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Comment by ericcholis | Hacker News Reader

I've always been of the opinion that there aren't any tech minded people making those types of decisions for publishers in Hollywood. Also, I'm sure there are a fair amount of contractual issues that prevent the open distribution of content using a paid model.

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No doubt the licensing and contractual issues are a thorny problem, but the licensing and contractual issues are generally from the studios who created them. If they wanted they'd be able to get around it, or find a compromise or similar.

Especially considering 95% of the content they resell is making them pure profit. By now, even the shittiest movie produced in the 90s has had so many tv runs, so many VHS and DVD units sold, that all production losses and fixed fees have been recouped.

There is absolutely no excuse for not having a cheap platform streaming every pre-2000 movie, except pure greed from the copyright mafia.

By now, even the shittiest movie produced in the 90s has had so many tv runs, so many VHS and DVD units sold, that all production losses and fixed fees have been recouped.

I'm not so sure about that. The movie business is notoriously crappy - most movies never recoup their costs. It's the few wild successes that keep the studios afloat.

On the other it is true that the marginal cost of selling digital downloads of back catalogue movies is close to zero.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting the movie studios can have a movie that "never recoups their cost" and yet they somehow make money off the enterprise. I am not saying they don't occasionally take a bath on a bad bet, but they do well most of the time (the percent of break even or better is much higher than they like to admit).

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