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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

There is clearly a church-and-state issue with tech platforms owning studios. On the other hand, they have the cash. Not sure how we solve this without directly plumbing the cash to independent studios through a tax on tech funding a subsidy on independent studios.

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In the 1940s it was common for studios to own movie theaters, but the Supreme Court ruled that this violated antitrust laws and forced them to sell off their theaters.

To me it's the same situation again, but now the theaters (streaming platforms) owning the studios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

And a federal government openly encouraging it

Sadly the era of government that split up studios and theaters is long gone. Hollywood is built on a different time between things like this and its flavor of unions that cover the biggest players in the industry.

Closest thing we have to a Hollywood today is games, but game makers can also make consoles and industry wide unions would never happen. Is there some unionization in games? Yeah, but I haven't heard of any single one that cover a significant number of different studios

>a tax on tech funding a subsidy on independent studios

Forcing consumers to subsidize an expensive taste sounds like a peculiar idea.

More like ensuring culture and art isn’t captured by the big conglomerate.

There is no church-and-state issue because the state is not stopping anyone from distributing video to whoever wants it.

It’s trivial to make and distribute a video (or text website or audio recording). Just because one business does not want to pay for it does not entitle the public to it, like any other media.

> It’s trivial to make and distribute a video

It's trivial to shout into the void

It's nontrivial to get heard

Freedom of speech is not sufficient in a world where it is so easy for the powerful to drown out all but the biggest voices

This feels like a strange take to me. With the internet, it has never been easier for people anywhere in the (connected) world to find an audience, which we've seen to great and detrimental effects. Prior to this, reaching widespread audiences _required_ powerful entities (publishers, marketers, broadcasters).

Why do you feel differently?

At least in the US, it seems like this viewpoint held more water before net neutrality died.

> Prior to this, reaching widespread audiences _required_ powerful entities (publishers, marketers, broadcasters).

I don't disagree I just don't think it has moved the needle that much. Powerful publishers still direct an enormous amount of the content available online

And there are fewer of them, because they have been consolidating for decades now

Edit: I think that a lot of people overestimate how much online publishing is independent. A vast majority of it is still backed/funded/owned by legacy media and publishers.

I see this all the time with video games. People will say "look at how popular "New Release" is! Indie games are so successful nowadays!" But it turns out that the game they're talking about is backed by a huge publisher

There are 8 billion people in the world, and only 24 hours in a day. There is no reason to expect anyone to hear or see what you are saying, it’s logistically impossible. Even for professionals, hollywood, big news channels, all are becoming less and less relevant.

They already paid for it though. The movie was done.

So the government should force them to publish the viewpoint against their will?

Yeah the church and state comparison is funny. The principles guiding separation of church and state are why the government can’t stop or punish tech companies from having studios.

What he’s suggesting is to violate the first amendment. You cant just tell tech companies they cant have studios.

Yet we could tell the studio companies that they can't have theatres. How did that not violate it? Has the amendment changed in the past century? Were the judges just stupid?

Maybe it's not so simple?

Regardless of the legal mechanisms, there is clearly a difference in power dynamics when people could only share media via specific venues compares to now when people have basically zero barrier to sharing any and all media.

How is it different than media companies owning studios? Or simply studios existing? Studios publish viewpoints.

What you’re saying seems to completely ignore the first amendment.

The first amendment is for humans fuck the corps

But in practice no, the government cannot compel speech like this due to the first amendment

This is the same studio that did the Melania movie.

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