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So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

secondbreakfast 5y ago
> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every week.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  This, in my opinion really depends on the content you consume, where you consume it and how you pay for it. Some types of content in competitive ecosystems, are thriving and flourishing. Other types, in large vertically organized systems, are languishing. Only time will tell, but for instance, it has been a really long time since I have seen a memorable film or tv show that truly stands out in my mind as something that will stand the test of time. And the best stuff can be found in obscure distribution channels while the worst stuff gets over financed and over promoted. But that has always been the story hasn’t it, so it’s tricky to make assessments as we only remember the best examples from the past. Certainly, more people than ever can make some thing and then rapidly deliver it to their audience and this is a good thing, even if there are fewer Stanley Kubricks around.
eplanit 5y ago
You're right. And yes, we could use those laws, but we're also now at a time in history where the combined power and influence of "big tech" is greater (by far, I fear) than the will and character of Legislators (i.e. low-character politicians) to enact any such law to constrain/regulate them, at all.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  Definitely, though I really do hope that will change at some point...
xiaolingxiao 5y ago
What's interesting is that the government had to step in and break the movie theaters from the movie studio in a famous anti-trust case. I wonder how it'll play out in this case. Presumably Amazon may still license Bond movies (for example) to Netflix. In fact Netflix is included in my Prime bundle I believe...
- billyhoffman 5y ago
  That Supreme Court case [1] stopped the vertical integration where the studios signed actors under exclusive multi-year contracts, made the films, and will only release them in their own theaters. It was overturned by new legislation in 2020. 1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
- tmp231 5y ago
  “Had to” They did not have to. They could have let market forces dictate how it played out.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    The market is currently "dictating" that I have to do business with Amazon no matter how odious I think their practices are. They're almost as hard to avoid as Google at this point.
    - tmp231 5y ago
      People seem to like them. And what a wonderful service they have done for society. But I guess Walmart is always available, or boutique stores if you don’t like big box.
    - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      They are much harder to avoid than google: Look at this list: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws Amazon, and their primary revenue stream (AWS) is *immune* to boycott because it's so diversified. The fact that a company is immune to boycott is alarming.
echelon 5y ago
Call your legislators!
libertine 5y ago
This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase. And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate. It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I mean maybe but so many people have prime for the shipping that I doubt it will do anything to stir piracy.
  - Retric 5y ago
    You need to be ordering from Amazon weekly to break even on Prime for shipping costs. It’s likely worth it for some people but it really doesn’t fit my habits.
- athenot 5y ago
  > It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions. Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe and cancel at your whim. None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to be owned and sold by someone. What other situation should we have expected?
    - libertine 5y ago
Spivak 5y ago
Would you also establish compulsory licensing so that studios and distributors can’t have exclusive content?
- 1-6 5y ago
  My point as well. A law to break up content and distributors seems far-reaching. Let the studios do what they want.
- Sander_Marechal 5y ago
  Compulsory licensing would be fantastic. It already exists for e.g. radio
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhino369 5y ago
    A studio recording is what? 100k investment? A season of TV is at least 10M--and Amazon and Netflix are spending 200M on some. I think it would be very challenging to set compulsory licensing rates for TV and Movies.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  Haven’t even thought of this - would be amazing at neutralizing the entire field.
- sib 5y ago
  Exclusive content --> more value for distribution channels --> ability to pay producers more money --> better content
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.
- edent 5y ago
  I'm unfamiliar with US television - but was NBC broadcast free to air, via a government regulated transmitter?
  - echelon 5y ago
    It wasn't bundled with a subscription to eCommerce/grocery store/ebook/video streaming. This is going to force subsidization of all entertainment. Then big tech will gobble it all up. We're going to have a lot of Netflix Original-caliber shit that gets cancelled once viewership changes.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    NBC is one of the major studios that chose to license their content to broadcast networks around the country. I do not see how that is related, but in the event it is, you can replace NBC with HBO or any other non broadcasted channel.
- mivade 5y ago
  The difference is simple: NBC was (and still is) free to watch if you have a television and an antenna.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    And if you lived in a location close enough to a city to receive the airwaves. I do not see what that has to do with it, but you can swap out NBC for a non broadcast media owner like Comedy Central. Point is content is more accessible and cheaper than it has ever been in history, and that is partially due to the elimination of middlemen like cable/satellite TV distributors. But media is always going to have an owner, who is always going to be able to license it to whoever they want at whatever cost they want.
Pxtl 5y ago
One wrinkle of that era was how they even had their own stable of actors working for them exclusively. The new vertical integration doesn't seem to be going that far down. I imagine there's not as much interest in that, and actors have a powerful union now.
- ajaimk 5y ago
  That’s kinda happening now too but with directors that have signed first look deals with VOD providers.
  - salamanderman 5y ago
    First look deals with production companies never went away. The first one coming to mind is The Weinstein company had a first look deal with Disney (yes, Disney turned down lord of the rings).
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Not surprising. I can't see how that would help their brand.
- croon 5y ago
  I'm bad at name dropping, but I atleast know of Adam Sandler and Shonda Rhimes signing exclusivity deals. I'm sure there are many more examples.
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.
- skystarman 5y ago
  We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago. But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental gymnastics used to defend piracy.
  - nkozyra 5y ago
    > But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to multiple services to get the content you want because it's otherwise siloed. Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a small subset of that service's offerings is driving people back to piracy.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - skystarman 5y ago
      You don't have to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a "small subset" of the service's offerings. You get ALL of their offerings. The idea that you should pay less than $8 for Disney Plus because you only want to watch Mandalorian when you actually get access to literally dozens of extremely high quality titles is just fucking dumb. The previous option was pay $14 per person to go to a theater and that's the only thing you get to watch. Or pay $120 a month for cable. It's all just ludicrously deranged mental gymnastics to justify the fact you don't want to pay for anything. Which you can do, that's fine, just be honest about it!
FridayoLeary 5y ago
It's important to remember is happening now is not without precedent. There have been large monopolies in living memory. It's also telling that they have all but faded from the memory. It's not just some hopeless, "evil" power - grab. [Edit: so thanks for mentioning that!]
spideymans 5y ago
It's wild to see. It feels like only a matter of time before the tech giants eat Hollywood.
mythz 5y ago
Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content. There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players. When everything's online the primary drawcard to different video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.
- ssharp 5y ago
  > It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content. How do you see this playing out when there have been so many big investments by traditional players to put forward new streaming services? The major players went from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and have now added Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and Paramount+, with more on the way. Untangling all the licensing deals is quite confusing as well and starts to get into the innards of production. I always associate Friends and Seinfeld with NBC, yet they aren't on Peacock, they're on HBO Max and Hulu, respectively. That and content shifting from one platform to another constantly, makes the web even more confusing and it's hard to determine which services you really want.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
    This kind of confusing experience is certainly advantageous towards extracting more from the viewer. It’s like shopping malls being designed to be difficult to get out of.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It’s a far less confusing experience than it was pre streaming services. You basically paid for an unknown item - you did not even know which content was going to be available or when it would be available. Now you can search for what you want to watch, follow the prompts, and it shows you the price, and you agree or disagree. And then you cancel if you do not want it anymore. Some of the purchasing flows can surely use more work, but it’s leagues better than it used to be.
52-6F-62 5y ago
Isn't that the period considered the "golden age" of Hollywood cinema? I've no skin in the game, really, except that I do love film and I hope good films are increasingly made. It's not as if those films or productions are requisite viewing. It's casual entertainment or philosophy. I'm not sure what the pressing concern there is. Amazon, however, is a different beast and should probably be broken up to some degree for other reasons—not this one. It's definitely a streaming service arms race, though.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  To a degree the “golden age” is as more about a certain style as it is quality. Casablanca is an entirely wonderful movie - but at the time it was just one of a fleet of films pushed through the machine. The ‘Hollywood style’ was intended to be 1) immediately legible/easy to understand for a wide audience and 2) easy to make quickly on a factory line-like studio process.
andy_ppp 5y ago
I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of dollars per year on content that I can own going forward. The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...
- xtracto 5y ago
  Right on. In the times of DVDs, you could get a DVD film for $5 dollars and here in Mexico even cheaper $50 pesos ($2.5 USD). I think the fact that a rental movie (even when you "buy" the digital version it is a rental as it has ben shown over an over) costs around $12 USD today that delivery process has been streamlined so much. That's pure greed.
- dhimes 5y ago
  My wife and I are no strangers to "buying" on-demand movies we enjoy. But our experience with Verizon FIOS is that every couple of months those titles "aren't available." Our "Purchased" area is empty. Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But we couldn't get it and ended up watching some junk (background while we talked mainly) and, of course, losing the kid's interest. The alternative was to try to call CS and spend perhaps an hour troubleshooting. If, however, we owned our own physical copy we could have watched it. My evening, crippled by tech failures of the vendor, and no recourse for compensation for loss of use or our time.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    Have you tried Movies Anywhere? It syncs your purchased Movies between most major providers. I wonder if this would allow you to watch the movie elsewhere when this issue occurs at one vendor. With this I now have many of my Apple purchases on Google Play and Amazon and vice versa
    - 5y ago
deegles 5y ago
Make all content available at a flat rate per minute streamed owed to the content creator. Maybe let the creator set the rate for the first N years (with a cap) if they want to capitalize on a new release etc. I would throw money at a service that had Everything(r) on it.
adaisadais 5y ago
You’re looking at this wrong. This is a massive opportunity for someone to do what iTunes did to music and what Spotify did after. It just might end up being Amazon...
- kin 5y ago
  I don’t think you can make the same comparison to iTunes. No record label had the ability to reach millions of paying users like Netflix already has. Netflix has no incentive to license their original content to a different aggregate platform.
margaretdouglas 5y ago
What do you think cable networks were in the 90s? If you weren't paying a middle-man to aggregate them onto a single monopolized access point in your house you'd be paying NBC/ABC/CBS/etc individually. Think about how premium channels worked at the time; you'd pay for HBO or Cinemax on top of your monthly cable bill. It's not as though those premium channels were significantly cheaper than HBOMax or Netflix, and they didn't offer a fraction of the content you could consume at any given time.
dylan604 5y ago
>Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's game, content started getting so much more interesting. Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get involved so we can have a full FAANG entertainment. All of the Paramounts/WBs want to do is take the one franchise and squeeze every drop from it with endless sequels to the point I have completely lost any interest in explosions, cars, and super heroes.
- seanicus 5y ago
  Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter out, but probably after all of us are dead.
leifg 5y ago
I wonder if we’ll see some kind of cable box equivalent where private companies will go ahead and bundle a subset of all the content on the streaming service into a package to sell you. Possibly subsidized with ads…
- TranquilMarmot 5y ago
  This is kind of what Roku does, yeah? Each Roku device comes pre-loded with a suite of streaming services installed (but you still have to subscribe to each one...) and the remote even has dedicated buttons for whatever streaming services are paying Roku the most at the moment.
cbetti 5y ago
I think in the near term a combination of good content and enjoyable user experience with viewing application is going to drive adoption. I have a Roku and Samsung SmartOS TV. The only independent playback experiences that come close to Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+ in my limited experience are Plex, Apple TV, and for legacy stuff, TiVo. I'll take this weird world of locked-in distribution channels for a few years while innovation progresses, and hope Plex and Apple TV win once innovation stops.
jccalhoun 5y ago
There are similarities but US vs Paramount was more about the dealings with the theaters and the movie studios and not the consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic.... If there was some kind of anti-trust to go on with streaming sources it might be more likely to be about something like Amazon only having its content on Fire devices or forcing Roku to only have Amazon content and not Netflix or something.
henvic 5y ago
No! On the contrary: stop trying to use the law for everything! Such strategy works a million times better than the horror of copyright law. The companies should be free to do it, and it's awful that someone wants to involve the force of the state to stop them from doing so, instead of seeing it as a way to get rid of the burden of copyright law to society.
bsedlm 5y ago
> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem too bad it's not about making better stuff but more profit. it's like the market has been distorted out of its ability to better reward better stuff.
- seanicus 5y ago
  Exactly. When the movie star system died, it took a lot of material made for adults with it. Even Robert Downey Jr. can't carry a movie that's not a popular IP. Now everything is a $200M sequel to something else or a $1M movie that's financed by 18 different companies. The TV golden age was serving adults for a while but seems to be dying off now.
ryanmarsh 5y ago
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution Why though? I wasn’t aware these laws exist(ed). Why are they needed?
snarf21 5y ago
We have the laws and organizations but the FTC and SEC have failed us in the 21st century. There is no consideration of the consumer or marketplace, only shareholder value.
linuxftw 5y ago
It's outrageous. If you want to buy a new Chevy, you need to go to a Chevy dealer. Seriously though, who cares? It's just mindless time wasting entertainment. It's an art form who's time is rapidly passing. Let's get back to doing things together, like live music, any kind of hobby, just anything other than watching moving pictures.
syshum 5y ago
We need FRAND for Copyright, if you are going to license your copyright in a commercial setting you must license it to all platform in a way fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory method
seanicus 5y ago
Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60% of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by going to a Disney theater.
fpoling 5y ago
In [1] Arthur De Vany showed rather convincingly that the split between distribution and production for movie production made things worse for the consumers. The problem is that the profit of the whole industry is dominated by very few titles and that split lead to a few non-trivial consequences like lack of diversity in Hollywood. [1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_po... EDIT: one of the Amazon reviews gave a very good summary of the above point: One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate. This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  This depends on what you think makes a great movie and a great system and there really is no right answer. I'm not sure the above 'proves' that things were made worse for consumers. Fact is, weird independent 'auteur' filmmakers and foreign films entered the market in the 1960's and were able to distribute without being locked out. The producers taking those risks perhaps didn't feel they were taking a risk at all. Maybe they knew they had a winning hand and had better know-how than the studio bosses and their risk avoidance BS. That's how you get those Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. At the same time, movie theatres ceased to be these lavish 'palaces'. So what 'going to the movies' meant shifted in consumers' minds. Film productions also shrunk in size and scale so there is that. I would assume the business side actually deteriorated while cultural relevance rose. Probably not everyone on the consumer side was happy with all of that. If we're talking about that studio era though, these portfolios of movies being managed from the top definitely made films bland and predictable. But then on the other hand they also forced the talent to hone skill through repetition. So you had some specific aspects of the films being executed on a high polished level like the noir cinematography. I'm feeling/seeing something similar going on right now with the VOD offering. Even though it's all really well produced and shot and put together, I just sense everyone is following the same seemingly risque but safe playbook optimized for social media marketing. Seen in another way, the internet aspect of these distribution systems really can make all of the above completely irrelevant too. I find my satisfaction with MUBI and weird niche shit on YouTube. A piece of my money still goes toward partially paying for the very same infrastructure. As someone else mentioned here already - I'm not physically limited from seeking what I want to find online, and it's all there side by side for me to view. This was not at all the case in the 1950's. In my mind one thing is certain, and this is just my take - I don't really want to watch a James Bond that has been developed by a goofy logistics e-commerce corporate giant. I just really don't see it.
nabla9 5y ago
Agreed. It's artificial bottleneck based on outdated model. Currently the best catalog is with illegal streaming services and BitTorrent VOD and (for the cost of VPN).
novok 5y ago
Isn't this more like cable tv packages, where you add another $10/month to your bill for that package of channels, which were often focused by broadcaster, who had a bunch of exclusive shows, or themes, like sci-fi or 'cartoon network'. Netflix, Apple TV, etc are broadcasters and crunchyroll is thematic.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
The laws are there, it's our lawmakers that have been failing us the past ~30 years as big tech has run roughshod over the entire fucking planet doing whatever it wants with extremely minimal consequences.
GFischer 5y ago
Very insightful comment, I ended up reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic.... https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american-film-industry-early-1950s https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american... https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-court-killed-hollywoods-studio-system https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-cour...
sircastor 5y ago
I see the meaningful difference here being that there is no limitation to distribution across consumers. With studio owned theaters, if there wasn’t a Paramount theater in your town, you’re outta luck. Today, you can get Peacock and Paramount+ and Disney+, etc on virtually any device. Even Apple, who has been historically resistant to distribution on other devices has Apple+ on Roku and Amazon devices Because antitrust favors impact on consumers, I doubt we’ll see any substantial legislation is this space.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  Oh yeah, definitely. I do have my hopes on some sort of anti-trust regulation, but it's not going to be focused on film - it's going to be all about software and gaming.
lpolovets 5y ago
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Forcing this would also have many downsides: - if you make content that others don't want to distribute, are you not allowed to distribute it yourself? Freedom to publish whatever you want feels very valuable for society, IMHO. - costs for consumers might rise because you now have two sets of costs priced in, instead of one set of costs. - It's harder to launch new companies. If content providers don't want to work with you as a distributor when you're small, it's hard to get off the ground. If distributors don't want to work with you because your content is unproven, it's hard to get off the ground. Etc.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  I don't see your line of thinking: - Yeah you um can, like build your own movie theatre and show your own movies. The point of the law in this case is to prevent vertically integrated corporate structures from forming. - I don't see the sets of costs argument - any price is made up of infinite sub-costs. You buy a carton of milk, it came from a distributor who bought it from a wholesaler, who got it from a carton plant and so on and so forth. At each step of the way someone verified the quality to ensure reputation. In a vertical corp quality control can be difficult. - The opposite - easier to launch new companies. This is already how it is in places like Europe. No problem to sign 'distribution' deals, and no problem in seeking 'distributors' if you have the content. What's more a ton of other types of incentives make it easier to start new efforts. I don't think you understand that mostly, this is how it all already works, by itself. That's the whole point of a 'free market'. Until Amazon rolls into town and starts buying everybody up and integrating it all into something else.
caycep 5y ago
Tbh, probably completely off topic, but the first thing that came to mind are alcohol regulations at least in CA preventing vineyards and distilleries from opening or operating restaurants...hence the rise in "educational tasting/pairing classes"
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. We have those laws for cars and beer and they are considered ongoing disasters. Why are films different?
mbesto 5y ago
“Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...
macspoofing 5y ago
>So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Or the TV business throughout all of TV history. You know, if you want to see an HBO show, you can only watch it on HBO. If you want to watch _new+ episodes of Seinfeld, you have to watch it on NBC.
asdff 5y ago
Netflix already owns the Egyptian Theatre. Disney owns El Capitan. History repeats again!
ryanSrich 5y ago
Disagree. Government oversight is usually never the correct answer. The simplest solution to this is through consumer choice. Simply pirate the content you want. If corporations don't want to lose money to piracy then they'll learn to stop doing anti-consumer behavior.
beloch 5y ago
A century ago, if Library's hadn't existed, someone trying to create one might have had a chance. Today they'd have no chance at all. If you think to today's U.S. government would willingly choose to fight the U.S. vs Paramount battle again, you'll probably be disappointed. They're far more likely to close libraries.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Well, the end of the 1930's to 1950's vertical monopoly shouldn't detract from the many ways the entertainment industry is monopolistic today. Indeed, my impression is no one could even summarize all the ways unions, rights, contracts and etc divide profits, limit who can do what, etc. My impression buying a historical piece of the entertainment industries is a lot like buying a company with large patent portfolio. No one knows whether the buyer is going to use the pieces "offensively" to cut off the rights of others or "defensively", to get leverage for cross licenses and so-forth.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  We definitely now know Apple won't be buying the James Bond franchise and making it exclusive. That would have been a huge loss for the other GAFA's entertainment libraries.
neuralRiot 5y ago
>We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Why? We’re not talking about food, water or the environment. There is where laws should be enacted or enforced.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should be enacted and enforced everywhere. This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young. If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.
  - neuralRiot 5y ago
    >This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Culture is important and so is entertainment but the later is not always the former, and none is vital. There’s plenty of unmonopolized cultural options and one could even argue that much more benefiting than big blockbusters, it’s like worrying that pizza hut would monopolize the pizza market and losing nutritional values in the community.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
      Well for one in this context you could say that I’m interested in the pizza and how it’s harder to find a good Neapolitan pizza place and all the mom’n’pop pizza places are being strangled to death. It’s an interesting phenomenon, not necessarily something to be “worried” about.
mudlus 5y ago
All hail Plex and torrents.
deleted 5y ago
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secondbreakfast 5y ago

> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Are we not currently living in a content golden age? Is there any measure of quality and quantity now vs the past? It feels like there's a new amazing mini series and movie and show every week.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
This, in my opinion really depends on the content you consume, where you consume it and how you pay for it. Some types of content in competitive ecosystems, are thriving and flourishing. Other types, in large vertically organized systems, are languishing. Only time will tell, but for instance, it has been a really long time since I have seen a memorable film or tv show that truly stands out in my mind as something that will stand the test of time. And the best stuff can be found in obscure distribution channels while the worst stuff gets over financed and over promoted. But that has always been the story hasn’t it, so it’s tricky to make assessments as we only remember the best examples from the past. Certainly, more people than ever can make some thing and then rapidly deliver it to their audience and this is a good thing, even if there are fewer Stanley Kubricks around.

eplanit 5y ago

You're right. And yes, we could use those laws, but we're also now at a time in history where the combined power and influence of "big tech" is greater (by far, I fear) than the will and character of Legislators (i.e. low-character politicians) to enact any such law to constrain/regulate them, at all.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Definitely, though I really do hope that will change at some point...

xiaolingxiao 5y ago

What's interesting is that the government had to step in and break the movie theaters from the movie studio in a famous anti-trust case. I wonder how it'll play out in this case. Presumably Amazon may still license Bond movies (for example) to Netflix. In fact Netflix is included in my Prime bundle I believe...

billyhoffman 5y ago
That Supreme Court case [1] stopped the vertical integration where the studios signed actors under exclusive multi-year contracts, made the films, and will only release them in their own theaters. It was overturned by new legislation in 2020. 1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P....
tmp231 5y ago
“Had to” They did not have to. They could have let market forces dictate how it played out.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  The market is currently "dictating" that I have to do business with Amazon no matter how odious I think their practices are. They're almost as hard to avoid as Google at this point.
  - tmp231 5y ago
    People seem to like them. And what a wonderful service they have done for society. But I guess Walmart is always available, or boutique stores if you don’t like big box.
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    They are much harder to avoid than google: Look at this list: https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-aws Amazon, and their primary revenue stream (AWS) is *immune* to boycott because it's so diversified. The fact that a company is immune to boycott is alarming.

echelon 5y ago

Call your legislators!

libertine 5y ago

This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase. And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate. It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.

Spivak 5y ago
I mean maybe but so many people have prime for the shipping that I doubt it will do anything to stir piracy.
- Retric 5y ago
  You need to be ordering from Amazon weekly to break even on Prime for shipping costs. It’s likely worth it for some people but it really doesn’t fit my habits.
athenot 5y ago
> It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions. Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe and cancel at your whim. None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to be owned and sold by someone. What other situation should we have expected?
  - libertine 5y ago

Spivak 5y ago

Would you also establish compulsory licensing so that studios and distributors can’t have exclusive content?

1-6 5y ago
My point as well. A law to break up content and distributors seems far-reaching. Let the studios do what they want.
Sander_Marechal 5y ago
Compulsory licensing would be fantastic. It already exists for e.g. radio
- deleted 5y ago
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- rhino369 5y ago
  A studio recording is what? 100k investment? A season of TV is at least 10M--and Amazon and Netflix are spending 200M on some. I think it would be very challenging to set compulsory licensing rates for TV and Movies.
scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Haven’t even thought of this - would be amazing at neutralizing the entire field.
sib 5y ago
Exclusive content --> more value for distribution channels --> ability to pay producers more money --> better content

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lotsofpulp 5y ago

> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.

edent 5y ago
I'm unfamiliar with US television - but was NBC broadcast free to air, via a government regulated transmitter?
- echelon 5y ago
  It wasn't bundled with a subscription to eCommerce/grocery store/ebook/video streaming. This is going to force subsidization of all entertainment. Then big tech will gobble it all up. We're going to have a lot of Netflix Original-caliber shit that gets cancelled once viewership changes.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  NBC is one of the major studios that chose to license their content to broadcast networks around the country. I do not see how that is related, but in the event it is, you can replace NBC with HBO or any other non broadcasted channel.
mivade 5y ago
The difference is simple: NBC was (and still is) free to watch if you have a television and an antenna.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  And if you lived in a location close enough to a city to receive the airwaves. I do not see what that has to do with it, but you can swap out NBC for a non broadcast media owner like Comedy Central. Point is content is more accessible and cheaper than it has ever been in history, and that is partially due to the elimination of middlemen like cable/satellite TV distributors. But media is always going to have an owner, who is always going to be able to license it to whoever they want at whatever cost they want.

Pxtl 5y ago

One wrinkle of that era was how they even had their own stable of actors working for them exclusively. The new vertical integration doesn't seem to be going that far down. I imagine there's not as much interest in that, and actors have a powerful union now.

ajaimk 5y ago
That’s kinda happening now too but with directors that have signed first look deals with VOD providers.
- salamanderman 5y ago
  First look deals with production companies never went away. The first one coming to mind is The Weinstein company had a first look deal with Disney (yes, Disney turned down lord of the rings).
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Not surprising. I can't see how that would help their brand.
croon 5y ago
I'm bad at name dropping, but I atleast know of Adam Sandler and Shonda Rhimes signing exclusivity deals. I'm sure there are many more examples.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

skystarman 5y ago
We for the most part have exponentially more and better content in tv and film, and for MUCH cheaper and with more convenience than 10-15 years ago. But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. Some people would just prefer to not pay for shit I guess. I just wish they'd be more honest about it than the mental gymnastics used to defend piracy.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  > But still people insist that they must pirate because the "studios" for some amorphous reason related to preexisting hatred of corporations or whatever. This is not a good faith reading or interpretation. The frustration is in the fragmentation; having to subscribe to multiple services to get the content you want because it's otherwise siloed. Hitting that point - having to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a small subset of that service's offerings is driving people back to piracy.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - skystarman 5y ago
    You don't have to subscribe to 3 or more services to get a "small subset" of the service's offerings. You get ALL of their offerings. The idea that you should pay less than $8 for Disney Plus because you only want to watch Mandalorian when you actually get access to literally dozens of extremely high quality titles is just fucking dumb. The previous option was pay $14 per person to go to a theater and that's the only thing you get to watch. Or pay $120 a month for cable. It's all just ludicrously deranged mental gymnastics to justify the fact you don't want to pay for anything. Which you can do, that's fine, just be honest about it!

FridayoLeary 5y ago

It's important to remember is happening now is not without precedent. There have been large monopolies in living memory. It's also telling that they have all but faded from the memory. It's not just some hopeless, "evil" power - grab. [Edit: so thanks for mentioning that!]

spideymans 5y ago

It's wild to see. It feels like only a matter of time before the tech giants eat Hollywood.

mythz 5y ago

Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content. There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players. When everything's online the primary drawcard to different video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.

ssharp 5y ago
> It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content. How do you see this playing out when there have been so many big investments by traditional players to put forward new streaming services? The major players went from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon and have now added Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and Paramount+, with more on the way. Untangling all the licensing deals is quite confusing as well and starts to get into the innards of production. I always associate Friends and Seinfeld with NBC, yet they aren't on Peacock, they're on HBO Max and Hulu, respectively. That and content shifting from one platform to another constantly, makes the web even more confusing and it's hard to determine which services you really want.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  This kind of confusing experience is certainly advantageous towards extracting more from the viewer. It’s like shopping malls being designed to be difficult to get out of.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It’s a far less confusing experience than it was pre streaming services. You basically paid for an unknown item - you did not even know which content was going to be available or when it would be available. Now you can search for what you want to watch, follow the prompts, and it shows you the price, and you agree or disagree. And then you cancel if you do not want it anymore. Some of the purchasing flows can surely use more work, but it’s leagues better than it used to be.

52-6F-62 5y ago

Isn't that the period considered the "golden age" of Hollywood cinema? I've no skin in the game, really, except that I do love film and I hope good films are increasingly made. It's not as if those films or productions are requisite viewing. It's casual entertainment or philosophy. I'm not sure what the pressing concern there is. Amazon, however, is a different beast and should probably be broken up to some degree for other reasons—not this one. It's definitely a streaming service arms race, though.

germinalphrase 5y ago
To a degree the “golden age” is as more about a certain style as it is quality. Casablanca is an entirely wonderful movie - but at the time it was just one of a fleet of films pushed through the machine. The ‘Hollywood style’ was intended to be 1) immediately legible/easy to understand for a wide audience and 2) easy to make quickly on a factory line-like studio process.

andy_ppp 5y ago

I still think DRM should be banned and paying for content should be super cheap - say per movie $1 for HD file download and $2 for a 4k version. For me I'd literally spend hundreds of dollars per year on content that I can own going forward. The funniest thing of course is I bet the studios would make more money than trying to charge me $4.99 to rent movies and absurd sums to "buy" them...

xtracto 5y ago
Right on. In the times of DVDs, you could get a DVD film for $5 dollars and here in Mexico even cheaper $50 pesos ($2.5 USD). I think the fact that a rental movie (even when you "buy" the digital version it is a rental as it has ben shown over an over) costs around $12 USD today that delivery process has been streamlined so much. That's pure greed.
dhimes 5y ago
My wife and I are no strangers to "buying" on-demand movies we enjoy. But our experience with Verizon FIOS is that every couple of months those titles "aren't available." Our "Purchased" area is empty. Last night was one of those nights. We settled in a bit early for TV (minor celebration) and decided we had time to re-watch a movie, and our kid-still-at-home would join us. But we couldn't get it and ended up watching some junk (background while we talked mainly) and, of course, losing the kid's interest. The alternative was to try to call CS and spend perhaps an hour troubleshooting. If, however, we owned our own physical copy we could have watched it. My evening, crippled by tech failures of the vendor, and no recourse for compensation for loss of use or our time.
- ajmurmann 5y ago
  Have you tried Movies Anywhere? It syncs your purchased Movies between most major providers. I wonder if this would allow you to watch the movie elsewhere when this issue occurs at one vendor. With this I now have many of my Apple purchases on Google Play and Amazon and vice versa
  - 5y ago

deegles 5y ago

Make all content available at a flat rate per minute streamed owed to the content creator. Maybe let the creator set the rate for the first N years (with a cap) if they want to capitalize on a new release etc. I would throw money at a service that had Everything(r) on it.

adaisadais 5y ago

You’re looking at this wrong. This is a massive opportunity for someone to do what iTunes did to music and what Spotify did after. It just might end up being Amazon...

kin 5y ago
I don’t think you can make the same comparison to iTunes. No record label had the ability to reach millions of paying users like Netflix already has. Netflix has no incentive to license their original content to a different aggregate platform.

margaretdouglas 5y ago

What do you think cable networks were in the 90s? If you weren't paying a middle-man to aggregate them onto a single monopolized access point in your house you'd be paying NBC/ABC/CBS/etc individually. Think about how premium channels worked at the time; you'd pay for HBO or Cinemax on top of your monthly cable bill. It's not as though those premium channels were significantly cheaper than HBOMax or Netflix, and they didn't offer a fraction of the content you could consume at any given time.

dylan604 5y ago

>Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Really? Have you enjoyed the drek that has been released over the past decade? HBO started the bucking of the system, F/X and A&E followed. But since they were cable ops, I guess they get a pass? When Netflix started producing and pushed everyone's game, content started getting so much more interesting. Obviously, Amazon/Apple followed. I'm waiting for Google to get involved so we can have a full FAANG entertainment. All of the Paramounts/WBs want to do is take the one franchise and squeeze every drop from it with endless sequels to the point I have completely lost any interest in explosions, cars, and super heroes.

seanicus 5y ago
Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter out, but probably after all of us are dead.

leifg 5y ago

I wonder if we’ll see some kind of cable box equivalent where private companies will go ahead and bundle a subset of all the content on the streaming service into a package to sell you. Possibly subsidized with ads…

TranquilMarmot 5y ago
This is kind of what Roku does, yeah? Each Roku device comes pre-loded with a suite of streaming services installed (but you still have to subscribe to each one...) and the remote even has dedicated buttons for whatever streaming services are paying Roku the most at the moment.

cbetti 5y ago

I think in the near term a combination of good content and enjoyable user experience with viewing application is going to drive adoption. I have a Roku and Samsung SmartOS TV. The only independent playback experiences that come close to Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+ in my limited experience are Plex, Apple TV, and for legacy stuff, TiVo. I'll take this weird world of locked-in distribution channels for a few years while innovation progresses, and hope Plex and Apple TV win once innovation stops.

jccalhoun 5y ago

There are similarities but US vs Paramount was more about the dealings with the theaters and the movie studios and not the consumers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic.... If there was some kind of anti-trust to go on with streaming sources it might be more likely to be about something like Amazon only having its content on Fire devices or forcing Roku to only have Amazon content and not Netflix or something.

henvic 5y ago

No! On the contrary: stop trying to use the law for everything! Such strategy works a million times better than the horror of copyright law. The companies should be free to do it, and it's awful that someone wants to involve the force of the state to stop them from doing so, instead of seeing it as a way to get rid of the burden of copyright law to society.

bsedlm 5y ago

> Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem too bad it's not about making better stuff but more profit. it's like the market has been distorted out of its ability to better reward better stuff.

seanicus 5y ago
Exactly. When the movie star system died, it took a lot of material made for adults with it. Even Robert Downey Jr. can't carry a movie that's not a popular IP. Now everything is a $200M sequel to something else or a $1M movie that's financed by 18 different companies. The TV golden age was serving adults for a while but seems to be dying off now.

ryanmarsh 5y ago

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution Why though? I wasn’t aware these laws exist(ed). Why are they needed?

snarf21 5y ago

We have the laws and organizations but the FTC and SEC have failed us in the 21st century. There is no consideration of the consumer or marketplace, only shareholder value.

linuxftw 5y ago

It's outrageous. If you want to buy a new Chevy, you need to go to a Chevy dealer. Seriously though, who cares? It's just mindless time wasting entertainment. It's an art form who's time is rapidly passing. Let's get back to doing things together, like live music, any kind of hobby, just anything other than watching moving pictures.

syshum 5y ago

We need FRAND for Copyright, if you are going to license your copyright in a commercial setting you must license it to all platform in a way fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory method

seanicus 5y ago

Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60% of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by going to a Disney theater.

fpoling 5y ago

In [1] Arthur De Vany showed rather convincingly that the split between distribution and production for movie production made things worse for the consumers. The problem is that the profit of the whole industry is dominated by very few titles and that split lead to a few non-trivial consequences like lack of diversity in Hollywood. [1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0415312612?psc=1&ref=ppx_po... EDIT: one of the Amazon reviews gave a very good summary of the above point: One of the more interesting conclusions is that the old movie studio system understood implicitly that this business was unpredictable. Until the antitrust laws were used to break them up, the studios contracted stars, script writers, directors, distribution networks and movie theaters in order to own the entire stream of revenues all their movies would generate. This way the old studio bosses could diversify their risk in what was essentially a portfolio of movies. They knew that they could not predict which of their films would be a hit so they insisted on owning them all and on managing costs so that the hits would pay for the turkeys, while leaving shareholders with a healthy return.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
This depends on what you think makes a great movie and a great system and there really is no right answer. I'm not sure the above 'proves' that things were made worse for consumers. Fact is, weird independent 'auteur' filmmakers and foreign films entered the market in the 1960's and were able to distribute without being locked out. The producers taking those risks perhaps didn't feel they were taking a risk at all. Maybe they knew they had a winning hand and had better know-how than the studio bosses and their risk avoidance BS. That's how you get those Easy Riders and Raging Bulls. At the same time, movie theatres ceased to be these lavish 'palaces'. So what 'going to the movies' meant shifted in consumers' minds. Film productions also shrunk in size and scale so there is that. I would assume the business side actually deteriorated while cultural relevance rose. Probably not everyone on the consumer side was happy with all of that. If we're talking about that studio era though, these portfolios of movies being managed from the top definitely made films bland and predictable. But then on the other hand they also forced the talent to hone skill through repetition. So you had some specific aspects of the films being executed on a high polished level like the noir cinematography. I'm feeling/seeing something similar going on right now with the VOD offering. Even though it's all really well produced and shot and put together, I just sense everyone is following the same seemingly risque but safe playbook optimized for social media marketing. Seen in another way, the internet aspect of these distribution systems really can make all of the above completely irrelevant too. I find my satisfaction with MUBI and weird niche shit on YouTube. A piece of my money still goes toward partially paying for the very same infrastructure. As someone else mentioned here already - I'm not physically limited from seeking what I want to find online, and it's all there side by side for me to view. This was not at all the case in the 1950's. In my mind one thing is certain, and this is just my take - I don't really want to watch a James Bond that has been developed by a goofy logistics e-commerce corporate giant. I just really don't see it.

nabla9 5y ago

Agreed. It's artificial bottleneck based on outdated model. Currently the best catalog is with illegal streaming services and BitTorrent VOD and (for the cost of VPN).

novok 5y ago

Isn't this more like cable tv packages, where you add another $10/month to your bill for that package of channels, which were often focused by broadcaster, who had a bunch of exclusive shows, or themes, like sci-fi or 'cartoon network'. Netflix, Apple TV, etc are broadcasters and crunchyroll is thematic.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

The laws are there, it's our lawmakers that have been failing us the past ~30 years as big tech has run roughshod over the entire fucking planet doing whatever it wants with extremely minimal consequences.

GFischer 5y ago

Very insightful comment, I ended up reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic.... https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american-film-industry-early-1950s https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/american... https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-court-killed-hollywoods-studio-system https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-supreme-cour...

sircastor 5y ago

I see the meaningful difference here being that there is no limitation to distribution across consumers. With studio owned theaters, if there wasn’t a Paramount theater in your town, you’re outta luck. Today, you can get Peacock and Paramount+ and Disney+, etc on virtually any device. Even Apple, who has been historically resistant to distribution on other devices has Apple+ on Roku and Amazon devices Because antitrust favors impact on consumers, I doubt we’ll see any substantial legislation is this space.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Oh yeah, definitely. I do have my hopes on some sort of anti-trust regulation, but it's not going to be focused on film - it's going to be all about software and gaming.

lpolovets 5y ago

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. Forcing this would also have many downsides: - if you make content that others don't want to distribute, are you not allowed to distribute it yourself? Freedom to publish whatever you want feels very valuable for society, IMHO. - costs for consumers might rise because you now have two sets of costs priced in, instead of one set of costs. - It's harder to launch new companies. If content providers don't want to work with you as a distributor when you're small, it's hard to get off the ground. If distributors don't want to work with you because your content is unproven, it's hard to get off the ground. Etc.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
I don't see your line of thinking: - Yeah you um can, like build your own movie theatre and show your own movies. The point of the law in this case is to prevent vertically integrated corporate structures from forming. - I don't see the sets of costs argument - any price is made up of infinite sub-costs. You buy a carton of milk, it came from a distributor who bought it from a wholesaler, who got it from a carton plant and so on and so forth. At each step of the way someone verified the quality to ensure reputation. In a vertical corp quality control can be difficult. - The opposite - easier to launch new companies. This is already how it is in places like Europe. No problem to sign 'distribution' deals, and no problem in seeking 'distributors' if you have the content. What's more a ton of other types of incentives make it easier to start new efforts. I don't think you understand that mostly, this is how it all already works, by itself. That's the whole point of a 'free market'. Until Amazon rolls into town and starts buying everybody up and integrating it all into something else.

caycep 5y ago

Tbh, probably completely off topic, but the first thing that came to mind are alcohol regulations at least in CA preventing vineyards and distilleries from opening or operating restaurants...hence the rise in "educational tasting/pairing classes"

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem. We have those laws for cars and beer and they are considered ongoing disasters. Why are films different?

mbesto 5y ago

“Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundling-and-unbundling https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...

macspoofing 5y ago

>So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Or the TV business throughout all of TV history. You know, if you want to see an HBO show, you can only watch it on HBO. If you want to watch _new+ episodes of Seinfeld, you have to watch it on NBC.

asdff 5y ago

Netflix already owns the Egyptian Theatre. Disney owns El Capitan. History repeats again!

ryanSrich 5y ago

Disagree. Government oversight is usually never the correct answer. The simplest solution to this is through consumer choice. Simply pirate the content you want. If corporations don't want to lose money to piracy then they'll learn to stop doing anti-consumer behavior.

beloch 5y ago

A century ago, if Library's hadn't existed, someone trying to create one might have had a chance. Today they'd have no chance at all. If you think to today's U.S. government would willingly choose to fight the U.S. vs Paramount battle again, you'll probably be disappointed. They're far more likely to close libraries.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Well, the end of the 1930's to 1950's vertical monopoly shouldn't detract from the many ways the entertainment industry is monopolistic today. Indeed, my impression is no one could even summarize all the ways unions, rights, contracts and etc divide profits, limit who can do what, etc. My impression buying a historical piece of the entertainment industries is a lot like buying a company with large patent portfolio. No one knows whether the buyer is going to use the pieces "offensively" to cut off the rights of others or "defensively", to get leverage for cross licenses and so-forth.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
We definitely now know Apple won't be buying the James Bond franchise and making it exclusive. That would have been a huge loss for the other GAFA's entertainment libraries.

neuralRiot 5y ago

>We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Why? We’re not talking about food, water or the environment. There is where laws should be enacted or enforced.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
Well technically the way I understand it, all the law should be enacted and enforced everywhere. This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Cultural products influence people a great deal. Especially when they are young. If monopoly power is influencing culture, the way it can with any industry by incentivizing low-quality or bad pricing, then it should be to some extent over-seen.
- neuralRiot 5y ago
  >This is a classic 'culture is not important, doesn't matter' line of thinking. Culture is important and so is entertainment but the later is not always the former, and none is vital. There’s plenty of unmonopolized cultural options and one could even argue that much more benefiting than big blockbusters, it’s like worrying that pizza hut would monopolize the pizza market and losing nutritional values in the community.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
    Well for one in this context you could say that I’m interested in the pizza and how it’s harder to find a good Neapolitan pizza place and all the mom’n’pop pizza places are being strangled to death. It’s an interesting phenomenon, not necessarily something to be “worried” about.

mudlus 5y ago

All hail Plex and torrents.

deleted 5y ago

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