Too Much Nick: Yes. Yes, I would obviously download a car. 
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?
Probably many other people really would watch all those! I absolutely never want to watch live sports, the Oscars, the Grammys, or those horrible MTV awards shows I never tweet about.
Also, I don’t watch Game of Thrones. I watch Girls, Veep, and (soon) The Newsroom.
“I’ll gladly pay” is silly and false. “I’ll gladly pay a fair price” is not. It’s still not a moral argument, but it is a practical one, and you can ball your fists as much as you want but that doesn’t eliminate a market force.
I watch about a dozen shows, mostly several years after they air, and the vast majority are available to me legally for purchase or stream. These networks and studios have all found a way to try to make their shows available online.
That is because the cable companies don’t subsidize their production the way they do HBO’s. Also, most everything from HBO several years old is available for download on iTunes, and the Blu Rays are available from Netflix and for purchase. Not free, but definitely not expensive. Here you go.
2) There’s no way HBO can do what people want to do. They’re on record as saying they would if they could.
That’s super-cool, because HBO is magically different from all their competitors and companies are always literally honest. I’m gonna go drink some Coke for breakfast because Coke is on record saying there’s no such thing as empty calories.
They are, actually, vastly different in several respects from every other network. Completely so. Their economics are totally, completely different.
Again, totally with you on the “no one has a legal right to free content” front. Anyone who claims they do are lying as hard as HBO saying “Gee, there’s just no way we could distribute our shows the way several of our competitors do!”
HBO will eventually adapt. They have no obligation to tell us so ahead of time. They should stall! You and I just know better.
They’ll adapt when it’s profitable for them to do so. Were it already, they would have. The evidence is in the it not having happened yet. What would they have to gain from turning down free money? Honestly: do you think they’re dumb? Anyone running that company who didn’t do this, now, and it was profitable, would have lost their job. The reason it doesn’t exist is because they would lose money. To use your analogy, it’s exactly why Coke doesn’t put some glorious healthy soda into all the McDonald’s: because no one would buy it and it would cost them money replacing a soda someone does buy.
They’d get a couple million cable cutters. They’d lose hundreds of millions in revenue from the cable companies. It’s not even close in revenue. We know this, because if it were, they’d do it.
Unless people actually believe the people running a company that makes ten figures of profits are dumb, there’s really no other logical explanation than this is what HBO costs, for now, and there’s not much to be done about it. It’s
Haha sorry. This is like my fourth Sunday night this year arguing about this on Tumblr. It’s just weird to me. People mix up “they’re dumb” with “the price isn’t fair.” I agree the price can be annoying if you happen to not want a single other thing on cable. But that’s how much it costs. Not because that’s the price they set, but because that’s the economics of the offering. It’s how they make such great shows to begin with.
(Source: The New York Times)
