[PeterStuer]

Services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video would be a lot more successful if only their catalogs in regions outside of the US would be comparable to their home turf.

If US clients would have the tiny tiny catalogs they offer e.g. in most of Europe, you would also be scratching your head how this could ever justify the subscription cost.

[mywittyname]

Could you imagine how great these services would be if copyrighted works fell into the public domain after 28 years instead of the nearly 100 years they are now?

[criddell]

I think being not available through legal means should be a defense (something like fair-use) for any copyright infringement claim.

[tenebrisalietum]

Unfortunately this either makes law or the notion of private property meaningless.

[nwallin]

I think the OP is only taking about media which was created for the purpose of being sold to people, and is easily copyable.

IMHO there are fundamental differences between that and something that was purchased to satisfy the needs of yourself or your close associates.

There's also a world of difference between a new paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring for $10, and a movie from some old company that went out of business in the '70s and whichever company bought up all the scraps never bothered to capitalize on the IP, and the movie can't be purchased (new) for any price anywhere. If it's been ten years since your media was commercially available, it should be at least temporarily public domain. If you want to assert that copyright, start selling it, then you can have exclusive access to selling it again.

It's dumb how much of 20th century history has been lost because of the march of ever dumber copyright laws.

[criddell]

Do the existing fair use defenses also make those concepts meaningless?

[jessaustin]

Sure, but in that case most current films would never have been made... or at least I got that distinct impression from MPAA.

[lotsofpulp]

It is in their benefit to claim that, regardless of the truth of the statement. Why would one trust a biased party such as MPAA?

[eikenberry]

I believe they were being sarcastic. No one would take the MPAA's word on something like this, they have an obvious bias.

[behringer]

Which films exactly took 28 years to turn a profit?

[sekh60]

Given Hollywood accounting and the topic of piracy I would be surprised if any films made a profit since the dawn of the MPAA.

[umvi]

That's not the point.

Valve turned a huge profit on Portal 2. Yet they refuse to make Portal 3. Why? Because compared to Steam, Portal 2 generates a tiny ROI by comparison.

Option A: invest $1 in Steam and get $10 back

Option B: invest $1 in Portal 3 and get $2 back

which do you do?

Same goes for movie industry. A movie promises returns for decades as it is milked and re-released in various formats. If the movie can only make money for 20-ish years, ROI goes down significantly. Read: "The Disney Vault" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

[behringer]

May I offer an alternative reason why Valve did not make Portal 3? It's because when you rehash the same game, people get sick of it. Sometimes a product needs to stand on it's own. Why harm the Portal franchise by being to quick to release, release, release?

Seems like hollywood is already on board with this. What do they need Ghostbusters to have a 100 year copyright on when they could just release a new Ghostbusters every 30-40 years like they're pretty much already doing.

[umvi]

If you don't plan on making Portal 3, don't tease Portal 3 with easter eggs like the Borealis.

[criddell]

I always thought Portal 3 never came out because nobody at Valve wanted to work on it.

[magduf]

Well, the entire movie industry doesn't even exist any more, because it was killed by the videotape, according to the MPAA. Remember, Jack Valenti of the MPAA asserted before Congress in the 1980s that videotape recorders would destroy the movie industry. So none of this should even be an issue now.

[w-j-w]

The MPAA is full of it on this one. Most investments happen with a payoff expected within a few years. In general,.investors don't care about what money they can make in 30 years.

[anongraddebt]

I just got back from vacationing in Greece and Croatia. Though I can't say whether the number of movies was higher or lower than in the states, I can say that the quality of films was much higher. Both my girlfriend and I complained multiple times that the movies we were watching in Europe were not available to us in the states.

[magduf]

Such movies would not be profitable in the US. Americans have no interest in those.

Of course, with digital distribution, the cost of actually making them available in the US should be extremely low, so it should still be profitable given there's a very small number of Americans who would watch them, surely more than the puny number who watch crappy old B-grade movies that are now available on YouTube. So I'm not sure why they don't bother.

[close04]

The major difference is that the EU does not behave like a unified body when it comes to purchasing the distribution rights. So Netflix negotiates with each country individually.

Unless you share it with family so more people get value out of it, it is indeed hard to justify the subscription for many people.

Edit:

> make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada

Is this a real protection against getting caught? I would have imagined Russia or the Ukraine to be better options for being outside of the reach of the FBI.

[PeterStuer]

Archaic distribution rights are indeed to blame. But this still leaves most of the world in an impasse with regards to a credible legal media streaming option for film and television.

(I am a Youtube Premium and an Amazon Prime subscriber btw)

[thayne]

I know it isn't quite as bad, but in the US, many European (or other foreign) are practically impossible to watch legally. Streaming services don't stream them, and dvds and blu rays are region-locked.

[blacksmith_tb]

Your local public library system may provide you with access to Kanopy[1] which has a good catalog of European films, along with other interesting titles not found on the paid services.

1: https://www.kanopy.com/

[pingyong]

Just yesterday I read something about the show "White Collar" and checked it out on Amazon Prime Germany. In German language it is available for free. I like to watch shows in their original language though. English costs 4€ per episode. Alright then, torrent it is.

[grammarxcore]

Frankly the cost in the US isn't necessarily worth it anymore. I've been a Netflix user since 2008/2009. Back when no one took VoD seriously, the catalogue was huge. You could actually get lost trying to find something because there was so much good content. Now, with every company attempting to cash in on their own platform, choices on a single platform are very, very limited. I've also noticed that many titles are shared between Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon so the illusion of choice is really just that.

I think original titles and foreign distribution (ie getting content from not your nation) are quickly becoming the only differences. That's what cable was when I moved away.

I have, quite honestly, consumed everything I'm incredibly interested in on the majors. None of them turn out originals fast enough to keep my interest and new/returning content comes in a trickle so I've recently turned to just buying old shows I like and watching those. It's just like the nineties/aughties all over but without the hope of what was then cable cutting.

[boring_twenties]

I'm in the US and currently scratching my head as to why the hell I haven't canceled my subscription years ago.

For as long as I can remember now, every Netflix experience boils down to spending 15-30 minutes looking for something remotely interesting before finally giving up and reading a book or playing a video game instead.

I'm not sure how much of the problem is them not having enough content, versus just their (at least on Android) godawful UI making it impossible to find, but the end result is the same.

[kgwxd]

Is the price cheaper in regions where the catalog is slim?

[icebraining]

No, there's no direct relationship: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/countries-netfl...