Hacker News Reader

Disney probably took that into account, and decided that the demographic buying DisneyOnDemand (or whatever they call this) isn't going to overlap much with the demographic visiting yohoho.warez.se

I'm not so convinced that true though. As I said in my post, I know plenty of people who have Sky / Virgin Media as well as Amazon Prime and/or Netflix subscriptions but who do also pirate content when they can't find what that want on the aforementioned.

There are only so many video subscription services a person is willing to pay for.

Maybe Disney have a compelling enough catalogue to convince people to switch away from an existing streaming service (which is what I think they're banking on), but I'm not so convinced that will happen at scale either.

"DisneyOnDemand" is probably a better name than "TakeTheMickey".

Disney was important in our time but kids growing up on netflix may never see disney content the same way.

Maybe their traditional animated movies but Disney have expanded out quite a bit in recent year.

The Pixar movies are loved by my kids and while they're still a bit young for the Marvel stuff the eldest is already a big superhero fan (particularly Spiderman) so I can see him really enjoying Disney's Marvel universe when he is older. And lets not forget how seminal Star Wars is even with the younger generation.

So I'm not so sure I'm ready to write Disney off with regards to the Netflix generation.

Disney is still crazy important. They own pretty much everyone's childhoods now between Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. You can't say with a straight face that these properties aren't important anymore. If anything, Marvel and Star Wars have become even bigger since Disney's taken ownership.

So the only alternative to paying for something you don't own is to steal it and pretend that you're somehow justified because you don't agree with the way the law is written?

In any other industry market forces would be in effect forcing business to either compete or go under.

Could you expound on this a bit? Disney owns the rights to distribute the products that it has spent billions of dollars to create and you take issue with that? What is the alternative- if you write a best-selling novel, or create a film or a song that people want, the government should force you to distribute it in such a way that guarantees that anybody who wants it can have it? We're talking about movies, not health care. I don't really see how you can make a cogent case that you have a right to access the content on your terms.

> So the only alternative to paying for something you don't own is to steal it and pretend that you're somehow justified because you don't agree with the way the law is written?

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.

Part of what makes Disney Disney is that their content is extremely guarded and restricted. This makes the perceived value higher.

Let's take straight-to-DVD movies for example. Anytime a movie is released straight-to-DVD, that immediately signals to the market that it's a lower-budget, lesser-quality movie. Yet that's a far more effective way to get it the widest possible distribution than screening it in select theaters for a $14 admission fee.

This is essentially what Disney does. Disney has earned a brand that distinguishes its movies from any other movie producer out there. When Disney makes a movie, people want to see it, because Disney has a certain standard of quality. That's not to say that I think every movie Disney makes is gold, just that every movie that Disney makes is perceived as gold by the public. The reason for that is that Disney guards its IP perhaps more stringently than any company. They don't make all of their movies available to everyone and they don't have buffet-style streaming ala Netflix. Anytime a potential competitor arises, they buy them. They now own Marvel and the Star Wars franchise, as well as Pixar and probably several others that I'm forgetting.

I'd argue that if Disney did stream all of their movies online for a flat rate to any and all who will add it to their lineup for an affordable rate (YouTube TV, Directv Now, Sling, Hulu, etc.) they would instantly lose a huge part of what makes their brand so powerful.

They actually did this in the 80's- they had their own channel that you had to get a separate cable box for to stream it into your home.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. Thank you

I am a music composer and audio engineer. My music is pretty niche. If someone were to ask me if I'd rather that they buy my music or 'steal' it from a torrent site that offers a 100% pure FLAC rip, I'd tell them the latter. Because the torrent site is the only one which has respect for my hard work, and has the users who are passionate and thankful for my work being available to them.

Services like Spotify are not designed to facilitate 30 minute long experimental electroacoustic violin compositions. I am much more likely to gain a dedicated fan (someone who will pay to see my concerts in their city) from a torrent site which is content-agnostic and facilitates true fandom for the less conventional music offerings out there.

I mean no offense, but you aren't Disney. Disney has been actively developing, innovating, and acquiring a huge library of content with proven demand for nearly a century. Clearly their priority is selling and licensing content. It sounds like your priority is getting your music in the hands of people who appreciate it in the best format possible. That's very respectable, but that's not how most companies operate.