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Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

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Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#121

Post by tssva »

reubeniv wrote: post #46
werdnapk wrote: post #9

So along with Disney pulling all their titles from Netflix for their own streaming service, I guess the FX content will be next to go from Netflix.

Oh it's crazy how much stuff Disney can pull off Netflix, I don't know if they will, because it's in their interest to have some stuff accessible over more than one place, but they own ABC (Lost, Castle, Firefly, etc), ESPN, Marvel, LucasArts, now Fox and their assets, not to mention they distribute on behalf of many publishers (Dreamworks for example), they would probably clear more than half of Netflix's content if…

Disney also gets controlling interest in Hulu through this deal. All around bad news for Netflix.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#122

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jakozaur wrote: post #24

Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...

It's not so black and white. Stratchery posits consolidation may promote competition at the distribution layer, where Netflix presently stands to dominate:

"To that end, might it be better for consumers, not-so-much today but ten years from now, if Disney were fully empowered to compete with Netflix? What is preferable? A dominant streaming company and a collection of content companies trying to escape the commoditization trap, or two dominant streaming companies that can at least try to hold each other accountable?" [1]

An analog might be found in the T-Mobile/Sprint merger [2]. It is not obvious whether their consolidation would have reduced competition, by turning two options into one, or increased it, by creating a stronger number three to AT&T and Verizon.

[1] https://stratechery.com/2017/disney-and-fox/

[2] http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/04/news/companies/sprint-t-mobi...

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#123

Post by astura »

levesque wrote: post #69
dorfsmay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly Hulu is only available in the U.S., although I find that I can rent/buy from google a lot of content that isn't available on Netflix.

At one point you start wondering why you pay for Netflix.

This is exactly why Netflix is banking on original content going forward.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#124

Post by bighi »

trisimix wrote: post #113
jakozaur wrote: post #24

Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...

But think of the x-men mobies

Now they're gonna get worse.

Before that, we could at least hope to see a good movie like Logan. Now if Marvel does them, we know they're going to be mediocre like all other Marvel movies, with bad jokes every 87 seconds.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#125

Post by snuxoll »

frogpelt wrote: post #100
snuxoll wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting only unused IP go to public domain is completely contrary to the stated goals of the constitution. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Much of our creative works and culture are driven by building on top of what came before. The asinine length of copyright we have today mean…

Maybe we need a compromise. Should we let companies keep some percentage of their IP out of the public domain?

No. The US constitution was a lot more forward thinking than people give it credit for, securing works for a LIMITED TIME is explicitly stated and there's a reason for that. Disney in particular has made a killing releasing copyrighted products based off public domain, and it extends far beyond the obvious ones like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, etc.

We have ALWAYS lived in a culture where reusing older works in newer ones has been a driving force for creativity. I just went to a play a friend helped put on a couple weeks ago called Heddatron, a mashup of Hedda Gabler, a telling of Ibsen's life, comedy and robots. The whole thing made absolutely no sense to me, but it was amusing as hell to watch. Hedda Gabler came out in 1890, if our current copyright laws applied to his work it would still be under protection and there's a good chance it would have never come to light.

We don't need to grant MORE protections to IP, we need to severly reduce the copyright terms back to sane levels.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#126

Post by bighi »

DanCarvajal wrote: post #44
jakozaur wrote: post #24

Sane antitrust regulations should kill this deal. It is bad for everybody other than shareholders of those two companies. In particular bad for customers, other companies and employees: https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2172555... https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are...

Why?

Because that's what antitrust laws are for.

Lack of competition is bad for consumers, bad for the economy, bad for everything... except for the owners of the monopoly.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#127

Post by shakna »

fragsworth wrote: post #73
Larrikin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney having more money and power to lobby against sane copyright laws is a negative for every citizen and really the world

I don't think it's bad that Disney protects things like Mickey Mouse and all of their old IPs. It's not just shareholders, there's a lot of people whose jobs depend on Disney being able to make money from these historic IPs. And I think it's fine that they keep it, it doesn't really hurt anyone. The problem is the easiest way to protect this is by having Congress extend the copyright law duration on all copyrighted w…

My own family had a somewhat big creation (Winnie the Pooh). At some point, the copyright was moved to a company, that was then bought out by Disney, (Slesinger. It's actually a more complicated story).

We can't release it into the public domain, and we can't allow anyone to make derivatives, 50 years later. We even tried to prevent Disney from continuing to create new derivatives, but lost that case.

A family legacy can't be reclaimed, or preserved, because of copyright extensions.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#128

Post by eloisant »

ekianjo wrote: post #39
jamiethompson wrote: post #33

So what you're saying is that Disney will own The Simpsons? https://i.redd.it/cx2j4c9aufwz.jpg (predicted in 1998)

That's visionary. Actually the Simpsons got lucky with several of their goofy predictions, it's always amusing after the fact.

The thing is the Simpsons did so many episodes, and so many predictions that they are bound to get some of them true.

The Simpsons is basically an illustration of the infinite monkey theorem.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#129

Post by DiThi »

fragsworth wrote: post #73
Larrikin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney having more money and power to lobby against sane copyright laws is a negative for every citizen and really the world

I don't think it's bad that Disney protects things like Mickey Mouse and all of their old IPs. It's not just shareholders, there's a lot of people whose jobs depend on Disney being able to make money from these historic IPs. And I think it's fine that they keep it, it doesn't really hurt anyone. The problem is the easiest way to protect this is by having Congress extend the copyright law duration on all copyrighted w…

The reason for the existence of copyright is that authors can receive compensation for their work, to incentivize creation in a new world where copying costs almost nothing ("why would I work writing a book when anybody with a press can just copy me?"). Similar to patents. But it seems people forget this.

Disney won't _die_ if their early characters become public domain. If they're hurt it will be very slowly, with enough time for jobs to shift.

And it's not clear that copyright is necessary for creativity. In some ways it can hindrance sometimes. See the case of the fashion industry https://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashi...

I guess people somehow think that only the lowest quality versions of public domain works will be popular, when the opposite is frequently the case. Like it happened, for example, with Disney versions of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Which is rather ironic: Disney created an empire in big part thanks to public domain.

Re: Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox

#130

Post by tssva »

KevanM wrote: post #104
chrisan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a next step would be just buying Netflix with threats of pulling? Maybe Netflix can survive on its own OC, which is growing each time I load it up.

Isn't a lot of that top tier stuff based on Marvel characters owned by Disney?

That is why Netflix bought Millarworld earlier this year.
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