[astalwick]

Laws aren't all equal. Stealing a car is zero-sum: if I take your car, you no longer have a car, which is a very, very expensive toy.

If I download Game of Thrones, the outcome for every single person in the world except me is exactly the same as it would have been if I had simply gone and read a book instead. HBO gets no money (I'm reading a book), and you still have the ability to watch GoT (I haven't done anything to prevent that).

Sorry, that's not entirely true actually. The outcome is ever so slightly different because I contribute to a metric that content producers do pay attention to: estimated pirated copies of GoT downloaded.

They make decisions based on that (like the launch of HBO go, which is not available in canada), and eventually, my hope is that they'll realize that there is a problem with the way they're selling their content and they'll fix it for everyone.

(Meanwhile, yes, benefit for me: I get to watch GoT).

Btw, you're being unfairly downvoted. Sorry.

[Lawtonfogle]

If you would've otherwise read a book. Had the ability to pirate not been available, a non-zero number of individuals would've paid. Hollywood is stupid thinking everyone would have otherwise paid. But anyone who insist that everyone pirating would've read a book instead is making the same mistake.