Since there wouldn’t be any cost associated with getting rights for streaming, why can’t I boot up Nosferatu on whatever platform I happen to be on? To me it seems like the cheapest, easiest thing to do to upload a collection of the most famous public domain movies as a matter of course when setting up a streamer. Is there a specific reason why it mostly isn’t done?
In: Economics
It could have something to do with the cost of hosting a file that won’t bring back any return on their investment. Perhaps to not dilute their brand with cheap stuff?
Not sure.
>famous public domain movies
There really aren’t any. At least not any good ones.
Anything decent that’s been made after the 1920s is not going to be in public domain. That’s because for films the copyright lasts either 95 years life or the author plus 70 years (the way films work it’s usually the 95 years thing).
And there simply aren’t very many movies from that long ago first place, let alone ones people today want to watch. For reference the first sound film was in 1927.
Some newer films are in the public domain, but that’s usually because the movie is terrible and the company/person that would otherwise hold the copyright knows its garbage and they don’t care
That said, some famous movies that are in the public domain, even newer ones. And those typically ARE on most streaming services. One example I’m aware of is *Night of the Living Dead* which is on most everything.
I did a quick search of this. Found some Charlie Chapman movies for free online and didn’t recognize anything else.
I think if it costs money to host but isn’t going to pull anyone in then it’s a loss, regardless of acquisition costs. And if everyone can get it than it’s even less effective at bringing people to your platform.
There may be no cost to license things in the public domain, but there are still be costs of storage and delivery, as well as other things like creating any meta data needed to categorize the films, create title images and teasers and the like. There may also be costs with acquiring media to digitize or previously digitized media.
Being in the public domain doesn’t mean the content is entirely free.
There are legit places to find public domain content for free or nominal fees.
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Attracting/retaining subscriptions is what they care about. Why would Hulu hosting movies you can already get other places for free make you want to pay money to Hulu?
It does have a cost. Network storage is a thing and then there is network storage NEAR where the person is streaming.
[https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/nosferatudvdquality#google_vignette](https://publicdomainmovie.net/movie/nosferatudvdquality#google_vignette) this sertvice has a ton of movies
Honestly I’m less surprised about every service having them and more surprised there isn’t a streaming service specifically for them.
Consumers don’t like it when you sell them something that is free elsewhere, basically.
There would be no “value add” for the streamer – it just makes them look cheap and like they don’t have enough material.
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