Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/833864

Game of Thrones was nearly "destroyed" by pirates illegally streaming HBO content - Divisions by zero

At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen. The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case. >Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions. >“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.” The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the situation than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers. Needless to say, Tom ignored this in favor of writing how you can get sued… Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1

I wasn’t even able to stream it legally in Canada. The only way I could watch it legally was to get a cable subscription and a $15/mo HBO package. Fuck that!
That sounds like a contradiction.
He means one needed cable. It wasn’t available purely as a stream
So he was able to stream it legally, he just wasn't happy with the requirements for doing so.
Cable isn’t streaming… 🤦‍♂️

The Reddit Pedantic-Olympics are starting up again…

I don’t know why internet commenters think it’s such a zing to “correct” someone when it’s quite obvious what they mean.

This isn’t being pedantic, it’s obvious they meant they couldn’t stream it over the internet and had to watch it on scheduled cable. It’s not even semantics. People just need to fully read a sentence.
It was not obvious to me at first because some on demand services require a cable TV account to access. That's what I thought they initially meant.