How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM

Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by tptacek on Friday November 30, 2012 @09:41PM (#4856630)

HBO is subsidized by the price of the entire cable bill. There are people who get cable in large part because they want access to HBO; HBO captures a portion of that revenue too.

HBO has stated directly that they would lose money if they offered a la carte access to their content. Recurring revenue is an extremely powerful thing; if you have a business model that works that drives recurring revenue, you stick with it.

HBO's business model works extraordinarily well; they have almost 30 million subscribers.

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by ChuckMcM on Saturday December 01, 2012 @02:01AM (#4857052)

Ok, I think you've accurately communicated HBO's reasoning for thinking this would be a bad idea. I'm not persuaded by their argument. For the reasons that I enumerated.

I completely accept that they wouldn't be persuaded by mine either if that helps. I firmly believe however that someone will adopt this sort of model and then we'll have an empirical example to talk about.

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Re:How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” wo... by tptacek on Saturday December 01, 2012 @04:41AM (#4857240)

Your second paragraph here is actually the root of my argument as well! I agree strongly. Content is inevitably going to be product for the direct Internet market, and that model will eventually supplant the pay TV model.

HBO is itself effectively just a middleman (at least for most of the content we care about). Maybe we should stop talking about what HBO should do, and start talking about what companies like Blown Deadline (David Simon's production company) should do. Again, my sense is that many more potential viable productions exist than are greenlit by AMC, FX, HBO, and Showtime.

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