Here we go again. It was only a month ago that Karl Bode wrote about Disney’s absolutely and totally cool process of removing a bunch of content from its Disney Plus streaming platform not because the content sucks and nobody liked it, but because it gets to play accounting tricks as to its assets in order to receive giant tax breaks. To some extent, a big media company prioritizing quarterly profit reports over providing customers value in its streaming platform is very much “Dog Bites Man” territory. However, it appears Disney isn’t particularly shy about taking this practice to absurd levels.
Crater is a Disney film that was released on Disney Plus in the ancient times of this past May, nearly two months ago. Despite that short lifespan, and what are apparently not terrible viewership numbers and reviews, Disney has already removed the movie from the platform and stuck it in the vaunted Disney vault.
The plan—and Disney hasn’t confirmed Crater was wiped for this, but why else would it be—works like this: media companies have learned that by removing TV shows and movies from their streaming platforms they can write down the value of their “content assets”, which in turn reduces their overall tax bill. It also reduces the licensing fees these companies are paying.
Until last week, the shows and movies being culled—at Disney and other studios—had included those released somewhat recently, but for whatever had underperformed vs expectations, like 2022’s Willow and Y: The Last Man (which I liked!). That was bad, but Disney’s decision to wipe Crater—released just seven weeks ago—is taking the piss.
Seven weeks. And it’s important to keep in mind that streaming services were supposed to be what put a major damper on film and show piracy. Here’s the thing though: streaming services don’t tamp down on piracy when providers refuse to stream things. Shocking, I know. Disney is as anti-piracy as it gets, of course, but it appears it has prioritized playing shell games with its books over providing the public with the content it wants in its own streaming service.
But now it’s just gone. There’s no way to legally view this film. It’s as though it never existed. One of the key selling points for streaming services was that they were going to eliminate piracy. Now here we are, just a few years later, and piracy is going to be the only way a ton of TV shows and movies are ever going to be saved.
This again points out how content providers aren’t keeping up with their end of the copyright bargain in far too many cases. Granting Disney copyright on this film only to have them refuse to make it available so shortly after release is as anathema to the point of copyright law as it gets.