Here’s my situation: I recently started watching the HBO series “Game of Thrones” (based on the George R.R. Martin “A Song of Ice and Fire” series of novels). It’s fantastic. I’m addicted. My girlfriend and I watched the entire first season in three days. It seemed like perfect timing, because season two is about to start on April 1.

One problem: I won’t be able to watch it until 2013 at the earliest. Well, legally, that is.

The problem is that I’m not an HBO subscriber. Believe me, given the quality of their programming, I would love to be. Unfortunately, it’s absolutely impossible to subscribe to HBO unless you also subscribe to cable (and/or satellite television). You cannot give HBO your money directly.

Not all piracy represents lost sales: many pirates would never have paid, and would rather go without whatever they can’t easily pirate. That’s not a market worth worrying too much about, because there’s not much anyone can do to stop it, and any attempts to slow it down usually just limit, inconvenience, frustrate, and anger the paying customers.

But there are a lot of people who will pay to get content legally, even if it’s easy to pirate, when getting it legally is easier. (This is now the case, to a large extent, with music.)

Here's Valve's co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell talking about piracy in the games industry. The man behind online retail service Steam tackles those who claim that lower prices for games will make piracy go away, and he takes on companies that seek to fight piracy by inconveniencing consumers.

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy," Newell said. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three months after the U.S. release and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.

RT @Oatmeal: I tried to watch Game of Thrones and this is what happened

Piracy can never be completely eradicated, because there are always going to be criminals, and there are always going to be brain-addled, hormone crazed teenagers on the internet.

Teenagers grow up, though, and criminals are a tiny minority. Meanwhile, there’s the rest of the entire adult world who are delighted to pay a reasonable price for convenient access to your stuff. The same people who hate being treated like criminals, and who really hate feeling that they’ve been robbed.

Give us convenient content at a reasonable price, and we’ll buy it. Sell the stuff without DRM, for a few dollars. Make it available to everyone, worldwide, at the same time. Then take the massive, unending pile of money, forever.

Or keep doing what you’re doing, and enjoy your ceaseless war of attrition, ever-rising tide of negative public opinion, and eventual forced irrelevance. And get fucked.

Rovio Mobile learned from the music industry's mistakes when deciding how to deal with piracy of its Angry Birds games and merchandise, chief executive Mikael Hed told the Midem conference in Cannes this morning.

"We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products," said Hed.

"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy."

Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans.

When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.