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

(tedium.co)
641 points shortformblog | 3 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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lxgr ◴[05 Feb 25 15:40 UTC] No.42950057[source]▶
Old movies have been available on various "free ad-supported streaming television" for a while now, so I'm actually more surprised it took copyright holders that long to realize that Youtube also shows ads and doesn't require people to install some wonky app that might or might not be available for their platform.

Of course, region-specific copyright deals are incredibly complex etc. etc., so I could imagine it was just a matter of waiting out until the last person putting up a veto retired or moved on to other things.

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1. MartinMcGirk ◴[05 Feb 25 23:01 UTC] No.42956621[source]▶
Actually it seems like region-specific copyright deals are still very much in play. If I visit that playlist from Australia then 14 of the full movies are unavailable and hidden. But VPN'ing through the US shows me the whole set.
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2. rezonant ◴[06 Feb 25 00:30 UTC] No.42957418[source]▶
Yes, YouTube fully supports region specific availability and has for a very very long time.
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3. mimentum ◴[06 Feb 25 02:02 UTC] No.42958093[source]▶
Yes however, the original broadcast contracts may not have clauses in them for streaming services so having to revisit those contracts would be a costly process.