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Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

Would upvote 100 times if I could.

I briefly worked for a movie/tv streaming service whose CEO was a movie industry exec. (I worked there almost accidentally as fallout from a previously company failing and that streaming company basically taking on all of the previous company's employees as a team).

One of the big take-aways from that brief stint was realizing how much the management at traditional "content" companies hate Netflix... like seething, psychopathic hate. In their minds they are on a mission to destroy Netflix at all costs because of how Netflix's all-in-one pricing model "devalues" their content.

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That's not necessarily an unfounded fear, though, is it? They're used to the kind of profit margins you can get in a world where people value a copy of one movie at $19. If that changes and suddenly copies of every movie are available all-you-can-eat for $7, those margins collapse. (Not to mention that you're splitting those seven bucks with Netflix.)

I have to think they look at how Apple managed to maneuver itself into the position of being an intermediary between most people and the music business, then look at what that did to the profit margins of the music business, and think "there but for the grace of god go I."

Oh, yeah I agree their fears aren't unfounded, but they take a really over-reactionary stance to the threat, I think.

IMO they would be better served working with companies like Netflix to figure something out that is more mutually beneficial rather than pissing away billions on half-assed alternate solutions of their own (that are designed to maintain the status quo at the expense of the obvious preference on consumers to keep things simple) like "Ultraviolet media lockers".

Of course, I'm assuming Netflix would also be a reasonable party to compromise solutions and maybe they aren't; I don't know for sure, I just know that the media guys have a very "must-destroy-at-all-costs" view of Netflix in particular.

My customers see netflix-like services as a way to get easy revenues once the premier/release time window is over. Same for music and Spotify.

By doing so, they can charge whatever they want for their productions using their own e-commerce solution (which we provide them [1]) and then get the long tail revenues that come afterwards by adding third parties like itunes, netflix or amazon.

[1] KiteBit, the direct-to-fan selling solution for video

So naturally they've got into bed with Amazon who have an all-in-one pricing model as well as a history of screwing suppliers with their dominant position to enforce wafer thin margins.

Seems like a plan with no flaws there.

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