Why a FOIA Request Probably Won’t Release Obama’s ‘Game of Thrones’ DVDs

President Obama is the only non-HBO employee on Earth who has access to Game of Thrones Season Six. One journalist is trying to change that—but it’s a serious long shot.

Vanessa Golembewski, a writer for Refinery29, filed a Freedom of Information request last Thursday to have the president’s advance DVDs released to the public. And the request has made progress—it’s now made it from the “Submitted” stage to “Evaluation,” according to FOIA’s website.

Sadly, even Golembewski herself has little hope the petition will work.

“That means a real-life person is looking at it and either having the best or worst day of her life,” she wrote after noticing the “Evaluation” status. "I am one step closer to what is bound to be an epic rejection letter."

Why such low expectations? The reason is in the Freedom of Information Act itself. Among the law’s exemptions is “a trade secret or privileged or confidential commercial or financial information.” And since the “GoT” season is a commercial product that HBO could reasonably call “privileged,” a FOIA request is unlikely to break through.

The other problem is that FOIA requests take a long time—121 days on average, according to one expert who spoke to the Poynter Institute—and the new Game of Thrones episodes will begin airing this Sunday.

On the plus side, the new GoT episodes will begin airing this Sunday.

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Nathan Place

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