I want to take this opportunity to thank Stephanie Bedard-Chateauneuf for making such a thorough argument with her article “Entitled Millennials Demand Netflix Let You Binge Watch For Free Because Of COVID-19,” published on ccn.com on Thursday, April 24th. I want to thank her for the attention she's brought to my petition for this important topic that is so close to my heart, and I want to thank CCN for this chance at a rebuttal.
One of the arguments Bedard-Chateauneuf suggests is that since we don’t ask grocery stores to give us food, why would we expect streaming services to let us use their products for free? I have a rebuttal to this, but it’ll require a little imagination. Please indulge me.
Imagine if we actually had the national infrastructure to actually do something as ambitious as delivering free food to citizens during times of crisis. A coordinated, 50 state wide delivery service, bringing meals to the front door of people’s homes every day, people who could not feed or shop for themselves due to being unable to leave the house. What a sight that would be. Brought, perhaps, on the wheels of large vans, carrying multiple meals to several people and houses in one trip. Of course, the logistics for such a Sisyphean task would be astronomical, depending on infrastructure on the scale of which I assume we probably don’t currently have right now. Such is life. What a fool’s dream.
Luckily, for my petition's idea to work, it will require logistics that are millions of times more simple than the previously mentioned and clearly magical scenario. You wouldn’t even have to go to each customer’s home to do it. It's on the internet. All of it is. Which means, if you make the movies free at the source, they will infect that free-ness to every single person's every single app on every single device. I hope I didn’t blow anyone’s mind with that, and to be honest I am not programmer, but I’m fairly certain it would work. Jeff Bezos could “infect” every $4 rental on Amazon Prime with a “Watch Now for Free” button. He could simply push the large black button he has in the briefcase I assume he keeps chained to his arm 24/7, and this solution would happen. A million times on a million movies in a million households that have Amazon Prime.
Hundreds of lives could be saved. Maybe thousands. Maybe more than that, based on how I think viruses spread, but I admit I am also not an etymologist. But I know people need to stay home. This will help them do that. And since (as every article has been so brilliantly telling me since this petition showed up) Netflix’s numbers are so good in this year’s first quarter, we know they can afford to do it. I believe all of these companies can, that’s why I picked them. Except for maybe Vudu, okay. I’ll admit, I was feeling generous and wanted to include them on a list with the big dogs.
Let’s not forget the most important incentive for these companies: This would be millions of people jumping on to these entertainment apps all at once. This would be a temporary Open Pool for everything these people could ever want to see. And then, when it’s over, what are they going to do? Go back to books? Talk to their families? Actually remember to cancel their subscriptions? Who has ever done that on the first month, for anything? After the 60 days is over, the first month back of actual subscription is going to be the biggest spike in profits these companies have ever seen. People are either going to forget to logoff, or they’ll remember and decide they still want to stay any way. Or the companies could temporarily make the first 6 months after my 60 days cost 16.7% more each month in order to make up the difference from beforehand. Or they could decide that everything’s great and they’re going to keep everything at a permanently lower cost than before forever because it always could have worked but no one had tried because everyone was too scared to go first but now everything is super cheap because the streaming service was in our hearts all along – why am I the one coming up with these solutions? I don’t even work for these companies! Are they hiring?
The point is, I don’t really care how it’s solved after the fact. What I do care about is that it’s in our best interests to keep people at home right now. Which means it’s in our best interests to make these entertainment sources cheaper for people living through this economic collapse right now. Our principle is to save lives. Their principle is to make money. A dichotomy which is perfectly fine coexisting. Netflix is a business. Their responsibility is to continue their business. I’ll admit I don’t have an MBA like Bedard-Chateauneuf, but even with my half-baked philosophy degree, I know I can’t appeal to Netflix’s sense of decency and public responsibility in order to get them to do the right thing. That’s not their job. That’s not what they’re there for. And far be it from me to attempt to suggest that Netflix, Amazon, HBO, YouTube, Hulu, and Vudu are faceless inhuman corporations with no principles. They have very clear principles. Their principles are to make money. That’s great. Keep at it, slugger.
I don't think Netflix is stupid. I love Netflix. Netflix is brilliant, that's how they got to be Netflix. Netflix is going to help us to save hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. All of these streaming services can help save lives, right now, instantaneously. And they can make a lot of money doing it. Both are allowed to happen. Everyone can get what they want. It is possible. Two groups, who operate on two separate principles, don’t always necessarily have to conflict. I just know which group and principle I'd rather spend my time on, that's all.
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