While Sony itself isn’t being the big bad wolf in this story they are in a round-about way because of an agreement they have with subscription movie channel Starz, which in turn has an agreement with Netflix through the StarzPlay label.
It seems that in the agreement between Starz and Sony that Starz has a cap of how many times they can show any of the Sony movies in any given month.
So due to the increasing popularity of Netflix it seems that Starz is constantly bumping up against those caps and in turn has to get Netflix to pull any movies that are hitting that cap imposed by Sony.
Pauline Fischer from Netflix writes this on the company blog regarding the issue
You may have noticed that Sony movies through StarzPlay are not currently available to watch instantly. This is the result of a temporary contract issue between Sony and Starz and, while these two valued partners work through their differences, we hope you are enjoying the wide variety of new movies and TV shows added daily.
Apparently the movies currently hitting those caps and as such being removed from rotation include The Social Network, Easy A, and Salt.
via The Next Web
