(no subject)

[feotakahari]

Galaxy brain take: fund video collections at public libraries to flex on Netflix.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like it’s the solution to the conflict between “having one company control the market is bad” and “no one wants to subscribe to twelve different video services.”

Comments

[metagorgon]

unfortunately, digital distribution by libraries is fraught with ip concerns, such that it tends to be crippled by drm and arbitrary non-technical limitations.

[flamingsword]

What they said.

[theopjones]

Probably budget constraints would be pretty huge. It would cost a lot to license all the media, and pay the other costs you would need to pay to run something on par with Netflix-type services.

It would take any library that does this in a competitive way more to run this service than they spend on everything else combined.

It appears that Netflix programming/licensing costs are about $20/user/quarter or $80/yr. (and Netflix has other costs, distribution costs/bandwidth would also be huge) https://www.statista.com/statistics/770096/netflix-programming-costs-per-customer/

The total cost of operation for the average public library in 2014 is $42/yr/eligible user http://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2014/public-libraries

[feotakahari]

Public libraries don’t have every single book you can get on Amazon, so they don’t need to have every single movie you can get on Netflix. There’s room for both to exist at once if enough people have the cash for a Netflix subscription and want access to a wider stock.