[Infowarrior] - Streaming Rights On Whitney Houston Movie Pulled In Order To 'Make Really A Large Amount Of Money On DVD Sales'

[Richard Forno]

Streaming Rights On Whitney Houston Movie Pulled In Order To 'Make Really A Large Amount Of Money On DVD Sales'

from the profiting-off-of-death dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120220/10535917816/streaming-rights-whitney-houston-movie-pulled-order-to-make-really-large-amount-money-dvd-sales.shtml

We covered how Sony Music UK jacked up prices on Whitney Houston's music minutes after her death -- then changing them back and apologizing. However, in an even more extreme case, it appears that whoever holds the copyrights on the Whitney Houston movie, The Bodyguard has pulled those rights from Netflix, where it had been streamable (found via Karl Bode, but kudos to Dan McDermott who noticed the problem and found out the details from Netflix). The reasoning is that they figure lots of people will want to buy it now, and this is a chance to cash in on her death:

Netflix rep: "Okay Dan, I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston's passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they're going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies."

.....

Now, watch the copyright holder complain that there's too much infringement of the movie as well...


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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.