HBO Still Has No Intention of Offering a Web-Only Subscription Service

As it stands right now, only users who subscribe to HBO’s television service have access to HBO GO, the network’s website for streaming content. If this seems kind of silly to you considering more and more users are giving up cable in exchange web-only options, and it essentially provides them with no way to access HBO’s shows — in 2012, mind you — without waiting months for the DVDs or illegally downloading them, you are not alone. Web designer Jason Caputo started a site called Take My Money, HBO!, which implored visitors to enter an amount of money they’d be willing to pay for a web-only option in the hope it would change HBO’s mind, and the movement quickly gained steam. In response to this organized, targeted effort by passionate fans of their programming to give them money, HBO took a step back, evaluated the situation carefully, and essentially told everyone to go pound sand.

TechCrunch has a more comprehensive breakdown of the situation, and it appears to be somewhat more complicated than “You have that thing I want. I have this many money. Can I have it?”, which is kind of a shame, because that is the entire extent of my knowledge of economics. It does seem like there should be a much simpler option here. But I guess until we figure that out, people without cable will just have to keep using their friends’ HBO GO passwords sit back and torrent the crap out of “Game of Thrones” wait for HBO to figure out a plan.

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