Economically speaking there is no difference between losing money and not making money, but socially there's a clear distinction. You're not automatically indebted to someone just because they built something you want. No value is lost when a digital good is duplicated. The only thing lost in this case is an opportunity.

>The rationale that someone wouldn't buy it anyway doesn't hold when the argument is that they want it so much they can't wait for it.

The point is that customers wouldn't buy the show under the conditions it's currently offered to them anyway.

" No value is lost when a digital good is duplicated. The only thing lost in this case is an opportunity."

I know this is a popular justification for piracy, but surely you can see that a lost opportunity is in fact lost value.

> a lost opportunity is in fact lost value.

I know this is a popular justification for curtailing liberties, but surely you can see that this makes no actual sense.

So now it's "curtailing liberties" to ask someone to pay for value they are provided.

Right.

You seem to have no issue ascribing ideas they have never written to people who reply to your comments. I therefore assume (and assumed) you are in full and complete agreement with the various *AA over the handling of piracy. Including but not limited to rights-restriction, network monitoring, traffic shaping and mass legal threats.

Also, your comment was idiotic and I was spinning it the other way 'round to demonstrate this.

Your assumptions are completely incorrect. I support none of those things.

I do support content creators being compensated in the manner and amounts they choose to ask.

These are different things.

"In what way is money not being taken from the pockets of others?"

In the way that they are taking money out of their own pockets by not catering to this sizeable crowd.

Intellectual Property does not fit neatly into our existing socio-economic framework. This is one of the areas where that really shows.

I'd have more sympathy for this line of argument if I wasn't currently watching season 1 of Game Of Thrones.

When it aired, sure I wanted to see it. People I know were talking about it. But I didn't want to pay what it cost to see it then.

So you know what choice I made? I waited.

And now it's available in a format I want at a price I'm willing to pay. So I paid and I'm enjoying it.

And, in a development that would evidently be quite shocking to some in this thread, I'm finding that I have plenty of people to talk to about it.

Look. I would love it if they made the show available online the next day, like Mad Men does. I think they're mistaken not to do so. I think they'd make more money if they did.

But they don't.

So I wait.

Well I watched it at a friends who had it copied on his DVR. Does that make me a pirate? I was given a copy by another friend who did copy if off a DVR. I do have the blu-ray version of season one as well.

I will be watching season two without ever paying for HBO, again I am watching it via a DVR. How is my watching it on someone's DVR not the same as downloading it and watching it? In neither case did I pay for it, someone else did in both.

The true issue is that HBO sees more money at risk than they see to gain.

Suppose instead his solution was to find a buddy with HBO and watch the show together. Would you still say money is being taken, despite the 100% legality of this approach? If not, why?

Because someone paid for it, and more than one person watching at one location is factored into the price.