
Disney Is Placing Classic Fox Movies into Its Vault - auxym
https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/disney-is-quietly-placing-classic-fox-movies-into-its-vault.html
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cbanek
As someone who has loved going to see "classic" movies in the theater, it's a
different experience than watching them at home. I'm not going to the theater
because I don't have the movie, but because I want to see it on the big
screen, with other people, and get that movie experience. For movies that came
out before my time, it's been amazing. For example, I've seen Wrath of Khan so
many times at home, but it was nowhere as good as seeing it on the big screen.
I wonder what the numbers say on how many people won't buy a movie or stream
it just because their theater decides to show it (and usually it's a very
short run, like a one night or weekend).

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Have you ever considered simply buying an HD/4K projector, a decent-quality
screen, and a surround-sound setup? If you have a good-sized living room, then
the resulting experience is so comparable to a cinema that I personally have
never felt inclined to pay for a film at the cinema for the seven years now
that I have owned this home setup. Yes, you won't be able to watch it with a
set of strangers around you, but I imagine many people would consider that a
downside of the cinema, not a plus.

~~~
acollins1331
You just described something that costs thousands of dollars to set up and
thousands of dollars of added rent. Or we could just go to the movie theatre
every couple weeks.

Hmm

~~~
Retric
Basic 4K projectors are down to 1,000$, you can add a screen and surround
sound for another 500$. Assuming you would watch any other video like Sports,
Netflix, or YouTube it’s a significant upgrade for both.

As to space, you can put your collapsible screen in front of bookshelves,
windows, doors etc So they take up less useful space than a large TV.

~~~
JansjoFromIkea
RE Space, you do need quite a lot of open area to give the projector space to
fill a decent area too though (less so if you've permission to mount it on the
ceiling).

I'd be surprised if a good short throw 4K projector is $1k (but if you've got
recs within that range I'm very interested)

~~~
tboughen
Ars reviewed a good short throw 4K projector yesterday, but it’s $2700
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/4k-projector-
turns-a...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/4k-projector-turns-any-
wall-into-theater-quality-screen-from-inches-away/)

~~~
Retric
That’s an ultra short throw which is different as it’s aiming for around 2
inches from the projector to the screen. Short throw is more in the 4 foot
range while producing an image several times that size.
[https://youtu.be/Fu_U0HS7axk](https://youtu.be/Fu_U0HS7axk)

A normal projector is 11+ feet from the screen. The diagonal being
approximately the same as the distance from the projector to the screen.

I have seen short throw 4K projectors from around 1,500$ but IMO they are a
poor fit for home theater as the screen ends up as a bright object in people’s
view.

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rurban
They are preparing for their Disney+ streaming launch, so that they can sell
their assets over that platform, to punish commercial screenings. Or better,
to enhance their value there. Normally it would be a stupid idea, because
their Fox archive which is worth several billions is suddenly worth nothing,.
It's about a fifth of the worlds films disappearing. But they are betting big
on streaming, to kill Netflix. Which will not happen, it just hurts users.

~~~
jimnotgym
And this is where it gets into competition law. If Disney won't allow Amazon
and Netflix to screen Disney and Fox films I would hope they are big enough to
litigate...

~~~
scarface74
And how would you feel if AWS sued ElasticCo or Mongo for not allowing it to
distribute the full version of their software?

~~~
jimnotgym
I would feel it had no chance of succeeding. If both those organisations
closed shop there are still other pieces of software to sell. It would be more
akin to stoping them have Linux.

~~~
scarface74
And if Disney closed shop Netflix would still have content to sell. Do you
think Netflix is going to go out of business once all Disney content is
removed?

~~~
phlakaton
If others follow suit, bailing out to their own proprietary online streaming
services, and Netflix is left with only its original content, I would indeed
see dim prospects for it. Netflix's own content is IMO not strong enough to
sustain it.

~~~
scarface74
I thought the entire idea of the Internet was “disintermediation” where you
could go directly to the consumer? Now we want to force middlemen into the
equation? Would you also be okay of indie artists couldn’t exclusively sell
their own content on their own website? Should Netflix also not be allowed to
have Netflix exclusives? Let’s take it one step further, should Apple not be
allowed to sell their OS only with their own hardware? What about the
consoles?

Do you really want the government to get involved in all of those situations?

~~~
phlakaton
The "entire idea" of the Internet, as far as I'm concerned, is computers
talking to each other over a common network. The rest is all crap we made up
to layer over it.

Both disintermediation and aggregation have been essential forces in the
information culture built upon the Internet from the early days. Both serve an
useful purpose, and both have their dark sides as well.

Netflix is of course free to make and sell their own content how they wish, as
is Disney. But the value proposition of Netflix started with syndicated
content, and that proposition is diminished the less you find such content on
it. At some point, you have to ask whether it's still worth the monthly
subscription, or if you should take your money over to the other streaming
services instead – each with its own slightly different and uniquely-broken
interface, I should add.

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zokier
People bring up copyright, and its length, here but one critical point is that
even if the movies would transition to public domain, that still would not
release them from Disneys vault. Instead it would likely mean that Disney
would exhort even tighter control over the copies. And make no mistake
thinking that Disney would be completely clawless without copyright.

~~~
twic
If the movies were out of copyright, people would be able to freely use
existing copies - DVDs, physical film not in Disney's physical control, etc.

~~~
gamblor956
People can already free use their existing copies under the first sale
doctrine which has been around for several decades.

Copyright simply means you can't copy your DVDs of Disney films onto other
DVDs and sell them for a profit without getting permission (aka a license)
from Disney first.

~~~
scintill76
IANAL, but I don't think profiting would be the illegal part here. I think any
distribution of an unauthorized copy violates copyright.

~~~
beerandt
1)no such thing as an unauthorized copy once copyright expires.

2) even before copyright expires, first sale doctrine applies to any re-sold
copy (the disc bought), but not copies of that copy.

3) this doesn't solve the problem of have having access to the high quality
masters.

------
tsherr
Disney has always been a corrosive force on our culture. They've taken our
cultural myths in the form of fairy tales and damaged them beyond repair.
Profit over everything is Disney's approach. The more they own the worse it
will get.

~~~
echelon
There's no precedent for breaking up a media company for monopolizing popular
culture. But perhaps there should be.

Disney owns way too much. They can bully theater chains to show their films on
as many screens as they want for as long as they desire, and then they take a
lion's share of the revenue.

Disney can print money from all of the licensing, which isn't a problem save
for the fact other entrants have a huge hurdle to overcome to get shelf space.

They water down their content for mass appeal, so it isn't artistically
interesting. They also appease foreign governments like China. Again, it
wouldn't be a problem if they weren't strong arming others out of the limited
theater space.

Disney+ kicked off the streaming wars. Which is going to be fantastic as a
consumer... :(

Disney is ridiculous. I say this despite the fact that I have a good bit of
stock in the company.

~~~
vertoc
> Disney+ kicked off the streaming wars. Which is going to be fantastic as a
> consumer... :(

It actually is going to be fantastic as a consumer. Since people are cutting
cable and going to Netflix, the money for content has to come from somewhere -
it’s not sustainable to get unlimited quality content for everyone for $12/mo.
If new streaming services didn’t appear, the only new content we would
eventually have would be Netflix Originals - and if that’s all you want, you
can continue just subscribing to Netflix! With Disney+ and others, it gives
companies incentives to create great new content. There’s no chance we would
have gotten say, the Mandalorian, on Netflix

~~~
curryst
My primary is the lack of central distribution. I agree, $12/mo is probably
too low to provide new content. I would generally be fine with paying more.

What I dislike is playing whackamole with what service I can get certain
content from. Is this show on Hulu? Or is it Netflix? Oh, right, Disney pulled
it from Netflix and now it's on Disney+. Continue ad nauseam. Getting
notifications that new content from a series is available is likewise
disparate across platforms.

There needs to be a central management point. Similar to how Amazon aggregates
physical goods from many vendors, offering me a central and familiar interface
to provide search, discovery and payments. They then handle distributing
payment and providing the actual content.

Amazon's Fire TV provides me with some of this (i.e. I can say "play such and
such show" and it will provide me with an interface that lets me open a
provider that has the content), but the fact that it's not available on my
computer and that it doesn't manage the subscriptions is somewhat painful.

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thrower123
There needs to be an end to copyright on this historical material. If I was
going to be very generous, I'd make copyright have a maximum of 50 years.
Twenty is probably more reasonable.

It's ridiculous that Steamboat Willie is always going to be the cutoff between
public domain and oblivion in dusty forgotten copyright hell.

~~~
esarbe
It's ridiculous that this post is down voted.

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jdkee
The U.S. Copyright Term Extension Act, aka the "Mickey Mouse" Act, is an
outrageous piece of legislation. The law effectively denigrated the public
welfare and reduced the public domain for the benefit of a few corporations.
It should be undone.

~~~
teh_klev
The article isn't about copyright. It's about a change in distribution and
access rights to Fox's back catalogue of movies since Disney bought Fox which
is harming smaller cinema house operators.

~~~
whateveracct
Some of the movies mentioned are well over 50 years old though, so copyright
is a root cause even if it isn't the root cause.

~~~
teh_klev
> so copyright is a root cause even if it isn't the root cause.

That assertion makes absolutely no sense. Fifty years isn't a huge amount of
time and the bulk of Fox's catalogue (that's actually interesting, well for me
anyway) is younger than that so your copyright argument doesn't stand up.

To re-iterate, this article is about restricting access to cinemas to play
these movies in their theatres. The distribution format for cinemas and their
equipment is, as far as I know, somewhat different from buying a DVD or BluRay
off of Amazon. Even a ten year copyright period wouldn't solve the problem of
the studios withholding the technical formats that are needed for their
content to be played in a theatre. They simply don't have to give that up.

Personally I don't have a problem with studios owning the copyright for say 75
years, that seems like a fair amount of time...provided the studio's play fair
with _access_ to their content.

Sure what Disney are doing is a shitty thing, but it's certainly not as simple
as claiming that reforming the copyright rules would solve this.

~~~
beerandt
Also, just because copyright is up, one still needs physical access to the
media to copy it. I'm not sure how that is (or should be) handled with film.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
I believe Mickey Mouse law must be curtailed. Copyright is retained for no
more than 20 years after movie is released, then it transitions to public
domain. In return, I can agree for a copyright for different merchandise to
last indefinitely.

Then, there are books. I don't really know what to do with them. Since books
are work of a much smaller group of people (most often, 1 person), maybe it's
ok for them to retain rights till their deaths.

~~~
jimhefferon
> till their deaths

When you want to use some work it can be a hardship to tell if the author is
dead. Fixed expiration time is much better.

~~~
CydeWeys
I've never understood what the creator's death has to do with copyright
anyway. You've already written the work; why should it matter to copyright law
if you were young or old when you did so, or whether or not you got really
unlucky immediately afterwards in getting run over by a bus?

~~~
lidHanteyk
Because copyright is artificial, and the only reason that we grant it to
artists is so that the artists may make money and thus more art. The interest
of the public domain far outweighs any imagined right of relatives of the
artist to make money; it's not like they're automatically artists themselves.

~~~
simonh
This strikes me as a particularly mean and grasping attitude I’m afraid. My
children aren’t IT engineers, but they still benefit from my savings, life
insurance and the proceeds of my investments. The property rights you exercise
over the things you own are artificial.

It’s in the interests of the public to encourage the production and
publication of new ideas and art. The vast majority of authors make very
little for their efforts, and the majority of the benefit to society is gained
simply by its publication and broad distribution. The additional benefit from
derived works IMHO is much lower.

~~~
mthoms
> _the majority of the benefit to society is gained simply by its publication
> and broad distribution._

You just made the perfect argument _for_ a robust public domain.

~~~
simonh
Being in the public domain doesn’t automatically mean material is published,
promoted and distributed. Those activities take a lot of effort, they are full
time jobs for an entire industry, and they are the only way martial gets to be
widely read.

I love project Gutenberg, I have several of its books on my iPad right now,
but a single book shop selling copyright works probably does more in a week to
promote actually reading stuff than Gutenberg does in a year.

------
wheaties
I remember going to see films at The Little. Man, that brings back memories. I
hope they can survive this.

~~~
mmmBacon
Me too. It’s a great theater and an important cultural institution in
Rochester.

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diggernet
We need compulsory licensing at a statutory rate for movies and tv shows.
Fine, give them absolute control and negotiated rates for the first decade.
But after that, let anyone show them for a reasonable fixed rate without
needing to arrange explicit permission. It works for music.

That way, all streaming services would have full access to all back catalogs,
and could compete on price, features, catalog size, etc. Not the current
situation where they need in-house originals and exclusive arrangements, and
many many shows are simply unavailable for any price.

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fortyseven
As always, those trying to play within the law get screwed over. Meanwhile
pirates fart, chuckle a bit at it all, and go back to sleep.

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areoform
Every citizen should be taught the history of anti-trust and labor law in the
United States. These events have already unfolded in our past. Their
consequences have already been dealt with by American society in 1946 - 1948.
In two landmark anti-trust cases, _United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc._
and _Bigelow v. RKO Radio Pictures, Inc._

The first one is more famous, but the second one is directly applicable as it
dealt with the inverse of Disney's current modus operandi - the restriction of
first-time screenings to theaters owned by the studio,

 _The gist of the complaint was that, by reason of an unlawful conspiracy of
the respondents, petitioners were prevented from securing pictures -for
exhibition in their theatre until after the preferred exhibitors had been able
to show them in earlier and more desirable runs, and that petitioners were
thus discriminated against in the distribution of feature films in favor of
competing theatres owned or controlled by some of the respondents._

The matter before the court was the lower courts judgement and the damages
awared to the petitioner. The lower court had found that an unlawful
conspiracy existed and used a rough approximation to derive the damages,

 _...evidence was introduced in the course of the trial tending to show that
respondents conspired to maintain the release system as part of a conspiracy
to maintain minimum admission prices to be charged by exhibitors generally.
This proof indicated that the object of this conspiracy was to make it
possible to maintain high admission prices in the Loop theatres by restricting
the price competition of the subsequent-run theatres.

The distributors' contracts with the Loop theatres provided for film rentals
based on a percentage of the admission fees collected. It appeared that the
rental contracts entered into between respondent distributors and the Chicago
exhibitors, including respondent exhibitors and petitioners, uniformly
contained schedules of minimum admission prices fixed on the basis of the
playing position assigned. There was thus evidence tending to show that the
release system and the price-fixing system were each an integral part of an
unlawful conspiracy to give to the Loop theatres the advantages of a first-run
protected from low-price competition._

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this as being too vague, but the
Supreme Court reversed this decision because,

 _...it is impossible to establish any measure of damage, because the unlawful
system which respondents have created has precluded petitioners from showing
that other conditions affecting profits would have continued without change
unfavorable to them during the critical period if that system had not been
established, and petitioners had conducted their business in a free
competitive market._

    
    
      - http://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep327/usrep327251/usrep327251.pdf
    

Disney should be held to the same standard. They have caused irreparable harm
to the industry through their predatory actions and monopolistic behavior. A
future where Disney controls the entertainment industry is a future without a
free, fair and functioning market.

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dangus
It’s not really worrying. Disney owns the films. They don’t have to distribute
them _at all_ , and in this case, they’ve determined it that the money they’ll
make from an independent theater is smaller than the money they’ll make
distributing another way, or perhaps not distributing at all for the time
being.

I recently contacted a student artist to ask to buy a print of a work they
posted on an art forum. I had no particular limit to my budget. The artist
said no.

You know what I can do about it? Absolutely nothing. It doesn’t matter how
badly I want that piece in my home.

~~~
readams
You seem to be confusing what is legal with what is reasonable. It's entirely
justified to criticize a company for doing entirely legal things. Indeed it is
impossible to make illegal everything for which a company might deserve such
criticism.

~~~
dangus
So then I’ll ask, what about this specific action is unreasonable?

~~~
victoro0
It is unreasonable to deny the entire public of works of art that are
culturally relevant.

~~~
dangus
Who determines what is culturally relevant?

You’re saying that if I make my own movie with my own funding and time/effort,
if enough people like it and the culturally relevant switch gets flipped on
they get to take it from me while I’m still alive and I don’t have any say on
whether my work is duplicated or screened?

What if I run a SaaS product, people have been using it for 30 years, and
they’ve determined it to be culturally relevant. Do they get to copy my source
code and run it for themselves?

These are 70s and 80s movies. Many of those who contributed to them are still
alive. It’s entirely reasonable for those people to determine how/whether to
distribute their own art.

If you believe in that level of public ownership I can respect that you hold
that opinion, but I don’t agree with it. At the same time, I do believe that
copyrights expiring a lifetime after the creator dies are unreasonable.

To me, the right balance of copyright law is somewhere in between the extremes
of Mickey Mouse ownership in perpetuity and complete public ownership.

~~~
fourthark
I am pretty sure if you asked the creators of these films, they’d want them
still shown. We’re talking about the actions of Disney, which wasn’t even the
studio for the Fox films.

~~~
scarface74
The “creators” wouldn’t have been able to create anything without the
financial backing of the studios. You have a few like Lucas and Spielberg who
owned their own production companies.

~~~
mthoms
You're right, those uppity "creators" should be thankful.

Joking aside- This will become less true as technology makes film-making and
distribution more accessible. Studios know this, so they've switched focus to
tightly controlling distribution. Hurray for cultural gate-keepers.

~~~
scarface74
How are they controlling the “distribution”? There are so many streaming
services and cable channels hungry for exclusive content that if you make
something halfway decent someone will buy it from you. On top of that, you can
sell directly to consumers on iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Redbox VOD,
etc.

~~~
mthoms
> _How are they controlling the “distribution”?_

What do you mean? The very article we've been discussing is about Disney's
attempt to control distribution.

I agree that _for now_ there's a healthy ecosystem of distribution channels
for _newer_ , lower budget content - I said as much. What's happening is that
the studios are countering that by tightly controlling valuable _legacy_
content. The kind of stuff we see as part of the cultural zeitgeist of the
last several decades (again, see the article for examples).

~~~
scarface74
Disney is controlling access to _their_ content not content you create
yourself. Disney isn’t stopping any of the content distributors I named from
distributing anyone else’s content.

