Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scaevolus | Hacker News Reader

Disney only lost the preliminary injunction. Redbox can continue to sell codes pending the completion of the full trial (plus appeals, if Disney loses).

View on HN

This case will go on until Redbox goes bankrupt, settles, or is bought by Disney.

Lords, even IBM vs SCO is still going strong. Huge cases like this just never really end, a curious feature of the US legal system.

It's only a failure if you're not a lawyer.

The legal system was designed by lawyers. Obviously it works for them.

I see it as going in the opposite direction. Laws created lawyers, much like processor op codes created computer programmers.

It's a specialization that not many people are in, yet which is in high demand.

If there's one lawyer in town, they drive a Chevrolet. If there are two lawyers in town, they both drive Cadillacs.

My mind instantly jumped to comparing to Bitcoin and other crypto-assets structured to be incentivized like Ponzi-Pyramid schemes.

Redbox is owned by a private equity fund that bought it and Coinstar for 1.6 billion USD. I doubt Disney would want to pay whatever they were asking.

The US legal system is completely broken. You are rich, you'll win even if you lose.

With the purchase of most of Fox (pending approval), Disney will own basically every franchise you can name. If there ever were a media company that needed to be broken up, it would be Disney.

It's definitely starting to look like Disney should be broken up, I just hope that they can acquire Fox first so they can keep each franchise together afterwards (e.g. all Star Wars properties owned by one entity, all Marvel properties owned by one entity, etc.)

Oh, for Pete's sake. Breaking up utility or transportation companies is one thing, but this is an entertainment company - not a provider of essential societal infrastructure. And there are still plenty of other companies making movies and comics and TV shows, including other very large ones; Warner Bros, for one, and NBC/Universal, for another. Disney/ABC/Fox has nowhere near a monopoly.

Nowhere in antitrust law do the arbitrary distinctions you’re trying to make exist.

"Is the entity in question actually a trust/monopoly-holder" is certainly a distinction I would hope exists in law.

Agreed, but that is a very different point from the one I responded to.

So you were arguing that an entertainment company is a provider of essential societal infrastructure? I just…

Even if true, Disney is still nothing near a monopoly, so this whole subthread is just silly.

No, I’m arguing that they’re monopolistic, grossly anti-competitive, and that the essential or non-essential nature of their services is another issue.

Saying that Disney is monopolistic in entertainment is like saying Ford is monopolistic in cars. Yes, they're a big player, but as I said several posts ago, there are many, many other companies you can choose from if you so wish.

When Ford changes copyright law to protect their assets, I’ll worry about their market dominance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com