[asharpe]

There is no model where Piracy makes sense. There is a cost of piracy (both in setting up and in risk of using). That HBO hasn't found a way to easily capture that value speaks to them not having found the right channels to market.

[bratsche]

> There is no model where Piracy makes sense.

That's not exactly true. Japanese anime companies have found a way to embrace piracy in an interesting way that benefits their businesses.

There are all these piracy groups called 'fansubs', which are groups of fans that take the Japanese comic or cartoon and make their own translations and subtitles. Most of the time these groups are just excited about the show/comic and translate it because it's not available in their language.

The companies used to treat them like any other piracy group, but some of them started changing so that they treat them more or less like market research groups. They can find out, with little or no investment, where a certain comic or cartoon is successful. Then they can invest in doing their own translations if it passes a certain threshold.

Once the creators begin releasing their own official versions of the show/comic, the fansubs usually shut down. Their goal wasn't really piracy, their goal was just to get the show released in their region.

[asharpe]

That's a very cool engagement model. I think that is more aligned with some engagement with Open source: release the building blocks, let the community of users start manipulating, then package up the best bits as a release. Not piracy outright as you say and very cool way to engage.