Warner cut off Netflix to profit from Whitney's death? Not true

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CNET News Digital Media Warner cut off Netflix to profit from Whitney's death? Not true by Dara Kerr February 20, 2012 9:17 PM PST Follow @darakerr

Hearsay that Warner Bros. was looking to make a "very large amount of money" on DVD sales of "The Bodyguard" after the singer's death was false.

The rumor mill turned out to be wrong this time.

News that Warner Bros. yanked Netflix's streaming rights to Whitney Houston's hit movie "The Bodyguard" went viral a couple of days ago. The company's purported greedy goal was to make a "very large amount of money on the DVD sales" from "all the publicity after Whitney Houston's passing," according to Dan McDermott, the host of Web show Google Plus Week.

However, in a blog post today, McDermott apologized and announced that both he and the Netflix representative that told him that information were completely wrong.

What in fact happened is that Netflix lost streaming rights to the 1992 Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner romantic thriller as of December 31, 2011, before she died on February 11.

The idea of corporations profiting from tragedy isn't actually too farfetched. Just last week, Sony was forced to apologize for substantial price hikes on two of Houston's albums in the U.K., which came one day after she was found dead.

Even though "The Bodyguard" can't be streamed on Netflix, the DVD is still available; and, as of this writing, Amazon Prime members can also stream it for free.

Dara Kerr Dara Kerr, a freelance journalist based in the Bay Area, is fascinated by robots, supercomputers and Internet memes. When not writing about technology and modernity, she likes to travel to far-off countries. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

Follow @darakerr Topics: Video, Corporate and legal Tags: sony, warner bros, movie streaming, whitney houston, netflix, bodyguard

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