Eli5: Why isn’t the entire Netflix catalogue available everywhere? It is a cost thing?
In: Technology
Its a legal thing, different people and groups own the rights in different places to the same content, and that content has different laws it needs to adhere to (and is thus sometimes different itself) in different places.
Sure some is a cost thing but thats more about agreements with the property owner rules in those places than cost to host it.
Yes, cost. Imagine that you created a cool movie. Netflix approaches you and offers $100 million for the rights to show it. Maybe you can negotiate them to $80m for just the USA, and then sell the rights to 10 other countries to other services for $5M each. Plus you negotiate those rights to be limited to 1 year, so next year maybe you can make some more money.
Countries and limited time are negotiating chips between the copyright owners and the streaming services.
Look up how many viewing choices you have on any given streaming platform versus, say, an independent video store. You’ll be blown away by how little streaming provides in comparison.
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