> The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.

> Why is this so hard for the film industry?

My theory is that the United States has compulsory licensing for music, but not movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_Stat...

To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law. However, that doesn't hold true for movies. Each video streaming service has to negotiate the right to carry a given movie with the film studio that owns it. Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.

> The music industry figured this out

> Why is this so hard for the film industry

Music industry runs on barely paying any artist that cant fill a stadium. Movie industry runs on constantly re-licensing content to min-max their returns from IP. Music industry can happily barely pay musicians via the spotify model, but the Movie industry can't continually re-license their stuff to a higher bidder if it's all on one site.

>Why is this so hard for the film industry?

It boils down to money.

Movies & tv have higher monetary value to the studios than songs to the record labels.

So the ip owners of video content get more revenue by restricting it as exclusives to their respective platforms rather than licensing it out to everybody and get a smaller fractional payment from an everything-unlimited-catalog video streaming service.

E.g. HBO would rather get 100% of their own $16.99/month subscription -- vs -- licensing entire HBO catalog to Netflix and getting a fraction% of $17.99/month.

How much extra would Netflix conceivably have to charge per month such that the fractional amounts to each movie studio (HBO, Disney, etc) would be enough $$ that the studios wouldn't bother with their own exclusive streaming platforms? $99/month? $149/month? Right now, there isn't a number that Netflix + all studios + subscribers can converge on so instead, we get the current fragmented streaming platforms of video content.

For more evidence of how video content is more valuable than music (in terms of digital streaming platforms), consider that tech giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple -- all created their own movie & tv studio business to produce even more exclusives for their streaming platforms. But none of them have started their own record labels to sign musicians to get exclusive songs or albums.

I only understand the frustration with finding any legal avenue at all to see certain films. I don't really understand why disparate services are a big deal. You don't need to subscribe to multiple things all at once, and it's all done in a few clicks in the convenience of your own home.

I'm concerned and curious about one thing, which is that tech giants have a monopoly on renting. If you want to rent a digital movie that isn't otherwise available from subscription, you might be able to get it from MSFT, Google or Amazon. Meanwhile the telecoms only seem to offer this through cable machines, just new releases at that.

I'm interested in seeing a few Korean films, the kind that aren't on criterion or mubi. Basically no legal way to see them.

> Why is this so hard for the film industry?

The logic is pretty simple:

* It has been widely demonstrated that, in the US, many consumers are willing to pay more than $100/month for cable TV, with ads.

* Netflix costs $8/month with ads.

* Why leave that money on the table?

Music recording copyrights have a single owner, and can be licensed for streaming by that owner. Older movies have a lot of IP owned by various entities with licensing to allow for theatrical and home release, but all of which have to cooperate to make the movies available for streaming.

Old media competes with new media.

If you, as the rightsholder can just eliminate that competition without any further effort, it makes logical sense to do so.

Excessivly long copyright is what enables this.

Out of curiosity, what formats do they rent?

The length of time it takes for media to enter the public domain is absolutely absurd. It if didn't take over a century for works to enter the PD, we could say, "Eh, just wait a few years." But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.

If we had a more reasonable period like a decade, it would be a driver for creating new art, and prevent works from being locked away arbitrarily until our great-grandchildren can enjoy them (unless the art was just... lost to time).

Just wanted to watch a relatively recent movie yesterday (Antichrist) and the only place that has it is a streaming service called Mooby. Not signing up for a service to watch one movie. Would have gladly paid 4 bucks to watch it, so had to find it in the usual places instead.

My spouse loves watching old direct to home video movies and I'd say about 75% of them have no accessible copies outside maybe eBay. Most of the remainder are only available via piracy. A vanishingly small percentage are available from streaming platforms.

One that I wanted to watch recently was Disney's 2000 animation short John Henry. It's now part of the American Legends compilation, which is only available for purchase on Amazon, not rent. It's not even on Disney+.

It gets worse when you're looking for a movie only to realize it's different from what you remember. Either a change of substance (different scenes), or a change of form (adjusted color palette). Occasionally the original version is no longer officially available anywhere.

IMDB does something similar (it at least lists Wake Up Ron Burgandy as available for rent on Prime, doesn't mention iTunes or Fandango but I'm not logged in to IMDB so I'm not sure what's enabled/disabled as "preferred services" by default)

Plex does this as well.

Seems like a fair solution might be limiting damages on pirating movies that aren't widely available. For example, if a movie isn't available for streaming cap damages at $2.99 or whatever the going rental rate is.

Oh boy. That one. And Battle for Middle Earth 2.

Nobody wants my money, so to the bay we go.

>Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.

I searched the biggest used online (flea)marketplace in my country and I could find the DVD for sale from several people. So I can buy it and play it right now legally if I want to, without resorting to piracy.

What point were you trying to make with this? Because I also can't buy a brand new 1969 Ford Mustang. Nothing is made forever.

I live in a small country town. It's decent for its size, but it's very small.

In contrast, Archive.org is an absolutely fantastic library, and we're happy to support them.

Way better than my public library -- especially for hard-to-find media.

I wonder what the material difference is between borrowing a film from the library (is this DVD? Blu-ray? Streaming?) and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network.

I suppose it's an act of support for your public library. But no one with a financial stake in that particular media is impacted in any way by using either method to obtain the film.

Came here to recommend this. A viable option, at least until Republicans completely defund public libraries.

In fairness to Netflix, in the old days they only had to own a copy of the DVD in order to rent it out.

Now they have to secure rights for every title they want to stream. That’s a lot of work (and cost) for a hundred thousand titles, especially when your competitors own some of the studios that license those titles.

Disney, for example, owns the Disney / Marvel / Fox / Searchlight / Lucasfilm back catalogues and wants to hoard much of it for its own streaming service.

They've ended/sold/traded away many of their licensing agreements. Many things they used to have are gone.

It stinks because some of the things they tossed are mundane, but they add to the depth of the catalog if you're looking for something and improve the experience.

This is why I started getting into physical media. I was subbed to so many services, but I felt like only 15% of the time would any service I want have the movie (and almost never Netflix as they prefer their own content slop).

Useful but +95% of the films I watch are not available in my country :shrug:

Because they aren't trustworthy:

1)Disney-adjacent properties.

Look at the amazing spiderman 1, it was better than anything Marvel has released with Spiderman, it got trashed on for a very simple reason in my eyes, Disney wanted the rights for Spiderman and tried to force them to give them it (it worked) via giving it terrible reviews.

Opposite thing happened with Star Wars, another Disney "product", the new trilogy getting "amazing" reviews at the start was ridiculous, they were very bad movies, like terrible, the first one which was the most watchable of the three was just bad acting mixed in with nostalgia bait, didn't push the universe forward at all which the prequels get hate for but they did hugely expand what star wars was, in good ways. Even midichlorians which people gave so much hate to in episode 1, makes sense if you rewatch the OT, Darth Vader suddenly turning good is like "snapping" out of the trance state he was in, because as we know now, the "force" in star wars is not like morality in the real world, while you play a part in you getting taken "over" by a side (light/dark side), once it happens you sort of lose control, sort of like a hard drug in the real world, it takes a lot for someone who has given in to the dark side to go back to normal, which I believe makes for a better science fiction universe, the concept of only giving in enough to receive the power but not enough to become evil was even explored with mace windu with Vapaad, anyways.

Lastly, Black Adam, I watched it and the movie was objectively not beyond terrible for current day standards, it was a watchable popcorn flick and the CGI was very very good compared to Marvel movies which made the movie look cool, the main villain was uninspiring but so are most first movie villains, it's all about the setup. It received beyond terrible reviews in my opinion directed from Disney/Marvel in an attempt to fully kill competition especially during Marvel's weak point post endgame. I would have enjoyed seeing a movie of Superman vs Black Adam but it is what it is.

Lastly any anime movie competing with Disney, just look at the Oscars, how many anime movies get snubbed? I still remember being shocked at how when marnie was there did not win vs inside out... or how look back wasn't even nominated, lol.

> No one can argue that you’re stealing a product that’s not being distributed, the law specifically says you need to put in a reasonable amount of effort to commercialize something to claim it damages you for someone to steal it

The law literally does not say that, either for things that are literally subject to be stolen, or, more to the point here, for copyright protection where “steal” is merely a very loose metaphorical term sometimes used to refer to infringement.

Citation for that? I've never heard such an interpretation before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work

There's plenty of stuff that isn't listed there

Not OP, but yes believe it or not it's impossible to find certain movies anywhere other than pirating them. One example is "Pirates of Silicon Valley", I watched it when I was young and recently wanted to watch it again. I pay for basically all the streaming services, I'm would have been happy to rent it from any service at all. I spent several hours trying to find a way to pay to watch it and never could.

Who wants to rent? I have money, give me a file for money.

DRM is laughable anyway, if you give me the data I have the file if I really want it.

Let me, the consumer, legally purchase a high res copy of media I can own. Why is this so hard?

I'm guessing they can. They just don't want to.

>I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for <$5 on Prime or YouTube.

delve deep into most directors filmography from the 60s/70s/80s and you'll find plenty missing. Ken Russell, Robert Altman, etc

It happens to me often enough. Might be a matter of taste in movies?

Even when Amazon Prime has it, the rental terms are dogshit. I used to rent VHS and DVDs from the store and got to watch them as many times as I wanted for a week. With Amazon Prime, once I start watching it I only have 48 hours and then I have to rent it again. Friends coming over in 3 days and you think they'll like the movie you just rented? Too bad, have to pay them again.

It's flagrant bullshit that physical media, with real scarcity, had better rental terms than digital.

So why the hell shouldn't I pirate it? I get a better product, it's free, and all the people who made it are dead now anyway so spare me any bullshit moralizing.