U.S. Loses Appeal Seeking to Block AT&T-Time Warner Merger
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Does anyone have a version updated for 2019?
Edit: The story got flagged - any idea why?
If show X is only available on service Y, and you don't agree, don't watch it. It's mindless entertainment anyway.
Usually more competition results in higher quality products and service for consumers; and usually, more conglomeration results in less incentive for the service to improve and therefore lowers the quality for the consumer.
> If show X is only available on service Y, and you don't agree, don't watch it.
This is not how society works. When things get big and popular, their existence pervades through society and all people are affected, not just those who purchase the service or product directly.
> It's mindless entertainment anyway.
This is surely a logical fallacy. Not only is it not likely true, you are dismissing the valid concerns of a person by belittling the importance of the topic itself.
Why is the government usually inefficient? Because they have no competition. If a corporation's competitors go away, they become more government-like.
Sometimes they are even worse than gov't because they can get profit by being deceptive, while gov't employees generally have no monetary incentive to earn a profit. The gov't workers may be indifferent to "customers", but have little reason to rip them off. For example, any extra fees collected don't go to a given gov't employee because fee incentive programs are not allowed. But customer sign-on bonuses are common at telecoms. I can tell you personal stories of "ghost fees" appearing on my telecom bill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
But unfortunately the appetite in this country for anti-trust litigation has almost completely dried up at this point.
IMO, when strictly speaking about content, there should be zero regulation in regards to whom can own and license content to whom.
Should some of the government regulation, protecting ISPs from geographic competitors, include a social contract of sorts agreeing not to own content production? Or do you pass laws forcing them to resell the last mile to competitors at fair market rates?
What we want in this country is not solely a free market, but a competitive one. Huge corporations often find themselves in the position of improving profit not by offering better products, but by snuffing out their competitors. Often nefariously.
Rockefeller didn't just establish a great supply chain for his oil refineries, he began making railroad companies charge other refineries more than his company. Then he bought the railroads and made the process even easier. He was literally making Standard Oil the only game in town. Anti-competition is not in our best interest as Americans.
And I'm not saying content providers are going to employ the same tactics as Rockefeller did, but its not hard to see how if you controlled a substantial amount of capital in the entertainment industry, maybe you can blacklist actors who decide to go do a show on Netflix. Or pay a director a few extra million just to stop working with HBO. We, as both consumers and free marketeers, do not want this behavior.
Who's this we business? Turn of the 20th century politicians?
> Rockefeller didn't just establish a great supply chain for his oil refineries, he began making railroad companies charge other refineries more than his company.
And were those railroads forced to take that deal? Economies of scale. Sounds similar to how Walmart is able to use their buying power to force down prices from their suppliers. "Raise prices for others" is the same as "Lower prices for me."
> Then he bought the railroads and made the process even easier.
Similar to how Walmart and now Amazon have their own shipping services as well (Walmart does their own back-haul).
> Or pay a director a few extra million just to stop working with HBO
I'm pretty sure this is already a thing? You can create all sorts of contracts around non-compete.
> We, as both consumers and free marketeers, do not want this behavior.
I want exactly this behavior. Hopefully we can cut out more middle people and have more direct-to-consumer purchasing model.