post itself isn’t though. This post refutes the article.
But they make you click and engage by having a deceptive title. Which incites the rage comments, or people commenting to correct them. I also commented, so they got what they want from me too, but had to point it out at least once.
Was OP trying to bait? They used the headline from the article and even wrote a summary that explained the article.
Uh? You mean they didn’t profit at all from the insane merchandising? Maybe they need to have a conco or two with George Lukas than, because the GoT merchandise was off the rails
I’d argue it was destroyed, in the last 2 seasons.
Agreed. I’d also argue that it would have been better if pirates managed to do the job before that.
Right around when I stopped downloading it
The show was destroyed by two mediocre fuck face showrunners who were more interested in harassing the naked extras on set then running the production lol
That happened? Not being smart/snarky but I really don’t follow hollywood gossip/fact/tmz/etc
Found nothing with Google, sounds made up.
I found nothing either, idk I’m going to hold out to see if someone can link something.
I’ll check it out thank you!
Good.
