From my perspective, we should not talk ethics because we can talk business.
Our purpose, obviously, is increasing the amount of wealth available to each and every human being on the planet.
For that, we want HBO to exist and produce content.
We want people who consume that content to pay HBO to make sure it exists.
But that to do with people who want to consume the content but HBO behaves as if they didn't exist?
What about letting them watch the content for free? The upside is, they have more wealth, and the downside is, I struggle to figure out any.
The ethical discussion is, to me, more interesting because there is a big gray area. A lot of people are framing something as a dichotomy (get HBO or pirate) when there is (to me) an obvious third option, which is waiting until the content is available.
As far as a business decision goes, HBO is making a choice that may or may not be the right business choice, but it is well within their rights. Maybe they will fail, maybe they will win big. Whatever.
I don't think it's morally wrong but it is at least ambiguous. I find the gray area interesting. Other people don't see it that way and I don't think they are moral degenerates or anything.
they've made their choice to not engage certain markets
They've made the choice not to engage in that market at the moment, but as legal copyright holders, they have the ability to engage that market later. Having that market eroded by people getting the content for free might be counter-productive, as in "we're not going to release in Russia because everybody pirates everything" leads to "I'm going to pirate this because nobody releases anything in Russia".
As I'm telling you, they're sitting on their rights of Maybe releasing, and Maybe profiting.
But I get Real wealth, not a Maybe one, from torrenting their series.
Real wins over Maybe.
Our purpose, obviously, is increasing the amount of wealth available to each and every human being on the planet. For that, we want HBO to exist and produce content. We want people who consume that content to pay HBO to make sure it exists. But that to do with people who want to consume the content but HBO behaves as if they didn't exist? What about letting them watch the content for free? The upside is, they have more wealth, and the downside is, I struggle to figure out any.