It's not a free market industry. To follow your exemple , a tomato owner cannot license you tomatoes and come back and take away your tomato after three days, nor make a deal with you to force your user to eat your tomato only in some settings and not other, otherwise they violate the DMCA.
TV and Movie owners already have copyright laws and DMCA laws giving them legal control on who gets their content and how it is used. The situation with Netflix is that now they can remove their past supply from the market to limit competition from their older titles. New content won't be better or more sought after than the older, it will just be the only one conveniently available. And as we move to more and more digital releases, there might not be any alternative way left to get the older content anymore.
You are right that this will pay salaries for industry people, but I agree with the parent that it's unfortunate.
TV and Movie owners already have copyright laws and DMCA laws giving them legal control on who gets their content and how it is used. The situation with Netflix is that now they can remove their past supply from the market to limit competition from their older titles. New content won't be better or more sought after than the older, it will just be the only one conveniently available. And as we move to more and more digital releases, there might not be any alternative way left to get the older content anymore.
You are right that this will pay salaries for industry people, but I agree with the parent that it's unfortunate.