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The Streaming Service Cartoon Purge

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Steven Spielberg's four Indiana Jones movies have all suddenly disappeared from Disney+ worldwide. Released in 1981, Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark introduced Harrison Ford's intrepid archaeologist to the world, and he would subsequently return in four sequels, three of which Spielberg would direct. Spielberg's final installment in the franchise was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), with director James Mangold taking the reins for the fifth and seemingly final installment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). Disney+ has now removed Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull worldwide. As of writing, Disney has not addressed the removal of the films. Check out a screenshot via What's On Disney Plus below of the content currently available when using "Indiana Jones" as a search term, which includes Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and two specials:


Disney: "I can also make really bad decisions as well"
 
Wateryblue said:
Disney: "I can also make really bad decisions as well"
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Probably part of the whole campaign to reel Streaming back into being cable television. Package everything together. Winnow down the content available at any one time on any one service, and cycle through the back catalogue on a time limited basis.
 
This really feels like it's just going to cause piracy to spike tbh. Do they think that's a solved problem for some reason?
 
RoboRenee said:
This really feels like it's just going to cause piracy to spike tbh. Do they think that's a solved problem for some reason?
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Last i checked, Piracy rates are down, a lot of the infrastructure (websites) for piracy have been taken down, and governments are more willing to do further takedowns.

So while not solved, piracy is harder to commit than it used to be.

Now granted, if streaming disaffects enough people, we'll see a move back towards piracy snd incentive to build more infrastructure for it.

But like, you have to realize the peak of mass public computer literacy is past - many younger people these days are used to convenient apps, and don't even know how to unzip a archive file, let alone the more complicated stuff they need to effectively do piracy.

and apps are a largely closed environment that is much easier to police than the wider web.

TL;DR - the move towards App/Tablet culture over PCs makes it easier to shut down piracy on the mass level.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
TL;DR - the move towards App/Tablet culture over PCs makes it easier to shut down piracy on the mass level.
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Pretty much. Which is part of the point of these sorts of devices. Not specifically piracy, but removing the user from the equation.

Edit - That said, I think in absolute numbers, the number of people who could set up a system has risen, simply because there are more people who require tech literacy for their specific job. More programmers, more computer science people, etc . . . But as a percentage of the population . . . yeah it's down.

Chloe Sullivan said:
Last i checked, Piracy rates are down, a lot of the infrastructure (websites) for piracy have been taken down, and governments are more willing to do further takedowns.

So while not solved, piracy is harder to commit than it used to be.
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I mean, the simple reason is as Gabin said, accessibility is the main cause of piracy. Most of the stuff that's still super easy to pirate with a just a quick google search tends to be fairly obscure without a way to get access to it by normal means.

And it's STILL not that hard!

Streaming stifled piracy far more than governments did by simply providing good access to 98% of what people wanted to watch at a reasonable price.
 
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On one hand, yeah, the general knowledge needed to torrent and things like that might have gone down in recent years; but also nowadays you can just pirate-stream things. With a netflix-looking interface and everything.
 
Vyslanté said:
On one hand, yeah, the general knowledge needed to torrent and things like that might have gone down in recent years; but also nowadays you can just pirate-stream things. With a netflix-looking interface and everything.
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Also. If ten year old me could figure out how to do this stuff in windows 98 of all things its not actually that hard.

Edit - Case in point - There was an article a while back where a UCLA computer science teacher was shocked that his freshmen programming class didn't understand file hierarchies.

While this is reason for alarm, since they'd never interact with them in school . . . It took about ten minutes to explain the concept and get them up to speed.
 
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Triggerhappy said:
While this is reason for alarm, since they'd never interact with them in school . . . It took about ten minutes to explain the concept and get them up to speed.
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sure, if you have a PC to sit them at.


it's more that many people only use phone and/or tablet. this isn't unusual - the PC revolution of the 70's was to a large degree geographically constrained, and even two decades on from that one might note that before the development of the modern smartphone Japanese culture largely had most people accessing the internet via phone rather than a computer.

A proper PC provides access to options that are either difficult or unavailable on a tablet, phone, or low-end browser-laptop (which doesn't have a full on PC OS). But the proportion of users with an actual PC is down.

I honestly would not be surprised if raw PC use numbers are down within some western countries. the App environment is so convenient.

and and the end of the day, it's really about convenience. Will the streaming services and host services and whatnot become sufficient un-convenient to drive large numbers of people in the app environment to do the extra work of piracy? I dunno. the balance of convenience has shifted a lot since the napster age, and honestly at this point I'm an old foggie.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
A proper PC provides access to options that are either difficult or unavailable on a tablet, phone, or low-end browser-laptop (which doesn't have a full on PC OS). But the proportion of users with an actual PC is down.

I honestly would not be surprised if raw PC use numbers are down within some western countries. the App environment is so convenient.
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At this point even mid tier chromebooks are rocking processors and memory sufficient to just dual boot linux. And basically anybody who has to do any sort of digital work from programming to graphics design to just plane data analysis is NOT doing it on a tablet, they're doing it on a PC or laptop.

So no, I don't think computer literacy is down in absolute terms, though it certainly is in relative terms.

Keep in mind PHONES in the vaunted 'app ecosystem' are also seeing a decline in their sales now that they've reached saturation. And they decidedly don't last as long due to their components being under constantly more thermal stress and being taken into more hostile environments than a laptop or desktop.

The truth is that a phone and app ecosystem is actually SUPER inconvenient for doing any task OTHER than consumption.
 
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Triggerhappy said:
I don't think computer literacy is down
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this was never my argument. I said one thing about computer literacy in an earlier post and it wasn't even the core of *that* post.

The core issue is convenience.

Note: setting up a netbook to "dual boot linux" is not convenient. processing power is a minor issue at most - as are other hardware constraints.

The main limiter is "amount of user effort required." That, and... pretty much just that, is going to dictate the course of piracy.
 
Vyslanté said:
But it's not! Having to download apps to do things is the worst!
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It's only really convenient for pure consumption, IMO. And only because of the form factor. The second you have to do anything else, it falls flat on its face. Hell, one of those logitech multimedia keyboards with a built in track pad is a superior experience to a remote control for couch streaming.
 
Piracy isn't hard but streaming is even easier so some people go the lazy route or maybe pirate only occasionally.

Regardless, it looks like the reason Disney+ removed the Indiana Jones movies is because they don't own the distribution rights on them despite owning the IP, they just made a deal to have them on the platform to promote Dial of Destiny.
 
Mal-3 said:
This is honestly more of a symptom of how corps dissect and assimilate each other than anything directly due to copyright law. The distribution of IP rights can get weird given sufficient time and desperation.
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Just look at the situation between Marvel and Sony RE Spider Man.

SeptimusMagisto said:
Piracy isn't hard but streaming is even easier so some people go the lazy route or maybe pirate only occasionally.
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It's kinda like how Microsoft proudly touts that the Xbox Series X/S are unhackable . . . When they've made it super easy to run homebrew by just paying a small fee for developer access and there are no console exclusives to incentivize hacking or developing emulators.
 
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This is why I hate IP law. At least in its current form.

The "but what about the poor indie inventors/creators."

As if current IP laws help protect small artists and scientists.

In my book I'd have it that if a corporation invests in a project like picking up a cartoon or publishing a video game they get exclusive economic access for it to seven to thirty years. After that it would go back to its creator or the public domain.

It would incentivize investment and companies would still get most of the profit from entertainment. With it going back to its creator/enrich the public after that. Not exactly owning the IP

The amount of works that won't make a profit after thirty years is vanishingly low. Even lost box office bombs make back their money in streaming, home video, and other stuff.
 
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