Take My Money, HBO is a growing online campaign aimed at getting HBO, the American subscriber-TV network and home of the Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm, to provide those without American cable, both "cord-cutters" and international audiences, a way to pay directly for the channels HBO streams through its HBOGO online service.
Currently, you can only receive HBOGO – the company's equivalent of BBC's iPlayer – if you subscribe to a participating American cable channel. Which isn't the best thing to tell people who want to move all their TV viewing online, or who don't actually live in America.
There are other ways to get HBO content, of course; you can wait until the DVD box set comes out, or buy it from iTunes once it is released there. But both of those are on a huge delay; the downloads and DVDs for Game of Thrones were finally made available this March, 11 months after the series started airing.
Alternatively, there is piracy. The day after most episodes aired, they were available in HD, for free, on sites like The Pirate Bay.
Clearly, that's not optimal. This comic, from earlier this year, neatly sums up the issues many had: Programs have aired, people are talking about them, but without a 1990s-style TV set-up, you can't actually watch them legally.
Hence, "Take My Money". The site asks users to tweet at HBOGO the amount they would be willing to pay for a subscription to the service; the average suggestiong is around $12 a month, according to TechCrunch
The business rationale at the first instance seems compelling. Digitopoly's Joshua Gans explains:
HBO has 29 million subscribers in the US paying around $10 per month. HBO receives $8 of that. That would seem to suggest that HBO couldn’t lose by offering a $12 per month subscription.
The fear for the company could be that, if they made another way to access their content, the cable companies would reduce their cut of the premium. But as Gans points out, in the US, where cable is the main form of broadband, most will keep a subscription of some sort anyway, and internationally, many have no option to get HBO at all.
The bigger problem is that HBO is far more intricately tied-up in the standard model of TV distribution than they might like to be. For one thing, it is in fact owned by Time Warner, the American broadcasting giant. For another, as Dan Frommer points out, there simply isn't the right infrastructure for such a thing to happen. HBO would have to support every major video game console, Mac OS, Windows, and probably Apple TV just to have a hope of getting on enough TV screens to even pay the money it cost to set up the system, let alone recoup the lost revenue from cancelled subscriptions.
And internationally the situation isn't much better. In the UK, Sky has forked out a reported £150m for a five-year exclusive with HBO; you can bet they wouldn't have paid nearly that much if it was available to anyone paying £10 online.
All of which means that if you are in the small (but likely over-represented in the New Statesman's readership) percentage of the UK population which watches barely any TV except for high-quality US imports, you are likely to have to carry on waiting or pirating for some time. Disruption may come to the market, but unless they are forced to, HBO just aren't going to take your moeny.
Finance ministry rejects ATEbank wind-down report - Athens News
Money laundering charges laid against GTA lawyer Kenneth James - Toronto Star
A 71-year-old lawyer from Etobicoke has been charged with money laundering in connection with a two-year international drug investigation by the RCMP that has resulted in arrests and freezing of assets worth more than $7 million.
On Thursday, police officers raided the Steeles Ave. office of lawyer Kenneth James, as well as a home on Willowridge Rd. in Etobicoke.
James has been charged with money laundering, possessing the proceeds of crime and fraud over $5,000.
A 61-year-old employee, Rosemary Cremer, has also been charged with money laundering and possessing the proceeds of crime.
Cremer shares a residence with James, according to Det. Insp. Derek Matchett, of the RCMP’s Integrated Proceeds of Crime unit. The Etobicoke home raided Thursday was purchased by Cremer in 1993, property records show.
Matchett said the RCMP began a two-year investigation into James shortly after an international drug investigation began in May 2010.
That investigation has led to arrests and the freezing of $7 million in assets, he said. Matchett said he cannot talk about the drug investigation because it is currently covered by a publication ban.
“This is a very complicated case and … we have a lot of work ahead of us,” he said Friday. “What we’re talking about is drug traffickers who make millions of dollars and then need to place that money into financial institutions — or need to ‘clean’ it, for lack of a better word.”
Charges have also been laid against three companies: James and Associates, Eveline Holdings Inc., and Sterling Capital Inc. The RCMP alleges these companies are under the control of James and were used to launder the proceeds of crime, Matchett said.
In May 2010, James was charged with professional misconduct by the Law Society of Upper Canada. In a notice of application, the Law Society alleged that James knowingly assisted with “fraudulent or dishonest conduct” in connection with some mortgage transactions in which he represented the lenders, vendor and purchaser.
The proceedings do not appear to have concluded, and James is still listed as a licensed lawyer on the Law Society’s website.
James has also been involved with a number of civil cases involving real estate deals. In 1990, he was sued, along with several other defendants, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The church alleged that James and the other defendants defrauded them in connection with four land purchases.
James was also sued in connection with legal services he provided between 1996 and 1999 on six condo units in Orillia. Two condo owners sued after the condo mortgages defaulted in 2001, alleging James had a conflict of interest and was in breach of contract and fiduciary duty.
In 2006, James filed for bankruptcy in Ontario. He declared in his bankruptcy filing that he had $4,505,000 in liabilities and $1,418,500 in assets.
James and Cremer were both expected to appear in a Newmarket court on Friday afternoon.
MONEY MARKETS-Spanish downgrade piles pressure on banks - Reuters
* Downgrade likely to hike repo costs for Spanish banks
* Spanish banks seen increasingly reliant on ECB cash
By Emelia Sithole-Matarise
LONDON, June 8 (Reuters) - Fitch's credit rating downgrade of Spain compounds funding problems for the country's struggling banks which may leave them even more reliant on the European Central Bank's cheap loans.
Fitch slashed Spain's credit rating late on Thursday, leaving it just two notches short of junk status. It signalled more downgrades could follow as expectations grew Madrid would ask the euro zone for help with recapitalising its stricken banks.
Cuts to individual Spanish banks' ratings are due to follow, which could complicate their use of repurchase markets which have been an important source of short-term cash.
Many of the big Spanish banks use clearing houses to reduce the risk and cost of repo trades using government bonds but the ratings downgrade will boost the cost, or the initial margin clearers require to offset risks.
"This means that for a number of banks...(that) clear through LCH.Clearnet the financing will become much more expensive through repo and it's possible that some banks will not be allowed to clear if they fall below BB+," said Don Smith, an economist at ICAP.
"LCH uses the most conservative of the ratings so this will have an impact of raising, if not immediately but after a short period, the cost of repo financing to banks which increases their reliance for short term funds from the ECB," he said.
Already earlier this week, banks' use of the ECB's weekly funding more than doubled as Spain's troubles left its institutions increasingly dependent on central bank support and as four Greek banks returned to mainstream ECB operations following a two week ban.
The ECB's weekly offering of limit-free 7-day funding saw a total of 96 banks take 119.4 billion euros, the highest since the second of its two 3-year injections at the end of February and more than double the 51.2 billion euros taken a week ago.
BANK RESCUE DETAILS EYED
Spanish banks have increasingly seen their access to funding markets shrink as they slid deeper into a crisis caused by a burst real estate bubble and the country's deteriorating fiscal situation.
"Effectively they were already locked out of the market...so it's not of huge concern as they were prevalent in tapping the ECB's liquidity operations," said Suki Mann, a credit strategist at Societe Generale.
"The latest downgrade doesn't help and it will mean they will need accommodative policy from elsewhere either from the ECB or some form of aid from the troika for the recapitalisation.".
The cost of insuring against a default by the country's banks jumped after Fitch's downgrade of the country's rating, with five-year credit default costs for Banco Santander rising by eight basis points to 412.5 bps while those for BBVA were up five bps at 447.5 bps, according to provider Markit.
Both Smith and Mann said they would wait to see the details of any planned Spanish bank rescue to see how far it would go in tackling the sector's problems.
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