It’s much more expensive. You as a consumer can buy a movie for $5 with a DVD on sale. But tos generally don’t include commercial activities. If you reach out to the film studio to get their permission, they can charge you anywhere from $10K to $1M+ for same thing.

And I’m sure meta paid for some specific content but they generally wouldn’t want to set a precedent where they paid everyone.

> And I’m sure meta paid for some specific content

Are you? I don’t understand why you think this. It seems like the only payments in this area are settlements after the fact.

Counterexamples welcome.

Meta wants to make their service compatible with meta vr headsets. They don’t require ongoing access to the content. The media vendor would also benefit from this, so an agreement is in the interest of both parties.