I think what network execs need to understand is the way feedback loops work. Essentially, piracy creates a positive externality. People don't consume TV Shows (or movies) on their own. They're something you watch with friends, or that you talk about around the water cooler. People pirating shows means more people are able to talk about the show, which in turn increases demand to watch as well: you don't want to be the guy who doesn't know what's going on with the show everyone else talks about. But if most people don't have HBO (and could not otherwise obtain the show), then you simply don't talk about shows like Games of Throne. Which in turn lowers the utility from watching the show - you lose the social aspect of talking about it.
This is precisely what Google has been pushing on the industry. Yes, you will lose money when your price drops on individual sales...but if you obtains millions of new customers, you come out ahead. The record labels constantly talk about how revenue is falling, yet they fail to mention it's revenue for their business, and not for the industry as a whole. The industry as a whole has seen a 300% jump in ticket sales, and something like a 25% jump in song sales--the problem for record labels is that many of these artists are now distributing on their own, or with very tiny labels (Who take only production cuts, IE fair cuts.)
The only reason record companies are holding on at all is because they are using their copyright libraries as leverage with radio broadcasters. Much like the media companies use their copyrights (Or money) to leverage the cable companies. Essentially they are telling these companies that if they play independent artist X, then they won't be able to lease Rihanna or other big name song Y. This keeps them firmly as the gatekeeper in radio market--and they are doing this even with internet radio. This is why, lately, you hear tons of good songs in commercials, or movies and wonder why you haven't heard them on the radio--it's because they were released independently and weren't allowed to get popular because these shit heads blocked them for trying to keep their own money--eventually if they get popular enough, the label caves and gives them a non-slave contract and you'll hear them on the radio.
But that's the thing, all this great music and TV isn't even getting made, or isn't making money when it is made, because these fucks block the way to TV--which scares off investors, because such a big market gets closed down. And there is NO REASON for these guys to have this power, except for the fact that copyright laws and end user monopolies (As I posted about before) give them such massive power over needed content for TV and Radio stations. These monopolies are killing innovation and growth in the industry, all so some executive can continue to line his pockets as nothing more than a modern bridge troll.
How anyone can sit here and be mad at pirates while these fucks have cost us billions in economic growth is beyond me. Google understands that if people could just produce on their own, and then other people could CHOOSE what they wanted through an OPEN market, rather than have some asshole dictate what they get to see, you'd have a much, much larger customer base to exploit. Which means more ad revenue, more tertiary sales of placement products, more overall sales of the actual product--but of course, people who simply trade in copyright holdings would be useless, which is why they are on the other side of the fence and fighting them in congress under the "noble" cause of protecting the poor camera men, or artists, or directors, which these terrible, life sucking pirates are
stealingfrom!
