[silisili]

It's weird. When Netflix came about, I was excited to dump all the bespoke pirating stuff that it replaced. I didn't mind paying for content, in fact, I was glad to.

Fast forward a while, and now Netflix seems to be an undiscoverable mess of old and foreign content while charging twice as much. Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, there are things just not available on any of them. And now, more than ever, the high seas seem so enticing again.

I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented, but they really soured people on their value proposition.

[chii]

> how they ruined the opportunity presented

netflix didn't really ruin it themselves (at least, not completely) - the owner of the licensed content did, by wanting a bigger cut of the pie. Disney, for example, didn't feel they're paid enough, and so stopped licensing the content out to netflix and instead created a competing service.

I think this is a regulatory issue, because each piece of content is an effective island of monopoly. The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly. An example policy would be to force content production studios from exclusive licensing - only broad and available licensing (so any streaming service can pay a known price and obtain the content).

Something similar exists with cinemas and movie producers (of course not quite the same). Why couldn't the same or similar be for streaming?

[dotancohen]

  > The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly.

Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it.

Now you could argue that some (much) older works are part of culture, and being exposed to that culture is necessary to function in society. But that then becomes an issue of how long copyright is necessary or reasonable. New works most certainly should be allowed to be monopolized by their creators - even if that means that some potential consumers are priced out of experiencing them.

You don't need to see every Disney movie. In fact, not seeing some of them will raise the bar to make better movies and will cause competition to emerge.

[b112]

Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it.

That's not the point. The parent was saying "if you own content and display content, you must license it", not "the price needs to be reasonable".

Typically, there are ways to do this. One way is forcing a company's distribution and streaming to be separate, and this already exists in some other parts of the market.

So if Disney sells Mickey Mouse content $x to its own streaming service for $5, they have to do the same for Netflix. Disney can still set the price. It just has to pay it as well, and that reflects on its own balance sheet. The problems involved in regulating this have already been solved in other markets, it's a solved issue.

Now, you can typically enter volume sales agreements still. So Disney streaming can buy 100k 'streaming options' for $4 if they hit the volume. But that means the same agreement has to be available to, say Netflix.

Of course, the same will be true for any Netflix created content!

Nothing is perfect, but this is the sort of common carry stuff that separates out 'cable companies' from 'TV studios', and there's been loads of legislation about this over the years.

[throw0101c]

> That's not the point. The parent was saying "if you own content and display content, you must license it", not "the price needs to be reasonable".

Or perhaps creation and display/distribution cannot be done by the same entity / conglomerate.

[dotancohen]

  > Or perhaps creation and display/distribution cannot be done by the same entity / conglomerate.

So if I as an artist paint a painting, I could not sell it in my small personal gallery by the beach? That is ridiculous.

[throw0101c]

> So if I as an artist paint a painting, I could not sell it in my small personal gallery by the beach? That is ridiculous.

It is so ridiculous that it is how movies were made and distributed in the US for decades:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_system#The_end_of_the_s...

[b112]

Everything like this has been worked out, handled, discussed, passed into laws, challenged by courts, all of it.

Typically, the size of the entity has some bearing on things. There are hundreds of pieces of legislation, which only affect companies (for example), with 50+ employees. Whatever complaint you have, or edge case you mention, it can be handled.

We are obviously discussing Disney here. So when people discuss Disney, and large-corp distribution, suddenly running in and applying the logic to a single person, is what is ridiculous.

[edmundsauto]

FWIW, I think this is what led to the car dealership world we live in.

[dotancohen]

That is because cars require maintenance and parts, so laws were enacted which ensured that a liable party would be located in the end user's jurisdiction.

Streaming services are not critical infrastructure that require an active supply chain.

[account42]

You got this the wrong way around: If no one needs Mickey Mouse then why should we so severely restrict everyone's speech to encourage its creation.

[dotancohen]

I agree completely. I address that in the mention of culture.

[troupo]

> Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it.

As if Disney only owned original content like Mickey Mouse. Or as if Disney didn't own huge swaths of culture.

[watwut]

You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have.

Yes copyright should be shorter. Yes, these companies abuse artists to the maximum they can away with. But there is zero reason to create state monopoly around this.

[troupo]

> You can happily ignore Disney. You are elevating it to status it does not have to have.

I'm not eleveating Disney to anything. It already is at that level. It owns huge swaths of, well, everything spanning back decades.

For example there was a minor viral news that Winnie the Pooh finally entered public domain. Well, Disney owned it exclusively from 1953 to 2021. All of it, from print to video.

Pooh is just the most famous and advertised example. Since Disney owns most of movie and TV production in the States, through that alone they own rights to a huge number of written works. That's before we go into how many audio and visual media they own.

Disney isn't just Mickey Mouse and Marvel. There was an article on HN yesterday on how the author "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" finally got the rights back after 35 years: https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/

Next time you watch a movie you like or even read a book you like there's a very high chance it's owned by Disney (or some other huge license holder).

Or if you can't find that movie or book you like anywhere? Same reason.

> But there is zero reason to create state monopoly around this.

I didn't say anything about this or imply anything of the kind.

Besides, copyright literally exists only due to state exercising its power.

[watwut]

There are hundreds minor viral news about a lot of stuff daily. I am not even trying to keep up with it all.

> Next time you watch a movie you like or even read a book you like there's a very high chance it's owned by Disney (or some other huge license holder).

And in all seriousness, very likely not, because the ones you keep mentioning are not the stuff I would read or my kids would read. My kids do watch some superheroes, I dont because I find that super boring. Like I said, you can happily ignore the Disney.

I agree that they abuse artists to the max, that artists should have more rights and corporations less of them. But, Disney is really not necessary and ignoring it is perfectly workable strategy.

[Levitating]

Hot take, we don't _need_ Marvel or Star Wars either.

[troupo]

We don't need many things. Basically everything in our culture is things we don't need.

And yet the next time you find yourself watching that cozy Christmas movie you fondly remember, chances are its owned by Disney. As is that book you read to your kids. Etc.

[johnnyanmac]

>Why?

I don't really care how streaming shakes down, except for how companies dodge paying creators.

But it's been clear for decades the DMCA and fair use laws needs a huge overhaul for the modern internet works. You make a 45 minute documentary, but some 10 second sample of a VEVO pop song can get your content taken down anyway? All fanart is technically under a gray area as well. All that is something that would benefit from reviewing content licensing.

[mvdtnz]

Your system simply makes society worse for the benefit of a handful of companies. So, why? To make society better.

[xandrius]

Yeah but think of any other piece of media and how people might be forced to start a brand new subscription just to see it.

It's not about Mickey Mouse but it's about you wanting to watch the next season of something and having to make a choice: either submit to the monopoly or skip.

Consumer protection should be there to prevent this kind of abuse of IP.

Imagine if every single individual piece of art was in its own individual subscription-based location in the world ran by a different owner, being the only way to enjoy it. That'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

[philipallstar]

None of this is abuse. It's a leisure activity that you have to pay for, and people have the right to sell their work how they like. It's not exactly access to clean running water.

[account42]

They only have that right because society has deemed it beneficial for everyone to give them that right. If it is no longer beneficial overall then they should no longer have that right.

[philipallstar]

If you want to abolish private property in the name of watching things on Netflix then that's your choice, of course.

Unless we see the horror that lack of private property rights has visited on people over the centuries and deem your right to believe things to no longer be beneficial overall.

[dotancohen]

Actually, most art is housed in either private locations or paid museums. Certainly most well-known art. You pay the owner of e.g. the Louvre to see e.g. the Mona Lisa.

[troupo]

> You pay the owner of e.g. the Louvre to see e.g. the Mona Lisa.

That owner is the French state that heavily subsidises The Louvre. On top of that no one prevents you from taking pictures or videos of Mona Lisa, re-drawing it any way you like, and posting those photos and videos and drawings and what not anywhere.

Additionally, there's nothing preventing museums just exhibiting their collections anywhere, and they do that frequently.

Meanwhile Disney not only has exclusive rights to an insane amount of properties [1], they will sue you for breach of copyright.

[1] My favorite example is Winnie the Pooh. Disney had exclusive rights to the character and stories for 70 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh#Disney_exclusi...

So while (most) of the Western world was/is in the chokehold of Disney, other parts of the world had completely different takes on the character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlk7O2-rnQs

[throw0101c]

> That owner is the French state that heavily subsidises The Louvre. On top of that no one prevents you from taking pictures or videos of Mona Lisa, re-drawing it any way you like, and posting those photos and videos and drawings and what not anywhere.

The Eiffel Tower copyright on the other hand:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Illumination_copy...

* https://www.travelandleisure.com/photography/illegal-to-take...

* https://www.headout.com/blog/eiffel-tower-copyright/

* https://www.rd.com/article/eiffel-tower-illegal-photos/

[batiudrami]

There is tonnes of private art in the world you are simply not able to see at all.

Many of these TV shows also come to DVD/Blu-Ray eventually.

[hulitu]

> Now you could argue that some (much) older works are part of culture, and being exposed to that culture is necessary to function in society

No. When people start using their brains, they become a danger for society. That's why their brain shall have access only to strictly necessary things like cheap violence and cheap emotions. /s

[bambax]

Yes there should be something like a "mechanical license". Content owners would set their own price but it would be the same for everyone and they shouldn't have the power to pick their licensees.

[mcintyre1994]

Wouldn’t Disney just set an insanely high license fee in this case though? If they’re just paying it to themselves then they can make it high enough that nobody else can justify paying it.

[chii]

This problem was also an issue for movies and theaters. The "fix" is to ensure theaters (the distributors) cannot be owned by, nor can they own production studios.

So under this rule, if disney wanted to have their own streaming service and used a high licensing fee to try stop competitors from their content, they'd pay high taxes due to the high licensing fees making huge (fake) profits for the parent company - it'd end in losses, as the streaming service (as a separate company) cannot bill their cost onto the parent company (to offset the profit). It's as if the tax man gets to sit in the middle, and siphon part of that license fee for free. Disney shareholders would never stand for that, and so they won't do it.

[eitland]

Could borrow the concept of FRAND (Fair, Reasonable And Non Discrimatory IIRC) from tech companies licensing patents?

I don't know much about it and I do not think it is perfect, but from what I remember from discussions here it prevents certain forms of abuse.

[rusk]

I don’t think such an obvious scheme could escape the view of the monopoly laws could it?

[philipallstar]

I don't think you can have a monopoly on stuff you own. That's like saying I have a monopoly on my own house.

[rusk]

Ha. Guess you’ve not much grasp on how competition law works huh

[mcny]

The idea of a mechanical license sounds perfect. Sorry to go off a tangent but my mind immediately went to healthcare as I have never heard of a mechanical license before.

can the same idea be applied to healthcare? for example, hospitals and doctors can set their own rates but these rates have to be public and they can't charge one insurance lower rate? If they charge anyone a lower rate, they have to charge the same rate for everyone.

[dpark]

> these rates have to be public and they can't charge one insurance lower rate? If they charge anyone a lower rate, they have to charge the same rate for everyone.

The problem with this is that it takes away only half of the negotiation. Doctors are now obliged to charge $X consistently but insurance is not obliged to pay it. So the negotiation process seems broken, and seems like it would cause a lot of bad faith negotiations from the insurers. “Eh, we’ll pay you minimum wage. Don’t like it? We’ll just wait until someone else finds your actual minimum and then you can pay us that.”

It’s also not clear what happens if Doctor A charges 10% more than Doctor B at the same medical facility. If you see Doctor A, can your insurance decline that even though they would have paid Doctor B’s rate?

Of course the current process is broken too.

[rusk]

This also solves the sports coverage issues. The clubs still make money but it’s the media companies that must compete on quality of service, punditry etc rather than it being an exclusive license to make money

[akho]

Or just enforce United States v. Paramount Pictures.

[helsinkiandrew]

> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly

That sounds similar to the 1984 Cable Communications Act (where large cable operators were required to lease channels to others, separating content delivery from content creation) but in reverse! requiring content producers to licence content to distributors

[bbatha]

Don't forget shortening copyrights would have a major impact on this issue as well! 25 year copyright would make most of these libraries public domain. Then the price would truly reflect what we would all like to be subsidizing: the new stuff.

Does the rights to Friends being traded around for the Nth time really benefit anyone?

[Sander_Marechal]

It also exist for e.g. radio. It's called compulsory licensing and people have been doing it for decades.

[contrarian1234]

I mean.. if Netflix offered Disney more money then they wouldn't have felt it necessary to launch their own service. I think they simply underpayed or overplayed their cards. It's hard to imagine Disney with it's own service is getting the same amount of people viewing its content.

Having the services fractured just ends up with everyone making less money. Both the streaming services and the IP holders

Its possible Disney just completely overestimates how much they can make on their own - but market forces should correct for that eventually. We aren't privy to the accounting that went in to the decisions. They currently are making some amount of money off of their streaming service. If Netflix could offer substantially more than that amount (and more customers this way), then I don't see why they wouldn't shut it down

[troupo]

> if Netflix offered Disney more money then they wouldn't have felt it necessary to launch their own service

Oh. "Just" offer them more money. Where would that money come from, exactly?

> Its possible Disney just completely overestimates how much they can make on their own

You underestimate how much content Disney owns, and how much of it is basically free for them ar this time

[gwd]

There's a sort of joke in academia, about the "least publishable unit" for a paper: Since "how many papers produced" is much easier to measure than "impact on a field", one way to try to game the system is to figure out the smallest amount of research that can be called "one paper", and publish just that, to maximize the papers / research effort ratio.

What we're seeing now is the same thing for streaming services. Sure, you'd pay £20 for a subscription to watch 75% of all available content. But it turns out most people would pay £40 for two subscriptions, each of which would show you 35% [EDIT and even people who won't, will still pay one £20 subscription for 35% of the content]; and quite a few people would pay £100 for five subscriptions, each of which will show you 12%. The beancounters are busy experimenting to find the "least bundle-able unit", to maximize extraction.

EDIT: And as someone else has pointed out, this is not something that any Netflix -- or any potential replacement -- can unilaterally do something about. In fact it's a "tragedy of the commons" situation: If MGM and Universal Studios and Paramount and WB all license their content to Netflix (under the £20 umbrella), and Disney doesn't, then Disney gets to keep a massive amount of money for themselves, while the other rights-owners have to divide up the rest. It only takes one or two "defectors" to basically force everyone to do the same thing.

[jbstack]

Or you can pay £0 per month for 99% of the content.

I'm a bit like the parent comment. I've always wanted to be able to pay a monthly fee (even a high one, say £50 a month) to have access to a good quality selection of movies and TV shows. The thing is, it's always bugged me that you can get a much better experience by pirating than by paying for legitimate access. That seems the opposite to how things should work.

This pre-dates streaming. DVDs came with FBI warnings and other screens that couldn't be fast-forwarded or skipped. You couldn't buy a DVD in the US and play it in a DVD player in Europe because the "region" didn't match. You couldn't easily transfer it to watch on a device without a DVD player because of the DRM.

All of this means that, even ignoring the fact that it's free, it's just far more straightforward to torrent a movie and watch it wherever you want using whatever app you want.

[freetime2]

I think I actually enjoyed Netflix more when they used to send DVDs in the mail. The library of movies felt much more complete, and getting stuff in the mail is fun. And it’s probably a healthier way to watch than binging 3 seasons of some mediocre show in a weekend just to see how it ends.

[turnsout]

Yeah, I think younger people don't realize how limiting Netflix's library is today. They used to have absolutely everything. If it was released on DVD, they had it.

Now if I want to watch a movie or TV show, I need to consult an aggregator [0] to figure out where it's streaming.

As a nerd, I was so excited about the early days of streaming, as it felt like the inevitable path for a company like Netflix.

Now though, I'm way past subscription fatigue. I've seen movies I "purchased" on iTunes be silently swapped out for other versions as the licensing changed.

So I recently bought a Blu-ray player for the first time, and I'm assembling a library of plastic discs. This might be the last physical media format for video, so I want to support it and grab some of these titles while they're available.

[0]: https://www.justwatch.com

[sixhobbits]

The only way to make money from business is by bundling or unbundling.

Netflix made money by bundling, now others are making money by unbundling.

We'll get another netflix era in the next decade or so

[bolobo]

> I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented, but they really soured people on their value proposition.

I think that they took the opportunity and milked it as much as they could. They are making a lot of money, have a ton of subscriber and are very successful.

They don't care if you are happy about the service as long as enough people pay for it. And it seems to be working.

[herunan]

It was inevitable. Netflix rose thanks to studios and distributors selling them rights to content for peanuts. Streaming wasn’t taken seriously as it wasn’t a main source of revenue. Some years later and it’s a completely different story. Demand for streaming sky-rocketed, digital rights value increased and now every studio wants to create their own walled gardens.

[2WSSd-JzVM]

At the very beginning Netflix was able to get licences for very cheap, as owners didn't think of it as serious service and it was not impacting their sales on other channels. That isn't going to happen again.

[throw0101c]

> Each IP owner felt it necessary to make their own way worse clone, and still, after paying more than a hundred a month, there are things just not available on any of them.

I wonder how hard—technically/legally, not 'politically'—it would be to create a 'neutral' streaming service where all the major studios and IP holders could become a part of as a part of a co-op (?).

After costs are taken care of, the holder of the IP would get the leftover profits proportional to the number of minutes their content was viewed in any given pay period.

[jasode]

>I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented,

Money. It's easier to understand it if you realize each studio is trying to maximize its own revenue.

Consider the common advice given to content creators and startups : "You don't want to be a sharecropper on somebody else's platform."

Well, the other studios like Disney, HBO-WarnerBros, Paramount, etc are just taking that same advice by not being beholden to Netflix's platform.

E.g. Instead of Disney just simply licensing all of their catalog to Netflix and then just getting a partial fraction of Netflix's $17.99 subscription revenue, Disney would rather create their own platform and get 100% of their own $19.99 revenue. In addition, the Disney+ subscribers are Disney's customers instead of Netflix's.

Everybody avoiding the "sharecropping" model inevitably leads to fragmentation of content. Everybody pursuing their self-interested revenue maximization leads to not sharecropping on Netflix's platform because Netflix (i.e. the Netflix subscribers) won't pay the equivalent higher prices that Disney thinks they can get on their own.

To create a truly unified video streaming service with everything for one cheap monthly price means multiple studios have to willingly give up revenue. Most customers are not willing to pay Netflix a hypothetical $150+ per month such that all studios like Disney think it's a waste of money to maintain their own exclusive digital streaming service and would be happy with the fractional revenue share from Netflix.

[benterix]

> old and foreign content

I don't really mean old, I'd even say old movies were "better" in the sense of more variety, also foreign is often not a problem provided it's good (my favorite genre here is comedies like Norsemen or British Ghosts).

What I really dislike is this bland, characterless, boring, inauthentic, unengaging, but neverending stream of pulp that Netflix is producing and promoting. Most people I know just got fed up with it.

Personally I watch maybe one movie a month, and when I do, I make sure my time won't get wasted.

[matips]

Corporations care primarily about their position relative to other corporations; you and piracy is not concerns for them. Disney, Warner Bross and similar media corporations fears monopoly of Netflix. You cannot harm them thru piracy, Netflix can.

[johnnyanmac]

>you and piracy is not concerns for them.

Sure it does. It's just that piracy is still pretty low right now compared to 20 years ago. Most people are boiling in the pot still.

It'll work or a while, until the frog evaporates. Then it'll all fall apart quickly.

[jlengrand]

And worse, when you search they KNOW what you want to watch and will show you EVERYTHING they have that is NOT what you want. Infuriating, I reverted back to the old ways a year back and haven't regretted it.

Same with Spotify, who has a solid catalog that I was happy to pay for. Now I pay double, for podcasts, shows, and now even freaking videos that I have never wanted or asked for and have no choice to not take.

And now they also the audacity to show me ads on PAID PLANS.

They don't deserve our money, customer focus is long gone.

[matips]

I am thinking of cancelling my Spotify Premium subscription because they introduce extra paid channels on top on paid Premium subscription.

[jlengrand]

Really? Darn, that is such BS. I was already looking out to be fair, only reason I'm still there is because of my family plan and older parents who will struggle to switch.

That being said, I don't mind additional plans to be fair. Let me pay for what I use, not what you force down my throat. What I mind is the constant enshittification.

[mft_]

> I'll never really understand how they ruined the opportunity presented

Greed, “growth”, “shareholder value” —> enshittification?

[gabrielgio]

And in this case, the enshittification of the whole streaming industry. In the same fashion as USA's "publisher can't own a venue", publisher shouldn't be allowed to own a stream service as well.

[johnnyanmac]

greed, as always. It's an interesting Tragedy of the Commons. Though "commons" is a weird word to use for private corporations.

They could have charged $50 a month if everything were truly in one place and always available. Instead they had to cut here and there to dodge residuals. Then cut more here and there to optimize slop over prestige, then cut more here and there to try and save money on licenses, then cut more here and there to try and become the middleman themselves. the cut more here and there to "maximize engagement" and compete with an entirely different business model and medium.

Ultimately the shareholders ruin everything with their short term mentality of companies. They keep rewarding hype over substance and overall health. And of course the consumers suffer in teh end.

[anal_reactor]

First you attract customers by offering (potentially unsustainably) good deals. Then you become the default option. Then you extract money from customers by enshittifying your service. Most famous digital services follow this path.

[bji9jhff]

Being put in contact with foreign contents? Disgusting! /s

More seriously, before Netflix I never knew how high-quality and fun was stuffs from all around the world. I watched great series from South Korea, Turkey, Jordan, Spain,France, Luxembourg, Germany, Scandinavian countries and South America. I also watched quite enjoyable movies from Nigeria. I probably forgot a few places too. Do Netflix has issues? Plenty. Their originals are often blands and cancelled. They taught me to seek mini-series and completed series instead of ongoing series. The wrestling they air is shit. But the availability of foreign contents is the coolest feature they have.

[troupo]

> before Netflix I never knew how high-quality and fun was stuffs from all around the world.

The only reason Netflix brought them in is because the big copyright holders (Disney etc.) pulled most of their content from Netflix.

There were a few years when Netflix was a desert.

So, silver lining to every cloud I guess :)

[watwut]

Yeah, same here. Foreign content is good thing about Netflix, the thing I enjoyed the most when I randomly run into it. Sure, novelty will wear off after a while, but at least it is not the same thing over and over and over.