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> copyright law is that there are entities that have businesses that are built on copyright protection that are so powerful they can nearly dictate what the cop

> copyright law is that there are entities that have businesses that are built on copyright protection that are so powerful they can nearly dictate what the copyright laws are (cough Disney cough). I fully agree w/ this criticism of copyright law. I do not think that has a substantial intersection w/ the competitive effects of this proposed acquisition.

ncallaway 5y ago
> I do not think that has a substantial intersection w/ the competitive effects of this proposed acquisition My understanding is that MGM has a large holding of copyrighted media, and therefore substantial interests in protecting and extending the rights and terms afforded by copyright law. For example, they have led consortiums of large entertainment companies in the past to bring copyright lawsuits to the Supreme Court (MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd). My other understanding is that Amazon is a very powerful corporation, that has complex interactions with copyright law already (they are a distributor of both physical and electronic media through Amazon Video and Amazon Music; they are a content producer through Amazon Games studios and Amazon Original Series [also already built on the back of other acquisitions]). This acquisition gives another significant interest in copyright protection to an entity that is already extremely powerful. We're going to M&A our way to another Mouse on the copyright front (which was also built largely on the back of "mostly-harmless-at-the-time-but-problematic-in-aggregate" acquisitions), until massive swaths of our cultural expression are owned by a very small handful of organizations. I suppose maybe a disconnect we have is there is a non-financial "consumer welfare" question that I don't see being asked. Consumer welfare is generally only approached from the financial perspective of: "what will the financial cost to a consumer be to obtain the rights to consume media"; I don't see anyone attempting to defend consumer welfare from a _cultural_ perspective of: "Which entities do we have to ask permission from in order to interact with important elements of our culture and society?"

ncallaway 5y ago

> I do not think that has a substantial intersection w/ the competitive effects of this proposed acquisition My understanding is that MGM has a large holding of copyrighted media, and therefore substantial interests in protecting and extending the rights and terms afforded by copyright law. For example, they have led consortiums of large entertainment companies in the past to bring copyright lawsuits to the Supreme Court (MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd). My other understanding is that Amazon is a very powerful corporation, that has complex interactions with copyright law already (they are a distributor of both physical and electronic media through Amazon Video and Amazon Music; they are a content producer through Amazon Games studios and Amazon Original Series [also already built on the back of other acquisitions]). This acquisition gives another significant interest in copyright protection to an entity that is already extremely powerful. We're going to M&A our way to another Mouse on the copyright front (which was also built largely on the back of "mostly-harmless-at-the-time-but-problematic-in-aggregate" acquisitions), until massive swaths of our cultural expression are owned by a very small handful of organizations. I suppose maybe a disconnect we have is there is a non-financial "consumer welfare" question that I don't see being asked. Consumer welfare is generally only approached from the financial perspective of: "what will the financial cost to a consumer be to obtain the rights to consume media"; I don't see anyone attempting to defend consumer welfare from a _cultural_ perspective of: "Which entities do we have to ask permission from in order to interact with important elements of our culture and society?"