> Vertical integration in steel production could as easily involve intellectual property as it does here. I didn't say Intellectual Property, I said Copyright.

> Vertical integration in steel production could as easily involve intellectual property as it does here. I didn't say Intellectual Property, I said Copyright. Copyright—much more than other forms of IP—has a significant impact on our shared culture and cultural transmission. Yes, there may be other factors with IP that we should consider when dealing with mergers, but end-users and everyday people are harmed much much more often due to copyright issues than they ever are due to patent and trademark issues. > I do not know exactly what will happen in this case, but it seems like Amazon's proposing to buy a single studio is very unlikely to result in harm to consumers. Sure, and I do not know exactly what will happen when we place a straw on a camel's back. But in each case it seems like it's very unlikely that the camel's back will break. It's a sorities paradox in reverse: Which individual acquisition is the point at which network effects start creating problems. Each individual M&A is unlikely to be the one that causes the problem, and yet if you allow each one because it is unlikely, eventually the system stops functioning correctly.