I dont believe they had a choice. Movieland...one of my favorites as well was breaking numerous copyright infringement laws. Playing movies they didn't have the right to air.
It was legit! I loved Movieland. It was my go-to channel for my weekend morning movies (it was a household tradition to watch old movies with my son to try and bridge the generation gap). They also had some classic old horror films that I coul pull up to watch in tandem with my bf in another state. He would find a movie he wanted to watch with me while we video chatted and I could usually find it on Movieland and stream it so the times would be somewhat the same (never could time it perfectly - lol)
I loved it too! Now where am I going to find a good streaming channel with classic movies? I tried a couple of others and can't get a consistent stream. Movieland always worked great for me!
Some other free channels, which supposedly have classic films (or television), have the worst in films - I've never heard of 75% of them. I would not imagine that too many young people would be searching for those on Movieland in the first place. (Movieland had far more content than what was displayed on any particular day - if I wrote down the title of a film I wanted to watch, I could search.) It was very relaxing. I know very few of the films were 75 years old - most were from the 1950s-70s. They used to be rerun on television easily every year, but I don't think they are being broadcast anywhere now. I just looked at another free channel - there wasn't one film I'd want to watch, I'd never heard of most of them, and the television offerings were flops when they did air 60 years ago.
Just because a movie is from the 50's-70's doesn't mean it is public domain. Those TV stations and basic cable networks that aired them pay for the rights to air them. As noted earlier, copyrights are death of the author plus 70 years. For many movies made by a company, it is set to 95 years from publication, or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first.
This channel is one of the best classic movie channels on Roku! I want it back!
@Hypnosandra wrote:It was legit!
No, very likely it was streaming media without authorization. There's only two reasons for a channel to be removed from the Roku channel store. One is violating the terms of use, which includes only streaming media with authorization. The other reason is the provider simply isn't going to continue the service. Perhaps they've gone out of business, or for some other business reason. In that case they would request Roku to remove the channel. Either way, there's a reason for it being removed, and unless the provider decides to return and follow the terms of use it won't come back.
There were breaks for commercials, but they narely blips in the movies without the actual ad coming on. I still have difficulty believing that they were deliberately pirating movies.
Nonetheless, if they're able to correct the issue, I want it back!
If it's too good to be true......
I suppose I knew all along that it was too good to be true. I can't believe the rubbish on other 'classic' channels. Even My Retroflix, which had some older classics (probably public domain), though it still appears in channel selection, doesn't load. I keep getting the error message that it is unavailable, probably from a 'slow Internet connection.' (I do not have a slow Internet connection, nor do I have problems with any other channels.) Retroflix had nothing like the wonderful selection from Movieland, but one might find something decent if one looked for long enough.