At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case.
Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it…
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
It’s not the competition that’s bad! It’s the anti competitive laws that allowed it to spoil. Companies saw how profitable Netflix was and pulled their shows from the platform to artificially create a reason for consumers to use their own shitty services. Netflix was no longer able to purchase those titles.
What does this have to do with laws though? I find it pretty reasonable for a film company to be able or allowed to run their own streaming platform and just not sell their shows to say netflix. If I create something that I want to sell my self, in my own store, there should be no law forcing me to also hand it over to that supermarket down the streat to sell it there. And if I want to charge a monthly fee for even being able to enter my own little store, that should also not be prohibited.
Imagine there would be a law that said, every studio would also have to sell their stuff to netflix. You think, Netflix wouldn´t immediately abuse this power to drive any competition out of business?
Don´t get me wrong, I HATE that to be able to watch all the stuff I might be interrested in, I´d have to subscribe to like 5 different services. I just don´t see how laws would be a good tool to deal with that.