[jsz0]

It seems as though you're suggesting that the movie studios that spend tens, sometimes hundreds, of million of dollars to produce a single film should be forced to sell it to companies like Netflix for pennies. The basic problem here is that Netflix is selling a total fantasy product that does not pay the rights holders enough money. Look at the math -- $8/month for unlimited access? How does that possibly work when your cable bill is $80/month, a DVD/BR costs $15-$30, and a movie ticket costs $10-15? HBO, which shows more recent movies, is about $20/month by itself. Just to offer competitive prices to the rights holders I suspect Netlix would have to charge between $50-$75/month.

I'm generally all for government regulation as needed but this seems absurd. Why would any film company produce movies anymore? People (un)happily pay a lot more for the content today in other mediums. We're going to force the film industry to charge them a lot less to prop up Netflix and other streaming video services? Again I have to go back to the simple fact that Netflix has always been selling a fantasy and their troubles today are totally self inflicted. They convinced people they could spend an insanely small amount of money to get a huge amount of value/content. Netflix is almost a ponzi scheme.

[a3camero]

That said, Netflix does have the content and the media companies presumably didn't license it out of the goodness of their hearts.