I wasn't alive then, so this probably me romanticizing, but the Hollywood of the WWII era I grew up learning about would have been sending these films over to the troops on their own.
There were the WWII Armed Service Editions: "Over the life of the program, over 123 million copies of 1,322 titles were printed. This makes the ASE program one of the largest wide-scale distributions of free books in history."
Even if they were doing so, the situation was very different. You couldn't easily copy movies, and either way, people in general weren't as dependent on Hollywood entertainment as they are now.
My broader point is that there's a lot of talk surrounding the legal/piracy implications of what this man is doing, and yes, the world is far different now that it was some 70 years ago, but in his era a comparative act to this - if there is one - wouldn't have been met with nearly as much (potential) "controversy" I think. Hollywood used to do quite a lot to show it's support to the armed services/government. (Disney sidelined projects to work on what was essentially free propaganda films among many others)
