Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content

The demand for content was met legally through the rise of Netflix and other streamers with large catalogs; consumers could pay one provider one price to get access to entire catalogs across creators.

Once this becomes so costly as each creator has their own minimum cost (HBO + Disney + Netflix + CBS + AMC et nauseum), users will pick only a small number of services, and users will start to go back to piracy in droves. The services will collapse due to lack of subscribers, but instead of going back to releasing the content back to the original services, they will instead sit on it... they won't get the original pricing from, say, Netflix or Hulu because they showed that the alternative, going alone, didn't work: no negotiating power, so they will simply sit on it, like the retail store locations left vacant for years until someone ponies up the expected rent.

This helps no one: the consumer won't pay, the services won't last, and the content gets shelved.

What might work: allowing rapid switching with credits that let one binge on different services for different time periods; allow aggregators to buy mass credits/subs and resell "group subs" that allow discounts to multiple services.

Otherwise, I think this will be a mess. When I start paying more than I did for cable to get the same access, that will be a problem.

No, I keep using both moral/legal.

It's their thing, so they get to set their rules for giving access to it.

What's immoral about "I created Star Wars 555 but only allow you to see it if you pay $10,000. Oh, and you only get to see it once for the price while I play the kazoo".

That's their proposition. The buyer can simply decline.

>* They didn't just boycott the technology, but the law as well - that shows that the public do not value those laws, and the laws were erected in contradiction to the will of the people. No?*

Only as much as DIU shows that the people don't value driving laws.

We can still say that pirating doesn't show that they don't value those laws, as much as that they found an easy way to bypass them and not get caught.

If they get it will be entirely up to the parents.

But if you're keen to know their chances; We don't even have Netflix. :)

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to miss video rental shops.

Well laws are meant to be interpreted rather than followed verbatim. But that genuinely wasn't the point of my post and I'm certainly not advocating piracy. That doesn't mean I have to agree with how the movie industry is run either.

My point was that Disney should be upping their game to make their content more accessible rather than making it harder and using their monopoly via intellectual property laws to force their market position. That just seems really disingenuous with the point of intellectual property - like how Apple and Samsung went to war.

Copyright law wasn't intended to last the period of time it does. In fact copyright law was first conceived to allow publishers to make money from publishing but then the information was always intended to go into the public domain. Granted we are talking about 300ish years of history (IIRC) and times change but given the profits Disney are raking in you can hardly argue that they haven't recouped their production costs. However I'm not trying to argue against capitalism here either. My real issue with Disney is that they have been one of the biggest campaigners of extending copyright law, and also one of the biggest abusers of the public domain with a multitude of stories adapted and then trademarked (Jungle Book, Little Mermaid, Cinderella, etc). They make billions from "stealing" public domain stories and yet people like yourself complain if someone suggests pirating Disney's work as an alternative (I'm not by the way, but you assumed I had) and that seems somewhat unfair in the general sense when Disney have intentionally priced themselves out of reach for many parents. As an aside: I think the fact that Disney often targets younger audiences really helps them here as well because it makes it harder for parents to boycott their services.

This is why I say I'd rather see them working with existing providers instead of running their services in their own silo forcing people to pay for yet another subscription service just to access Disney content. You're right they have no legal nor economic obligation to do so; but I think respecting your customers wishes should count for something given that in any other industry customers could vote with their feet and easily switch services.