First up, there is the news that HBO has been hacked and someone is trying to blackmail them by threatening to release Game of Thrones episodes ahead of official release. Plus allegedly damning emails. After the Sony "The Interview" hack of 2014 which is rumored to have cost Sony around $100 Million, companies have taken threats like this seriously. Unless the hackers don't actually have what they say they have or think that what they have is more critical than it is (see "Burn After Reading"), as appears to be the case here. HBO is not reported to be negotiating in any serious manner with the cyber thieves.
Secondly, Disney has announced that they are severing ties with Netflix and will be pulling their content from that service in 2019. They intend to set up their own streaming service for their content which may include content from ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney. Netflix responded by buying a comic book publisher, Millarworld, which is most known for the "Kick-Ass" series.
What do these two news items have in common? Well, they are both about money. They are both about control. And they are both about content piracy. And content piracy is about breaking free of money and control.
Certainly, the HBO Game of Thrones story is more overtly about piracy than the Disney/Netflix thing. But there are some things about it that recognize the new world order involved with piracy. For instance, HBO is not putting any serious effort into negotiating. Putting aside how damaging the content actually is, I agree with this approach because releasing this stuff ahead of schedule no longer matters. Two things have changed/accelerated in the last few years that make it harder to hold content companies hostage: spoiler warnings and it's all ready out there.
Spoilers
More and more people are focused on getting a personal reaction to their favorite content. That means watching it the first time with only the information that the director intended. All of those blogs and reviews that scream "Spoiler Warning" before diving into details do this so that fans know that surprises are going to be ruined; that maybe you should wait until after viewing the episode or movie yourself before discussing it.
Therefore, releasing old script outlines, as the HBO hackers have done, do not offer the same incentive for fans of Game of Thrones to not watch the episodes anyway. In fact, those people who do read the outlines are most likely to be die-hard fans who will still watch the episode when it is officially released just to compare and contrast what they had read with what actually made it in to the episode.
Selling What's Free
The other shift has been the wider availability of pirated content for free. Kodi boxes with add-ons like Exodus and Zen make uploaded streams of everything available to anyone with an hour of time and a Raspberry Pi (or Amazon Firestick or almost anything that runs any OS). And those streams are available almost as soon as the original content has been released. For movies, this can mean shaky-cam footage, but for broadcast content (for the set of 'broadcast content' that includes streaming services) it is usually top quality.
In other words, HBO has already lost the upload battle, so why pay more?
Saying it like that is a little facetious as HBO has not lost. These shows are driving subscriptions to their service and they are doing it despite the piracy. Which is where Disney comes in.
Another $10 a Month
Disney looks at the successes of HBO and Netflix and starts to think to itself, "Why aren't we doing this? Why do we have to sell our content to someone else when we can slam a service up and make all the money directly? Especially after those neck beards at Netflix turned down our purchase offer!"
And they can and will. They have not presented any details at to what their service will look like, but we can make some good guesses based on what has been successful in the market. For instance, I believe that they will offer a per-month flat rate instead of the pay-per-view route. Services like Vudu and such have had some success, but not compared to Netflix. In fact, the only one that has really made any headway has been Amazon... though they saw an increase in all digital content views when they opened up a lot of their licenced content to Prime members. A set monthly price puts Disney in line with these services and with HBO Now.
The trouble is that this is another fee and another app. There are already too many. Who has what movie or series and am I subscribed? We're back to channel surfing, if channel surfing involved switching to a different cable box (the app) every fifty channels or so. And how many $10 a month fees are we all willing to support each month? I reached my limit years ago.
In other words, Disney's new service will drive more people to pirated content because using their service will be that much more difficult.
Free And Easy
Netflix is easy. Amazon Prime Video is easy (and includes a Netflix app on Fire product). HBO Now is easy (though with less content). Get much beyond that and it is no longer easy. Disney is hoping that the quality of their content will be enough of an incentive for people to make the effort, both monetarily and in the app switching sense. This is a good bet because they have some of the best content available.
But they will lose some. Those who have reached that barrier between morality and free-and-easy.
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