What’s funny is that I had this exact experience with this exact show. When it’s trivial to have it for free, but nobody is willing to let you pay for it at any price unless part of that price is being in a certain place at a certain time it’s maybe right to have a good long think about the nature of the incentives at play.
What’s funny is that I had this exact experience with this exact show. When it’s trivial to have it for free, but…
Published
A Pun Involving Travel 
And with the FCC now in full reverse on net neutrality, this is even more appropriate than ever.
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I’m not following the certain place and time bit. You mean cable installation?
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He means, you might be at a mall and you see a one time offer. Or perhaps the offer is available in the UK online. In other words, it’s not an open offer available anytime that you can get online no matter where you are.
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I mean that they’ll allow me to pay to watch the show if and only if I do so in the context of my subscription, and only usually a certain subset of past episodes so I’d I forgot to DVR in screwed; Even then, if it’s DVRd I have to watch it on my TV in my living room.
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If you pay for HBO (and cable) you get HBO GO, which does pretty much allow you to watch anywhere any time, including old episodes.
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Um yeah, well your generic example covered all of that too. I just didn’t think of that example as well. But I guess the point is, media houses want to tell you when and where you watch what they want you to. And at what price. Which goes against all models of economy I know.
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This is how theaters have been operating forever. The show is at a certain time, in a certain place, for a certain price. If you can’t or don’t want to go, you don’t see the show. You do something else instead.
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When I had this experience HBO Go didn’t exist.
And theaters were poeticizing a technical experience that was impossible for a customer to have in ant other way. The whole point here is that in this case they made it impossible (now less so) to pay them any amount for an experience that could be had trivially, for free. That’s the lunacy of the whole thing.
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Because HBO doesn’t care or even wants it http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/21/5636120/game-of-thrones-free-to-play-tv-hbo
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