Oh, really? Cool.

Post of the Day #2216

So, I finished season 7 on Netflix and apparently, the show's leaving Netflix on August 16th.

Well. That sucks. A lot.

Netflix in a nutshell.◊

Wait really? Wow that sucks. Now where are we supposed to watch it?

There is a certain "anime dub" website where you can watch cartoons online. That's all I'm gonna say about it.

you could try youtube

... why the hell is Netflix getting rid of it?? They DO KNOW it CONTINUES, right??

Probably means not enough people were watching it

This.

Netflix doesn't really get rid of shows and movies. Apart from their own produced content, Netflix doesn't have shows and movies. What it has are paid licenses to stream other people's shows and movies for their subscribers.

Those licenses expire, at which point Netflix has to make a decision whether or not it's worth the cost of renewal. And that depends entirely on how many people are watching it.

If they're making the decision not to renew even though the show's still ongoing, that's just another sign of how much the fanbase has dissipated.

This is, in its own way, a fundamental weakness of the streaming service business model over old-fashioned movie rental. Rental stores like Blockbuster actually owned the copies they were renting out, so they could keep them forever. Streaming services have to pay a continuous fee to the IP-holder, and when they stop paying that fee, the movie disappears from their shelves forever.

That's also why Netflix's DVD-shipping selection is so much larger than its streaming services. The unfortunate fact of digital copies is that you do not own them. You never own them. You are simply given permission to use them, which can be revoked by the IP-holder.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 18th 2018 at 8:43:31 AM

This is why I NEVER go with digital copies or streaming. I want to own that DVD box so its mine. Forever.

And yeah, I guess it's a sign of the decline of the show. Looking at the ratings on Wikipedia, A Royal Problem lists only 0,15 million viewers, and that's the last rating listed.

In theory, there would be a way to solve that problem for streaming services and digital distribution. However, it would require doing something that remains unthinkable to so many:

Regulating the internet.

So long as the internet remains a lawless wasteland, companies are free to do things like "You're paying to use this thing you bought, not to own it." Anarchy is a friend only to people who want to do things they would never get away with in a world of rules.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 18th 2018 at 9:18:17 AM

That's not a matter of regulating the internet, that's a question of regulating IP. Anyway, companies could use a different licensing model if they wanted. I'm surprised they don't use a "pay per stream" model like music does.

I guess maybe the difference is that people rarely watch things more than once? But it is still weird.

Edited by storyyeller on Jul 18th 2018 at 11:20:42 AM

Technically, when you own a hard copy of a movie/game, that's also just a license to use the product, not actual ownership (serioiusly, people, read the god-damn EULAs), so what's done on the Internet really doesn't have a difference there. Digital streaming can be revoked, yes, but a digital copy obtained and held on a local hard drive (as per serial numbers or even a non-streaming digital service like iTunes) has little difference from a hard copy (the major difference being it's easier to have back-ups of the digital copy). You are licensed to watch that hard copy and nothing else. Granted, it's on the honour system, so everyone and their mother makes illicit copies for their friends and whatever, but you're technically not supposed to do that because you only have a license, not ownership.

The difference is that they can't come into your home and take away your DV Ds, though. No one would find THAT acceptable.

Yeah, I remember that they marketed that a lot when they first came out. Rent a DVD and keep it as long as you want.

They also can't come into your home and take the hard drive/tablet/iPod/phone you have that legal digital copy on away from you. As I said, very little difference if you get it from a service that lets you have a local digital copy (or multiple copies, if you're feeling paranoid).

Also, also, the cops might come into your home and take your library (and you) away if you've been distributing illicit copies, which is kind of the major license-breaking thing people do with their hard copies.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Jul 18th 2018 at 10:51:55 AM

Actually, some e-reader did just that once. Ironically, it was the book 1984.

An e-reader company sent repo men to take away the devices their e-reader was on? Harsh.

Not quite,they deleted the story from people's e readers

No, the digital copy of the book was remotely deleted.

Here's the article.

Okay, so that's a single brazen example, which will never happen again because Amazon changed its policies to do that. That's really not indicative of anything and if it was something higher profile, the backlash of angry customers would probably be enough to destroy a continent. I could lose my hard copies to a freak fire because someone near my place was being an idiot, but that doesn't stop me from keeping hard copies of things.

In the grand scheme of things, there is still little difference because any company attempting to make a consistent policy of doing this to the end user would be committing reputation (and therefore, financial) suicide.

Due to the news of Netflix soon removing MLP, I decided to finally watch The Perfect Pear, since it's the one episode from later seasons I've heard just about universal praise for. I was not expecting a MLP episode to hit me in the feels. I was wrong. Holy shit this episode is amazing. Now I know why it's beloved so much, and this is coming from someone who never particularly cared for the Apple Family in general.

Edited by marston on Jul 18th 2018 at 12:22:37 PM

I feel annoyed that I just haven't been able to get into Netflix. I dunno,I just can't find enough stuff on it that I WANT to watch.

But it's where the wind is blowing these days. Blech.

The Perfect Pear is definitely among the top ten best MLP episodes.