Too Much Nick: Yes. Yes, I would obviously download a car. 
I also love how everyone says they’d pay for HBO but don’t want to pay for HBO right now, even though you can.I’d pay $500 for a Benz. But Benzes go for $50k. That’s BS. I have no choice but to steal one.I’m kind of with you? Except that Benz competitors also go for…
Very fair point. That was a sloppy metaphor. But you’re, too, are conflating two things. It’s true, you can’t download a Benz. A show is a replicable thing. A thing that can be replicated for zero additional cost. That is very true. And that does make them different. This is why we have IP laws. They have to pay for them and produce them somehow. I don’t think anyone in this HBO debate debates that, since they all claim “they’d gladly pay.”
But the cost issue is still there, as in my Benz example. The phrase “I’d gladly pay for it” that people throw around is silly. You CAN pay for it. It’s just more than you’d like to pay. Yes, it comes with some other stuff, but let’s say for a moment it doesn’t. It costs about 5 times more than the $12 people say they’d pay. Does it really matter that there’s other stuff bundled? That’s the cost. $58 extra dollars a month and the misery of a lot of other great content.
And what’s so wrong with bundling anyway? I find it so suspect when people talk about this game of thrones/bundling unfairness. Is Game of Thrones really the ONLY show they want to watch? Are all those other HBO shows worth nothing? Do people not like Mad Men? Do they not like watching live sports or the oscars or the Grammys or those horrible MTV awards shows we all Tweet about? Sure, some of those we can get on Hulu so the ones we can’t we get more annoyed about, but for like $900 a year, you get all of that. The equivalent of 2 movies a week. It’s not that bad of a deal. Billions of dollars of produced content. It’s really quite reasonably priced.
In the end, two things irk me:
1) People can buy it. Anyone that says “I’d gladly pay” just doesn’t really mean it.
2) There’s no way HBO can do what people want to do. They’re on record as saying they would if they could. But they can’t. There’s no mystery to the economics. They are widely reported. It flat out wouldn’t work to offer the general public HBO Go. So why do people act like they’re dumb? Why act like HBO doesn’t get it?
(Source: The New York Times)
