Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube, its easy cash for them on films that are sitting idle otherwise. Anything they aren't licensing to anyone anywhere should just be on YouTube. Or any sort of streaming platform that has sane ads, and anyone can see. It is really sad to me there's no genuine YouTube competitor.

"you should just do X" generally means you don't have the full picture. You're completely disregarding all the union stuff that needs to be considered. You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do.

Edit: You're right. Just disregard any laws and contracts in place. HN knows best. It must be that easy.

> Anything from before the 1980s should just be on YouTube

Agreed, but because all of that should be public domain at this point. The idea that some company needs rent-seeking motivation to allow people to view 50-year old media literally until everyone who could have consumed it when it was published is dead is absurd.

Early US copyright was something like 20 years + 20 years if they were still alive.

Under that, everything before 1985 would be free of copyright already.

I think the majority of Americans would greatly prefer that model; but, The Mouse had other plans and has extended copyright to approx 100 years.

I wanted to say that too, but I rather take any wins we can get. I mean, the best part is, if they made their movies public domain THEN put them all on youtube, they would earn so much ad revenue from them being on their YouTube accounts.

Are the little guys receiving royalties from these movies decades later? I recall instances where actors paid some of the little guys out of their own pocket to keep movies going, Deadpool is an example of this.

Yes, I'm pretty sure they do.

I'm not saying that shouldn't change. But you're right! Just change copyright law! Easy. Brilliant.

It's such a scandal that even though the original Mickey Mouse cartoons are finally in the public domain, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act is still preventing anything created in our lifetimes from ever joining the public domain during them.

Apparently it was super easy to change copyright law to extend it over and over again.

> You're forgetting all the little guys that make movies happen. Yeah the directors and actors probably don't care, but the other 100s of other people involved in making films probably do.

We're talking about movies that are 45 years old at a minimum. The majority of the people "involved in making the film" are dead at this point.

But I think that the real shame is that there's no true YouTube competitor for ad-supported streaming

That really depends, as the studios have some tricks up their sleeves, like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting