Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content
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
As an example, the only reason there was ever any interest in Top Gear stateside was because of piracy. In my youth, that was the only way to watch it, and it showed the BBC that there was an interest, which led to it being made available through legitimate means in the US.
Piracy isn’t about free shit.
I don't remember the band, I think it was Iron Maiden, that discovered that brazillians fucking love them by Napster data and they started touring in Brazil selling entire stadiums full even today. There's even a joke in Rio de Janeiro about how Iron Maiden visits the Barra de Tijuca area (the place where big concerts are played) more often than regular Rio's habitats.
Yes. That's Iron Maiden. They go where people are torrenting their music and sell a shit ton of tickets and merch.
literal proof that piracy leads to legal profit?
meanwhile the another band who hates pirates:
Those 24/7 Top Gear streams on justin.tv before they shut down and rebranded as Twitch turned me into a lifelong fan.
I have a prime subscription in part because is gives me access to both Top Gear and TGT.
Yeah I'd definitely agree. The amount of memes and just general sense of people buzzing about the show when it was at its peak was just unreal. And I'd argue that the fact it was being pirated and passed around so much was a big driver behind that. There's no real way to test it, but without that big cultural drive would the show have done nearly so well? My suspicion is that it wouldn't have. Not to mention all the knock-on effects such as launching the careers of many actors, who will go on to drive other hit shows etc.
Just seeing the issue as "someone watched a torrent of it so we lost the subscription fee" is extremely myopic IMO.