Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros

The best outcome would be for all of the bids to fail, all the streaming services would bleed money due to people sick of the siloing, and for there to be multiple streaming services competing on experience because they all have access to the same catalog.

The second best outcome would be the cartoon villain Larry not getting what he wants.

I honestly don't think cbs paramount would be any better, if anything, wb content would be further paywalled and tiered off

Which is why the model that would actually be good for consumers and the model that absolutely no content producer wants which is splitting content creation from distribution isn't going to happen. Let a bunch of companies compete over being the best streaming platform and then let those companies all compete for licensing deals for content.

I think a big copyright holders in a strange way actually don't want a repeat of cable. They want all content to be exclusive by default to their own streaming service.

> and for there to be multiple streaming services competing on experience because they all have access to the same catalog.

That's a weird way to write "and for us to go back to owning copies of movies instead of just renting them."

When you make something (eg TV shows), you might also want a direct relationship with your customer (eg viewer). Consequently, A platform where you get to choose how to present and celebrate the stories seems like a reasonable thing.

In the US, the film industry originally worked like the streaming industry does today. Besides just creating films, the major studios distributed them through the theaters they owned. If you wanted to see a Paramount film you had to go to a Paramount owned theater, if you wanted to see an MGM film you had to go to an MGM owned theater, and so on. In 1948, this distribution scheme was ruled to be in violation of antitrust law and the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theaters. Now you can see major films in any studio and the theaters have to compete on price and amenities. I don't see why the same logic shouldn't apply to streaming services.

So you want to pass a law that no one can produce content and put it on their own website?

They will all go back to just licensing to Netflix.

Meet the new boss…

> no content producer wants which is splitting content creation from distribution isn't going to happen.

Sony does that now

More and more content can't be bought at all due to streaming platforms. That's a real problem.

Here in Norway we have a law for mobile carriers which is intended to prevent moats. It states that carriers must provide access for a "reasonable price" to other phone companies. It seems to have worked fairly well.

One could imagine something similar, that sure you can put your own movie or TV show on your own website, but you must also sell it to companies who asks on reasonable terms. So Netflix can make a movie but couldn't say no to say Plex if they wanted to buy the rights to show it on Plex.tv.

This is completely different. Cell phone infrastructure in particular is by nature a natural monopoly. Two carriers can’t operate over the same frequency and only certain frequencies are conducive for cell phones.

Content has no such restriction. Are you really saying every piece of content anyone produces must be licensed? Who decides what is “reasonable”?

No, just media production companies on their own streaming service. There is no reason to pretend that billion dollar, publicly traded companies are poor college kids just trying to get noticed on the Internet for their quirky videos.

The law would decide what is reasonable

Would you want the “law” deciding that you had to license software code to anyone and have the law set the price?

How does the law decide how much Disney should license the Avengers for compared to my cat videos I’m going to put on my website?

Should we expand the law so if I post open source code under AGPL, I must license it to at a certain price?

Okay, and if they move ownership and production outside of the country and stream it from their website ate yoi going to block them from streaming to the US?

How is that law going to apply to Sony who is Japanese owned and CrunchyRoll?

Do we force PluralSight and Udacity to share their content? YouTube creators?