Game of Thrones Piracy Rates Soar Courtesy of HBO's Stubbornness → thanks cabletv monopolies

if cabletv and isp's were nothing more than a content distribution system, i'd have hbo go on my roku3 by now. the fact that it's not is a clear indication of hbo and cabletv's need to maintain it's stranglehold on distribution. you would have though after year 1 of GoT piracy they would know better by now, but into year 3 and yet another government bought and paid for Comcast merger coming, it could be many more painful years until this industry wakes up and stops listening to it's fossilized executives who are all probably screaming for data caps as the latest nail in the p2p pandoras box that they already know they can never close, only provide a better alternative for - if they ever become enlightened enough to realize that. it's astonishing that with itunes as the clear example how pirated audio could still be well monetized after nearly a decade, that these fossils still don't recognize the same can happen to the video industry - if only steve jobs would have lived, we'd have a fully realized appleTV by now, with hbo go fully on board - instead we just have a lot of streaming wannabees.

This is the fourth season and viewership has grown every year. The first two episodes of Season 4 have nearly 3x as many viewers as the first two episodes of Season 1. Despite the piracy, the show is a massive success.Hasn't music sales been in decline for years now? TV at least has maintained revenue growth.

accord - my point was - they were writing these articles about GoT piracy the first year as well, yet the industry has not changed a bit. maybe they thought 6-strikes would help, but that was clearly a futile effort when anyone can now get a VPN for a dollar per week to thwart 6-strikes.

music revenues have only increased since itunes was introduced - look it up - it single handily saved that industry.

And my point despite essentially doing none of the things that people keep advocating that HBO do, HBO is now more successful than ever.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if lots of people pirate of GoT, as long as lots of people still subscribe to HBO to watch it.The numbers don't show that at all. Digital music sales has grown, but that hasn't been enough to offset the decline in CD sales. 2012 was the first year since 1999 that there was year-over-year growth, but then fell again in 2013:

»www.ifpi.org/news/music- ··· -markets