Can someone help me understand the negative impact of this leak? From what I can tell, the leak only benefits HBO. Viewership numbers in the age of time-shifting are worthless. Moreover, viewers now cost HBO money, in terms of server load during the peak viewership time. If even a small number of people avoided the broadcast during the premiere, HBO actually wins - and there's no telling how many people decided to subscribe to their new service after watching the leaked copy.
Anyone who remembers the first GoT streaming premieres, they were largely catastrophic on the the servers. Last night appears to have gone well. I'm beginning to think HBO leaked it themselves.
> Can someone help me understand the negative impact of this leak?
The best way to deal with piracy is by offering a better experience to customers than to pirates. Here, that would be HD + not having to look for a torrent server that isn't currently blocked in your country. Just as people rarely try to evade paying their train/tube tickets unless they're broke: their time and convenience isn't worth that sort of hassle.
Had it been a leak of one episode hours before it aired, it wouldn't have been detrimental to HBO. But 4 episodes at once mean pirates can get one month worth of binge watching, which is _the_ thing people want and TV channels can't offer. That means many paying HBO customers will watch the pirated version and ask themselves why they keep paying their subscription. Even those who choose not to watch the leaked versions, will no doubt experience some amount of frustration due to having to make that choice. And their are other minor inconveniences, such as having to avoid spoilers on forums.
Your point would have been completely valid, had GoT been produced by a binge-friendly media such as Netflix, though.
Viewership numbers in the age of time-shifting are worthless
Do Comcast/TWC/DirecTV/Echostar feel that way? If even one person that was planning to subscribe to HBO over cable/satellite to watch this season decided to bail and watch the torrent instead, then the leak has economic impact. DVRs are irrelevant.
HBO doesn't want to encourage more people to go learn how to use bittorrent / usenet / streaming sites.
Someone who figures out how to get these episodes very well might just cancel HBO and get them all that way.
Though, a fairly credible rumor said that Showtime did strategic bittorent leaks. For a while almost every single season had the first two episodes leaked in high quality. Of course, it could have been one leaker just doing it each time.
I think it is pretty incredible that these leaks are not more common.
To elaborate, intellectual property law is essentially "use it or lose it" - a company that does not defend its IP against unauthorized use is likely to have it invalidated. One that actively promotes unauthorized use is almost certain to.
If HBO is not making a good-faith effort to secure for George R.R. Martin all the royalties that he is entitled to (which deliberately leaking GoT to torrent sites certainly would not be), then there isn't a court in the world that wouldn't consider HBO to be in breach of contract and return the TV rights to Martin.
> which deliberately leaking GoT to torrent sites certainly would not be
This is my central question that has not been answered. How is deliberately leaking GoT not beneficial to HBO? How does the company generate revenue from everyone watching it on their service at once (remember, HBO themselves mentioned that they don't mind piracy and the old joke is that for every one subscriber to HBO GO there are dozens of other, non-related people using those credentials)
Anyone who remembers the first GoT streaming premieres, they were largely catastrophic on the the servers. Last night appears to have gone well. I'm beginning to think HBO leaked it themselves.