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Comment by blackjack_ | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been an absolute pain. There are theoretical catalogue sites, but they are all randomly out of date to the point that its not very useful.

I'm literally at the point where its looking like pirating the movies is the only way to watch them...

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This is precisely the problem, and the whole reason why we still pirate TV/movies. I would have no problem paying $XX to a unified service that has basically everything; I have no interest in paying a dozen different streaming platforms for effectively "cable packages" that often add/remove/shift content around.

The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.

Why is this so hard for the film industry?

> The music industry figured this out

> Why is this so hard for the film industry

Music industry runs on barely paying any artist that cant fill a stadium. Movie industry runs on constantly re-licensing content to min-max their returns from IP. Music industry can happily barely pay musicians via the spotify model, but the Movie industry can't continually re-license their stuff to a higher bidder if it's all on one site.

If you have Indie artists on the music side of the comparison, you should have barely paid tiktokers and YouTubers on the movie side.

I broadly agree with your assessment, but I think the important takeaway is that these situations are created artificially, usually by dominant market players for their own benefit. There is nothing natural or neccesary with the way these markets work, and it's certainly not unchangeable.

>but I think the important takeaway is that these situations are created artificially

Are they really though? It's easier than ever for an indie creative to create and distribute their works through the many channels. Problem is, people don't spend as much money as a whole on indie works compared to focus-grouped blockbusters.

> Are they really though?

Yes, in the sense that at one point IP laws didn't exist and then we made them up. It stands to reason we could make up something better - maybe something that doesn't routinely banish media from public access.

Honestly I dont know that I believe that narrative, music labels have been cheating the talent out of the proceeds of their work since Edison phonograph. Labels claiming to the artist that they dont make any money while they use creative accounting to charge any and every expense to the artist and is a long and storied practice in the industry. Artist are expected still to pay x% of sales revenue for "breakage fees" on digital downloads example. Breakage fees having been introduced to cover the loss to the breaking in transit of early brittle shellac phonograph records. ID dont know about you.but tje think the breakage cost of a mp3 file should be on the scale of negligible to nonexistent.

> The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.

> Why is this so hard for the film industry?

My theory is that the United States has compulsory licensing for music, but not movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_Stat...

To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law. However, that doesn't hold true for movies. Each video streaming service has to negotiate the right to carry a given movie with the film studio that owns it. Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.

>To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law.

The copyright holders can legally prevent their recordings from being streamed by Spotify. Famous examples were Taylor Swift and Neil Young withholding their music from Spotify.

For extra nuance, copyright holders can't stop cover songs from appearing on Spotify. So the Taylor Swift cover songs do have to pay compulsory license fees to her and her record label.

Swift withheld from Apple Music because they were giving it away for free and not paying her (or anyone); I don't recall it being kept off spotify?

Source for the Apple Music claim?

Here's info about how and why Swift pulled her music from Spotif: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/taylor-swift-yanks-music-s...

Perhaps you'd mixed the two up?

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33220189

> Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.

Even worse, a lot of the big studios have their own streaming service (Disney, Paramount, Peacock, Canal+ in France, etc) and have no incentive to have lease the rights to competing services.

That's ultimately what pushed Netflix to focus so much on creating their content, they knew that at some point the original content owners will realise streaming can be lucrative, and just build their own services.

Yep. This kind of exclusivity agreement should probably be illegal across the board; they basically exist to make competition legally impossible. Great for business, sucks for people.

I dont know, that means if a streaming service created a show they would be forced to share it meaning no incentive for them to make their own content I prefer a limited time exclusively of 3-5 years for first party content then compulsory licencing of content. That would incentivise creation of new content as a positive market differentiator but also decincentivise removing old content as it would in effect be a negative differentiator.

>Why is this so hard for the film industry?

It boils down to money.

Movies & tv have higher monetary value to the studios than songs to the record labels.

So the ip owners of video content get more revenue by restricting it as exclusives to their respective platforms rather than licensing it out to everybody and get a smaller fractional payment from an everything-unlimited-catalog video streaming service.

E.g. HBO would rather get 100% of their own $16.99/month subscription -- vs -- licensing entire HBO catalog to Netflix and getting a fraction% of $17.99/month.

How much extra would Netflix conceivably have to charge per month such that the fractional amounts to each movie studio (HBO, Disney, etc) would be enough $$ that the studios wouldn't bother with their own exclusive streaming platforms? $99/month? $149/month? Right now, there isn't a number that Netflix + all studios + subscribers can converge on so instead, we get the current fragmented streaming platforms of video content.

For more evidence of how video content is more valuable than music (in terms of digital streaming platforms), consider that tech giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple -- all created their own movie & tv studio business to produce even more exclusives for their streaming platforms. But none of them have started their own record labels to sign musicians to get exclusive songs or albums.

Games make way more money than movies but it also seems to be solved for games in the form of steam

Except there are times when exclusivity deals have games launch on other platforms first, and then get to Steam sometime later. Therefore, more like the movie model than the music model.

Only if you consider availability on release more important than availability later. Personally, I don't.

If its so valuable why are HBO and Disney killing already produced content making it unavailable (legally) on or off their platform. Why is the Willow TV show (sequel to the classic movie) removed it was one of their flagship early offering when they were starting their streaming service. Why is HBO killing finished movies like Batgirl and Wiley Coyote v Acme for the tax right off if they are such precious valuable content? Why is classic Looney Toons being broken up and sublicensed to everchanging array of shit tier streaming services. none of these moves makes since with the reason given

> Why is this so hard for the film industry?

The logic is pretty simple:

* It has been widely demonstrated that, in the US, many consumers are willing to pay more than $100/month for cable TV, with ads.

* Netflix costs $8/month with ads.

* Why leave that money on the table?

Old media competes with new media.

If you, as the rightsholder can just eliminate that competition without any further effort, it makes logical sense to do so.

Excessivly long copyright is what enables this.

I only understand the frustration with finding any legal avenue at all to see certain films. I don't really understand why disparate services are a big deal. You don't need to subscribe to multiple things all at once, and it's all done in a few clicks in the convenience of your own home.

I'm concerned and curious about one thing, which is that tech giants have a monopoly on renting. If you want to rent a digital movie that isn't otherwise available from subscription, you might be able to get it from MSFT, Google or Amazon. Meanwhile the telecoms only seem to offer this through cable machines, just new releases at that.

I'm interested in seeing a few Korean films, the kind that aren't on criterion or mubi. Basically no legal way to see them.

Why not have some platform that lets users to actually buy the movie and download/stream it as a file at full quality on their device?

Renting is sucky compared to just buying things, you could watch any movie you want and have unlimited access to it instead of juggling 5 subscriptions and get frustrated with shitty products. And publishers that make actual good movies that people want to watch would be rewarded

Probably owing to the legal/licensing constraints other users brought up.

I don't want to buy movies, 99% of the time. Renting is cheaper, and I don't care to rewatch most things.

Games we used to rent those too, before they got to be 50-100 hours long. For several reasons it's no longer practical.

Music recording copyrights have a single owner, and can be licensed for streaming by that owner. Older movies have a lot of IP owned by various entities with licensing to allow for theatrical and home release, but all of which have to cooperate to make the movies available for streaming.

I recently joined a local independent video rental store and it's so, so good. My partner looked at me like I was crazy when I told her, but she was a convert after one trip to pick out a movie in person.

Something about browsing in person is just so much more enjoyable than flipping between 9 services. Having a cinephile right there behind the desk that wants to nerd about movies and help pick something out is awesome. It's not a big store, but they've got thousands of movies in their catalog, which is (apparently) way bigger than any of the streaming services.

This doesn't solve your problem, but for the folks that are near the few remaining physical rental stores: consider supporting them, because they're great.

Edit: Actually, on the "your problem" part...maybe give the store a call? Looks like he'll mail discs too: https://myvideowave.weebly.com/services.html

Out of curiosity, what formats do they rent?

Most of the collection is DVD and/or Blu-ray, but he's got some VHS tapes and video games across a few platforms. When he was giving me the spiel about joining he was explicit that he doesn't have any Laserdisc or Betamax, though.

I really love that enough movie nerds came in there and asked about Laserdisc and Betamax that it became part of the spiel.

This is actually a larger problem that has to do with lost licensing negotiations and residuals. For a place to offer up streaming, they have to know they can license the content.

But oftentimes, that production company is closed shop. They've sold the licenses off to someone else, who split it into something else. And then there's the music rights. The whole thing becomes extremely complicated.

There's a whole set of movies that were somewhat popular that you just cannot find streaming. 100 cigarettes and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors are good examples.

I'd say if they can't figure out the rights, just put it on YouTube.

The length of time it takes for media to enter the public domain is absolutely absurd. It if didn't take over a century for works to enter the PD, we could say, "Eh, just wait a few years." But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.

If we had a more reasonable period like a decade, it would be a driver for creating new art, and prevent works from being locked away arbitrarily until our great-grandchildren can enjoy them (unless the art was just... lost to time).

> But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.

In many cases, the conglomerates aren't even making money from them. How much do you think the movie company (and all the various middlemen) are making from some obscure movie from the 80s that they don't even make available on DVD or streaming anywhere? They're just griefing the public by withholding it and not even making any money.

I think the reason that the big guys don’t make money out of old films is that if they did they’d be on the hook to pay the cast & crew(‘s retirement plans).

The Roku app is actually really good at determining where everything ever is currently streaming (or purchasable). It's not 100% perfect, but it's generally correct. I go there first for basically everything.

For example, it tells me Wake Up Ron Burgundy (which isn't even a "real" movie) can be purchases on Prime, Fandango, or iTunes.

Actually, iTunes and Prime have mostly everything for rent, what movies were you actually looking for?

It gets worse when you're looking for a movie only to realize it's different from what you remember. Either a change of substance (different scenes), or a change of form (adjusted color palette). Occasionally the original version is no longer officially available anywhere.

Just wanted to watch a relatively recent movie yesterday (Antichrist) and the only place that has it is a streaming service called Mooby. Not signing up for a service to watch one movie. Would have gladly paid 4 bucks to watch it, so had to find it in the usual places instead.

Plex does this as well.

Too much. I love Plex but it's increasingly hard to avoid the search integrations and other non-local features. I recently set up access to my library across a few devices and it's disappointing how hostile it now feels to turn off a lot of stuff that should not be enabled by default just to get to my own files.

agreed. at least there are still toggles to disable most of it. especially considering i paid for a lifetime membership. i’ve tried enby and jellyfin though and they just aren’t up to snuff yet for me needs. but i need to put my money where my mouth is and toss jellyfin a donation.

IMDB does something similar (it at least lists Wake Up Ron Burgandy as available for rent on Prime, doesn't mention iTunes or Fandango but I'm not logged in to IMDB so I'm not sure what's enabled/disabled as "preferred services" by default)

My spouse loves watching old direct to home video movies and I'd say about 75% of them have no accessible copies outside maybe eBay. Most of the remainder are only available via piracy. A vanishingly small percentage are available from streaming platforms.

One that I wanted to watch recently was Disney's 2000 animation short John Henry. It's now part of the American Legends compilation, which is only available for purchase on Amazon, not rent. It's not even on Disney+.

An archival incentive is the reason I am pro 25 year copyright. This current situation is causing our cultural heritage to rot.

Seems like a fair solution might be limiting damages on pirating movies that aren't widely available. For example, if a movie isn't available for streaming cap damages at $2.99 or whatever the going rental rate is.

I don't see why there should be any damages paid out if something isn't available to stream. How can you claim a loss of sales for a product you aren't even selling? Why why should anyone be rewarded for not providing a product and just sitting on it so nobody else can use it? There certainly isn't any excuse for not being able to bring a product to market fast enough when it previously was already on the market and there are plenty of services to license it for streaming or sale.

Not just 80s-90s but try everything non-vanilla Hollywood stuff. Asian cinema, MENA, Eastern Europe etc. Piracy is just superior because I can actually watch what I want.

Video games too. Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.

>Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.

I searched the biggest used online (flea)marketplace in my country and I could find the DVD for sale from several people. So I can buy it and play it right now legally if I want to, without resorting to piracy.

What point were you trying to make with this? Because I also can't buy a brand new 1969 Ford Mustang. Nothing is made forever.

The point could be made that if it's not available from the publisher for sale then piracy is not illegal.

Agree. However I'm willing to cut EA some slack here. NFS series (like some other games) has music in it that's been licensed by the devs for a limited time.

Selling the game today would mean either ripping out the music which is what made the game fun, or paying the record labels more money, which will not be offset by the few sales to 30+ year old nostalgics.

But at least EA isn't actively preventing you from playing that old game if you own a licensed copy by requiring always-on DRM.

BTW: today is the last day to sign the Stop killing games EU initiative : https://www.stopkillinggames.com/eci

> Selling the game today would mean either ripping out the music which is what made the game fun, or paying the record labels more money, which will not be offset by the few sales to 30+ year old nostalgics.

Well if the market can't provide, Pirate Bay can. Maybe they should fix "the market".

> However I'm willing to cut EA some slack here. NFS series (like some other games) has music in it that's been licensed by the devs for a limited time.

If that practice gets killed as well, that'd be a bonus.

Oh boy. That one. And Battle for Middle Earth 2.

Nobody wants my money, so to the bay we go.

I Still have my OG copy of BFME2. The joke is that I don't have a disk drive, or an OS to support it.

How's your local library system?

I live in a small country town. It's decent for its size, but it's very small.

In contrast, Archive.org is an absolutely fantastic library, and we're happy to support them.

Way better than my public library -- especially for hard-to-find media.

Ask about interlibrary loans; our rural library can get almost anything, given time.

Where I live, ILLs do not work for video games because the format identification for video games is “Electronic”, and their software is programmed to suppress the request button for these items because it is interpreted as “no physical media”. I emailed the people who run the system, they said it is a known issue, and as far as I can tell that just means they aren’t going to fix it, since it has been this way for at least three years.

I wonder what the material difference is between borrowing a film from the library (is this DVD? Blu-ray? Streaming?) and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network.

I suppose it's an act of support for your public library. But no one with a financial stake in that particular media is impacted in any way by using either method to obtain the film.

Came here to recommend this. A viable option, at least until Republicans completely defund public libraries.

Unhelpful but related; back in the day (15 or so years ago), Netflix had a truly excellent back catalogue of old movies. Over a hundred thousand titles. A DVD collection that we just didn't realise was going to vanish as quickly as it arose.

The current offering is just... less. I don't know if I mean in terms of sheer number of titles, but a million episodes of slop is just more slop. Netflix peaked 15 years ago and we didn't even notice.

This is why I started getting into physical media. I was subbed to so many services, but I felt like only 15% of the time would any service I want have the movie (and almost never Netflix as they prefer their own content slop).

They've ended/sold/traded away many of their licensing agreements. Many things they used to have are gone.

It stinks because some of the things they tossed are mundane, but they add to the depth of the catalog if you're looking for something and improve the experience.

In fairness to Netflix, in the old days they only had to own a copy of the DVD in order to rent it out.

Now they have to secure rights for every title they want to stream. That’s a lot of work (and cost) for a hundred thousand titles, especially when your competitors own some of the studios that license those titles.

Disney, for example, owns the Disney / Marvel / Fox / Searchlight / Lucasfilm back catalogues and wants to hoard much of it for its own streaming service.

> I can't go rent them from blockbuster

I can. :) But for those not so lucky, second hand stores have tons of DVDs usually for peanuts. Also your library might lend them out.

I'm still in the process of ripping our collection, but we can watch stuff on TV with Jellyfin.

But to your point, Louis Rossman suggests that when piracy provides the best experience, providers might want to rethink their strategy...

I find justwatch.com useful

Useful but +95% of the films I watch are not available in my country :shrug:

Same here. I have 4 streaming service subscriptions and it really frustrates me when I can't find classic films that I want to show my kids or just watch myself.

> Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever

Try the library, I've found lots of things not on streaming in mine's DVD collection.

my son gets all the old movies from the local library

I'm at the point where I just automatically assume any new movie is derivative, uninspired slop. Professional reviewers don't really seem trustworthy these days and user reviews are constantly being gamed based on fandom, political sentiments or just bots boosting or tanking reviews.

I do love movies, particularly ones that are pre-2010 or so. I've actually started going to a local indie theater that curates excellent older stuff so I just check their calendar every once in a while and pick something that sounds interesting to go see a couple times a month. Often times it's foreign stuff or things I've never heard of but those guys have excellent taste and I have yet to see a bad film. For anyone curious, here's my spot: metrograph.com

Because they aren't trustworthy:

1)Disney-adjacent properties.

Look at the amazing spiderman 1, it was better than anything Marvel has released with Spiderman, it got trashed on for a very simple reason in my eyes, Disney wanted the rights for Spiderman and tried to force them to give them it (it worked) via giving it terrible reviews.

Opposite thing happened with Star Wars, another Disney "product", the new trilogy getting "amazing" reviews at the start was ridiculous, they were very bad movies, like terrible, the first one which was the most watchable of the three was just bad acting mixed in with nostalgia bait, didn't push the universe forward at all which the prequels get hate for but they did hugely expand what star wars was, in good ways. Even midichlorians which people gave so much hate to in episode 1, makes sense if you rewatch the OT, Darth Vader suddenly turning good is like "snapping" out of the trance state he was in, because as we know now, the "force" in star wars is not like morality in the real world, while you play a part in you getting taken "over" by a side (light/dark side), once it happens you sort of lose control, sort of like a hard drug in the real world, it takes a lot for someone who has given in to the dark side to go back to normal, which I believe makes for a better science fiction universe, the concept of only giving in enough to receive the power but not enough to become evil was even explored with mace windu with Vapaad, anyways.

Lastly, Black Adam, I watched it and the movie was objectively not beyond terrible for current day standards, it was a watchable popcorn flick and the CGI was very very good compared to Marvel movies which made the movie look cool, the main villain was uninspiring but so are most first movie villains, it's all about the setup. It received beyond terrible reviews in my opinion directed from Disney/Marvel in an attempt to fully kill competition especially during Marvel's weak point post endgame. I would have enjoyed seeing a movie of Superman vs Black Adam but it is what it is.

Lastly any anime movie competing with Disney, just look at the Oscars, how many anime movies get snubbed? I still remember being shocked at how when marnie was there did not win vs inside out... or how look back wasn't even nominated, lol.

I think you're making up a narrative in your head to support your bias against Disney here.

TASM 1 was definitely well received when it was released. It was tarnished by the slop that was TASM 2, which lead to Sony being able to come to a licensing agreement with Marvel Studios, to use Spider-Man in the MCU. I think it's an extreme stretch to think Disney had any nefarious doings in the public opinion of those movies, Sony did that to themselves and has proven time-and-time again they cannot make a good quality movie with their Spider-Man IPs.

The Rise of Skywalker is at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, that was universally acknowledged to be terrible, even by the "critics". Disney definitely was also not able to silence or drown-out the absolute outrage by the cast and fans of the treatment of Luke in The Last Jedi.

Why would Marvel / Disney spend any effort sabotaging the DCEU when Warner Bros. was good at doing it all themselves? If Marvel was worried about DC stealing their audience, they would have focused more on movies like The Batman, not some c-grade antihero most people have no idea about? The Rock fostered a lot of the ill-will towards that movie himself.

I say all this but I also think it's accurate still to say reviews are trustworthy but I don't think they ever have been. I don't think this is some new phenomenon, just people are more aware of the corruption embedded in the system.

Pirates always pull this out as justification. Like they are starving people who are forced to steal bread just to survive. Maybe just because a piece of media has been published in the past, we don't all have some God-given right to access it in perpetuity for a nominal fee. Lost media is not a sin.

And good luck trying to find anything marginally erotic, like "Bliss (1997)".

Not only you don't own anything anymore, you can't purchase anything anymore and you can't view content that the overseers deem imoral. At this point pirating is just civil disobedience against the stronghold that corporations have on the American society that ripples across the globalized world.

> streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore

They're all scams, of varying levels of scammyness ;P

No but seriously, the pricing is intentional deceptive and a lot of werives won't offer ad free viewing, no matter how much you pay. They'll also weasel around it with "most media won't have ads, but some will". Thanks, how helpful. Paramount plus apparently doesn't consider ads for itself to be ads - so on the ad free plan, you still get ads for Paramount.

But the worst part is that every app is different and some are really, really poor quality. You'd think we would just invent an API for this and then have one viewer, like we had for TV. But then again, maybe nobody wants to reinvent TV.

Also, blocking VPNs: if I'm logged in and you know my real country and I'm paying, you don't need to block VPNs. It doesn't do anything but annoy customers

try local second hand sites and physical copies, although the quality will most likely not be as good if its only been released on DVD

You can’t find them to rent on iTunes and similar platforms?

I'm guessing they can. They just don't want to.

No, they explained they don't want to scrub through each and every rent-seeker app to find which one has it.

There's plenty of stuff that isn't listed there

Who wants to rent? I have money, give me a file for money.

DRM is laughable anyway, if you give me the data I have the file if I really want it.

Let me, the consumer, legally purchase a high res copy of media I can own. Why is this so hard?

In most cases, in the world of TVOD (transactional video on demand), an item that is rentable is purchasable, but the reverse is not always true.

That is, the window for purchasing is much longer than the window for renting.

Not OP, but yes believe it or not it's impossible to find certain movies anywhere other than pirating them. One example is "Pirates of Silicon Valley", I watched it when I was young and recently wanted to watch it again. I pay for basically all the streaming services, I'm would have been happy to rent it from any service at all. I spent several hours trying to find a way to pay to watch it and never could.

I'm pretty sure i just watched that via apple+.

But your point generally valid regardless.

This is an old relatively low budget TV movie, it's not on TV+ (which I subscribe to). Nor can you rent it on iTunes, it doesn't even show up when you search for it. Same for Prime Video, etc.

https://tv.apple.com/mx/movie/pirates-of-silicon-valley/umc....

That link says "Content Unavailable" for me, possibly region locked? I changed the "mx" in your link to "us" but same error.

Ah, that's too bad for you.

its a great movie!!

Apple TV doesn't allow me to stream in my browser, so I happily pirate their content. I pay for all the other "big" streaming services that I can use like a normal person.

I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for <$5 on Prime or YouTube. I’ve never been unable to identify where I could find a particular movie to stream, and it’s certainly less effort than going to a physical storefront.

I think there are plenty of problems with the streaming model, but I think it’s borderline bad faith to try and make the claim that piracy is needed because it’s hard to navigate streaming sites. It’s certainly easier than finding obscure movies was pre-streaming

It happens to me often enough. Might be a matter of taste in movies?

I’m sure it’s related. I’m curious for any examples

I regularly run into shows and movies no one will carry.

A recent example is Hot l Baltimore. It's an early Norman Lear production and stared James Cromwell and Charlotte Rae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_l_Baltimore

I planned to add Turn On (1969), Tim Conway. It was canceled while the 1st episode was airing.

But since the last time I looked for it, some ethical soul uploaded it to wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On

Not a movie, but Police Squad is missing from streaming services. It's strange given it spawned 3 movies and now we even have an upcoming sequel to those.

BBC: This Was the Week That Was. TV, aired 1962-1963

NBC: This Was the Week That Was. TV, aired 1963-1965. Someone found acetate audio recordings of two episodes and ripped them to YT. An act of culture, done in spite of rights holders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtVRJ2qdYw4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pprBfg6OSRM

>I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for <$5 on Prime or YouTube.

delve deep into most directors filmography from the 60s/70s/80s and you'll find plenty missing. Ken Russell, Robert Altman, etc

Yep. I watch a lot of movies and TV shows from the 60s and below, and they are often not available to stream legitimately anywhere, and the only option is the occasional DVD release on Amazon which is hit or miss.

You have to go pretty deep though for the record. At least, using one of your examples, for Altman if you look at his top 25 films on Letterboxd, 20 of them are available to rent or stream online. And for me at least the other five I can get at the library. There are none that are totally unavailable of those 25.

Even when Amazon Prime has it, the rental terms are dogshit. I used to rent VHS and DVDs from the store and got to watch them as many times as I wanted for a week. With Amazon Prime, once I start watching it I only have 48 hours and then I have to rent it again. Friends coming over in 3 days and you think they'll like the movie you just rented? Too bad, have to pay them again.

It's flagrant bullshit that physical media, with real scarcity, had better rental terms than digital.

So why the hell shouldn't I pirate it? I get a better product, it's free, and all the people who made it are dead now anyway so spare me any bullshit moralizing.

You may know this, but these rental terms are typically driven by the studio that published the film, not the TVOD service provider (Amazon in this case).

I know that it doesn't change the customer experience, but it's worth being angry at the right people...

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