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by sl4yerr 5230 days ago
When The Oatmeal starts telling you what's wrong with your industry, it's time to shift gears:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

3 comments

Once I saw that, I knew pirating was going to go mainstream. It has to. People like movies too much, pirating is so easy, and everything else is hard and is a shitty service.
More on shitty services...

I have an hbo account through verizon fios, and typically watch shows through hbo go. Its hbo's streaming answer to being able to view the content you already pay for. The service is terrible, it constantly stops buffering and looses its place in the show / movie and you have to restart the player constantly. This can't be due to my connection because speed tests report everything as fine and dandy.

Related:

http://xkcd.com/488/ - on what happens to DRM-locked files when technology changes

http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg - comparison of a pirate to a DVD buyer (via http://boingboing.net/2010/02/18/infographic-buying-d.html ; I don't recall the original source)

Reminds me of http://www.blackrimglasses.com/2008/08/23/the-frustration-of...

Basically: I wanted to buy a song. It wasn't available. I ended up pirating it and donating money directly to the lead singer of the band.

Or in other words: windowing strategies cause others to make up for the deficiencies of the market reach. If you don't offer a free or paid option, someone is just going to infill it.