Wales is frequently active on Quora, where someone asked him if he likes the show. His response was:

Apparently HBO Go is not sufficient for all fans of HBO shows. Even the founder of one of the biggest sites on the web.

Unfortunately for fans of HBO, the network doesn’t get to call all the shots. The network is owned by Time Warner, and its CEO, Jeff Bewkes, says that a standalone streaming service just isn’t happening. He told Deadline that they would do it if it was “in [their] economic best interest.” He further elaborated by saying that the potential market for such a service isn’t yet big enough in the U.S.

In short, Time Warner is ignoring the rising trend of cable cutters opting instead to pretend that it’s not a market worth investing in. It’s a strategy that will work out over the short term, but data suggests that cable subscriptions are quickly becoming obsolete as more people look to services like Netflix and Hulu for content consumption.

It’s a fact that HBO will have to follow suit sooner or later. The problem for it is that competitors, like Netflix, are now creating content that rivals the kind of quality content that HBO offers. That strategy has already paid off for Netflix as its latest earnings report revealed that it now has about half a million more subscribers than HBO. That gap may widen even more as series like Arrested Development and Orange Is The New Black start airing on the service.

It will be interesting to see what happens when HBO finally does get with the times. The network must lament the fact that Game of Thrones is the most pirated content on the Web, but its lack of a standalone streaming services leaves many fans with no choice. Netflix recently found that piracy rates over BitTorrent go down when it introduces its instant streaming service in countries, and it’s a given that the HBO would see a similar reduction in piracy if only it offered a standalone service.

You’re never going to see that reduction in piracy, however, until Time Warner realizes that its potential market in the US are all those who are pirating Game of Thrones for lack of a better option.

[h/t: BGR]

At least according to data from SNL Kagan. Variety reports that HBO ended 2012 with 28.7 million subscribers, which means that as of the last known report, Netflix is now beating HBO in the U.S.

That’s a pretty significant development in the streaming wars.

It’s important to note that this is only a U.S. victory for Netflix. Although the company reported 1.02 million new subscribers internationally, it only boosts their total to 7.14 million. HBO boasts over 114 million subscribers worldwide.

HBO and Netflix have a lot in common. They are both platforms which host TV shows and films. And with Netflix’s recent push, both companies now produce their own content (and it’s pretty well done). Both companies offer online streaming apps filled with said content.

But of course, the difference is that HBO is still in bed with cable, while Netflix is the top choice of cordcutters everywhere. It will be interesting to see whether HBO keeps up with Netflix in subscriber growth over the next year, or whether the tide continues to turn in favor of the true, standalone, streaming experience.

This nugget isn’t the only interesting thing to come out of CEO Reed Hastings’ letter to shareholders. We also learned that Netflix is planning on unveiling a $11.99 family plan that offers up to four simultaneous streams. We also learned that Netflix’s original series House of Cards was able to rope in subscribers and keep them subscribed after it was over.

“Jon Snow. Hannah Horvath. Sookie Stackhouse. If any of these names ring a bell for you, then you’re going to be very happy to hear that we’ve just added HBO to our TV lineup. Starting today, our Google Fiber TV customers will be able to add on our new HBO package to their plan for $20/month (plus tax). The plan will include HBO, HBO2, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Latino, HBO Comedy, and HBO Zone,” says Product Head Larry Yang on the Google Fiber blog.

Not only HBO, but Google Fiber is now offering Cinemax (Max, MoreMax, ActionMax, ThrillerMax, WMax, @Max, 5-StarMax, and OuterMax) for $10 a month.

Google Fiber already offered Showtime and Starz for $10 a month, and now if you want to get all four premium channels you can do so for $40. If you were planning to get all four anyway, this saves you $10 a month on the HBO.

In all, this means that you can get Google’s 1 Gbps internet + TV and 4 premium channels (including HBO) for $160 a month in Kansas City (and soon, Austin). Talk to plenty of cable subscribers and you’ll find that that’s not a bad deal, comparatively.

Google hopes to start construction on Fiber in Austin in 2014, and should have their first customers up and running by the middle of that year.

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, have I got a Craigslist ad for you.

Posted a few days ago to the “casual encounters” section, this anonymous sex ad supposedly coming from a 25-year-old woman in the New Orleans area is probably one of the best Craigslist ads that you’ll ever see.

The poster, a self-described avid fan of the George R.R. Martin series on which the HBO series is based, is looking for a man to fulfill her sexual fantasy between Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen, Mother of Dragons (her) and Robb Stark.

“When I come to Robb Stark, our eyes lock and something moves inside of me. I realize I need to have him, want him, and I can tell he is thinking the same. I order my guards to throw him in the dungeon and later that night, I have him brought to me, in the throne room. There, on the Iron Throne I’ve so recently won, I make wild and passionate love with him, repeatedly,” she says.

Aw yeah…

Here’s the entire ad:

I am an avid fan of George R. R. Martin’s series Game of Thrones (both the books and the show). I have recently purchased a replica of the Iron Throne as seen in the television show, and need a partner to play out an elaborate fanatsy.

In my fantasy, I am Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, and Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms. After crossing the Narrow Sea and defeating the forces of Westeros, it is within my power and right to slay all of those who betrayed my family and denied me my rightful place for so many years. The most vile enemies of house Targaryen, House Stark and House Baratheon must pay the highest price. All of those who fought against the Mother of Dragons are slain – all except one. When I come to Robb Stark, out eyes lock and something moves inside of me. I realize I need to have him, want him, and I can tell he is thinking the same. I order my guards to throw him in the dungeon and later that night, I have him brought to me, in the throne room. There, on the Iron Throne I’ve so recently won, I make wild and passionate love with him, repeatedly.

Please only respond to this post if you look like Robb Stark! I would appreciate pictures, but please, no names. In order to stay as true to the fantasy as possible, I ONLY want you to refer to yourself as Robb Stark. You will need to provide your own clothing. Please keep in mind that you will have recently participated in a battle and been thrown in a dungeon, so you will not be wearing your nicest furs.

I’m looking for a Stark in the streets but a wildling in the sheets.

That last line…I just…can’t…take it.

“#GameofThrones is renewed for a fourth season. RT & share this update with your friends across the realm,” tweeted HBO’s official Game of Thrones Twitter account this afternoon.

Before today, there was technically a doubt as to whether or not HBO would pick up the show for another season. Technically. The show has been a huge success for HBO, and is one of the network’s most-watched shows (along with True Blood).

#GameofThrones is renewed for a fourth season. RT & share this update with your friends across the realm. twitpic.com/cgh7ze

— Game Of Thrones(@GameOfThrones) April 2, 2013

4.4 million viewers tuned in for Sunday night’s season 3 opener, which is a couple hundred thousand more than tuned in for the season 2 finale – and even more than watched the season 2 opener.

But that 4.4 million number isn’t really representative of everyone who has watched the Game of Thrones premiere in the past few days.

Today we learned that the season 3 premiere broke BitTorrent records. In just a few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded, 163,088 people were sharing the single torrent – 110,303 actively sharing and 52,786 still downloading. That broke the previous record of 144,663 peers on a single torrent set after a Heroes season premiere. TorrentFreak estimated that over 1 million people had already downloaded the season 3 premiere. So your 4.4 million is looking more like 5.5 million and maybe even more who have actually watched the show since Sunday.

With numbers like this, Game of Thrones is well on its way to reclaiming the distinction of the most pirated show around – an honor the show took in 2012.

And some at HBO couldn’t really care less. HBO programming head Michael Lombardo recently said that Game of Thrones piracy is really more a compliment than a threat, and that it surely didn’t hurt DVD sales. He made a point to say that HBO still doesn’t support piracy of its content (obviously), but that they “haven’t sent out the Game of Thrones police.”

But the sheer volume it pretty staggering – in fact, it broke records.

TorrentFreak has the numbers: In just a few hours after the first torrent of the show was uploaded, 163,088 people were sharing the single torrent. That broke down to 110,303 actively sharing and 52,786 still downloading.

That’s a record in the world of BitTorrent tracking – the largest previous swarm belonging to a season premiere of Heroes with 144,663 peers.

If you take into account all of the torrents, TorrentFreak reports that estimates put the total number of Game of Thrones season 3 premiere downloads at over a million. That’s a performance that even a hard-to-satisfy Lannister patriarch can be proud of.

If you break down the numbers, the majority of sharers came from the United States (12.9%), barely topping the U.K., who took 11.5% of the pie. Australia came in third with 9,9% of the total downloaders.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons that so many people decided to torrent the show. It has a huge following, first and foremost. HBO’s international release delays don’t help either. Plus, there’s a large contingent in the U.S. (and elsewhere) that simply don’t subscribe to HBO and can’t get HBO GO because they don’t have cable. Many of these people would pay for a standalone HBO streaming service, but HBO is yet to offer that outside a few Scandinavian countries (although the prospects have gotten a bit better as of late).

But according to one HBO exec, this piracy is more of a compliment and less of a problem.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” HBO programming head Michael Lombardo recently told EW. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

And apparently, not everyone at HBO thinks that this is completely terrible.

HBO programming head Michael Lombardo recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly, and referred to the rampant Game of Thrones piracy as a “compliment of sorts.” Also, it’s not really hurting DVD sales.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Lombardo told EW. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

Lombardo also confirmed that per season, Game of Thrones is HBO’s #1 money machine.

Delving deeper in to the issue of piracy, Lombardo cited a concern that doesn’t have anything to do with HBO’s bottom line. He worried that viewers who download the show may be seeing an inferior product.

“One of my worries is about the copies [downloaders are] seeing. The production values of this show are so incredible. So I’m hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up.”

This isn’t HBO condoning the piracy of one of its most-popular shows. He make a point to remind us that HBO still attempts to stop piracy when it can. But, they “haven’t sent out the Game of Thrones police.”

Lombardo isn’t the first person associated with HBO to talk about piracy in this manner. Last month, frequent HBO director David Petrarca (GoT, Big Love, True Blood) hinted that shows like Game of Thrones rely on “cultural buzz,” and that downloading is part of that.

He quickly backtracked those comments, saying that Game of Thrones piracy was only a signifier of its popularity, not a cause of it.

HBO had this to say in the wake of that:

“Game of Thrones is sold worldwide, available legally on a large variety of viewing platforms and is one of HBO’s most popular series. With that kind of success comes a great amount of social media chatter, so can’t say we see an upside to illegal downloads.”

While we’re not seeing any monumental shift in the way one of the top cable content providers around views piracy, we are seeing a shift in how some people associated with that content think about it. Of course, if you’re serious about combatting piracy, ease of access to content usually helps – and this is something that HBO has been accused of failing on recently. Last month, HBO CEO Richard Plepler hinted that just maybe, HBO may offer HBO GO apart from cable subscriptions – possibly as a bundle with an ISP.

According to HBO Sports head Ken Hershman, yes. But HBO leadership aren’t all in the same boat, and another exec isn’t ready to spill the beans on any such project.

Speaking at Harvard Law School’s Sports Law Symposium, Hershman said that live sports, and specifically boxing, are coming to HBO GO “by the end of the year.

But HBO SVP of corporate affairs Jeff Cusson told The Verge that there are currently no plans for any such streaming offerings.

“We’re always exploring ways to enhance HBO Go, but we have no immediate plans to offer live boxing on the platform,” he said.

HBO’s sports division airs documentaries like the 24/7 series and weekly news programs like Real Sports, but when you think of HBO Sports it’s likely that you think of boxing.

So when the head of HBO Sports says that the company will bring sports content to their HBO GO subscription streaming service by the end of the year, you would think that he means boxing, right?

This isn’t the only hint that we’ve heard recently about HBO expanding their HBO GO service. Last week, HBO CEO Richard Plepler mentioned that it’s possible that the service could become available without a cable subscription, as a package deal with ISPs. And by “it’s possible,” we mean he said that maybe, just maybe, HBO GO could “evolve,” but right now they totally have the right model for the service.

Because the content is so good, people are willing to do just about anything to get to it. For some, that means paying over $100 a month for a cable subscription + HBO. For others who have cut the cord on cable, that usually means pirating it.

But that’s not because they’re cheap, or because they think that the content isn’t worth paying for. Quite the contrary, actually. At least one online campaign showed that people are more than willing to pay HBO, directly, for their content.

And until now, HBO has shut down any and all hopes of their content moving out from under the cable subscription umbrella. Until now.

HBO CEO Richard Plepler gave cordcutters a glimmer of hope this week. Speaking at the Game of Thrones season 3 premiere, Plepler said that offering HBO content (via HBO GO, the company’s on demand content hub) without requiring a cable subscription could maybe possibly might just may be an option, down the line, maybe.

“Right now we have the right model,” Plepler told Reuters. “Maybe HBO GO, with our broadband partners, could evolve.”

He went on to say that they would “have to make the math work.”

Not exactly a signal that HBO is planning to give up on the lucrative cable subscription-based model that has served them so well for so many years, but it sounds like Plepler is aware that the times may be a’ changing. Although abandoning the traditional distirubtion system system may be a shaky business call, Plepler seems to understand that there is an availability issue with HBO content:

“Doesn’t mean we are not mindful that the problem exists,” he said.

If HBO decided to go this route with an internet-packaged HBO deal, they know that they would have plenty of support for the venture. Last summer, a viral campaign saw hundreds of thousands of people take to Twitter and shout, “Take my money, HBO!”

The campaign was simple. Give us a standalone HBO GO service, free of cable requirements, and take our money. As in we’re ready to pay you for your content if you will just let us. People tweeted the price that they might pay for such a service, and the average was an impressive $12+ per month – a couple bucks more than Netflix. Some people even said that they would pay well over $20 per month for a cordless HBO GO service.

The effort received over 163,000 supporters in just two days.

Shortly after, HBO dismissed the whole thing with a single tweet, basically saying that their model was the right model for now. Thanks, but no thanks.

But these few words from HBO’s CEO gives cordcutters a little bit of hope that HBO could break at least a few of their ties with cable. It’s not like it would be a first for the company. Last year they launched HBO Nordic, a standalone streaming service like HBO GO, in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. It’s available for under 10 euros per month.

Hope. Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.