Live data from Hacker News

Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

91–100 of 844 posts

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#91

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase. And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate. It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.

Have they been releasing material worth pirating in the last 10-15 years? The movies coming out aren't even worth the bandwidth.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#92

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.

You would be shocked at the amount of shows that were sold to NBC but produced by ABC Studios or whatever. It still happens today but the trend is going back to the closed loops.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#93
post #41

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

Would you also establish compulsory licensing so that studios and distributors can’t have exclusive content?

Compulsory licensing would be fantastic. It already exists for e.g. radio

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#94
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.

I'm unfamiliar with US television - but was NBC broadcast free to air, via a government regulated transmitter?

NBC is one of the major studios that chose to license their content to broadcast networks around the country. I do not see how that is related, but in the event it is, you can replace NBC with HBO or any other non broadcasted channel.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#95

If I had to pick a single politically uniting issue, breaking up Amazon and big tech would be it. Why has this not happened yet? Is the out of power party afraid the in power party will get credit? (This has been discussed when both parties were in power) If the government can't get something with this kind of support done, I fear the road we are headed down .

I don't think that people are united about breaking up Amazon and frankly I don't really see the damage to consumer necessary to break it up; products come faster, cheaper. Could you articulate why Amazon should be broken up? Most of the arguments I've seen boil down to "It's so big" and not really "It's effectively dominated x market and there is no competition there" or even "they are harming competition by pre-ins…

I don't know how large of a concern this is, but Amazons wide growth allows using revenue from their higher profit sectors (such as aws) to force out competitors in other lower margin sectors they are involved with such as grocery stores. This also may very well be a strategy other large conglomerates utilize.

Video on subject: https://youtu.be/EYPs-ya_GDA?t=128

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#96
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.

The difference is simple: NBC was (and still is) free to watch if you have a television and an antenna.

HBO wasn't and you needed to pay to watch an HBO show. There's really not much difference between and premium channel cable offering and these services, at least, it's a lot more similar and closer in time than studio-owned movie theatres.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch an NBC show, you had to watch it on an NBC network. What is the difference? At least nowadays you can just pay, watch, and cancel at your leisure with the click of a few buttons.

You would be shocked at the amount of shows that were sold to NBC but produced by ABC Studios or whatever. It still happens today but the trend is going back to the closed loops.

How does that affect me as a customer?

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#98

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

Except watching online is nowhere near as inconvenient as only watching movies from theaters in your area. It will most will likely consolidate to 4 major players so we're looking at 4 subscriptions to watch most new content.

There's nothing stopping production companies from producing content, if it's compelling enough they'll still be able to license it out to the big players.

When everything's online the primary drawcard to different video subscriptions is exclusive content, which the giants are funding the production of themselves. Can't see how you could impose a law banning them from producing their own content, if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#99

So what we're seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930's-1950's. You want to see a Paramount movie, you must go to a Paramount theater. Today you want to watch an Apple show you must go to Apple's VOD. We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Better stuff gets made in this kind of ecosystem.

> We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution. Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It's a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.

I think we're at or approaching a tipping point. For a long while I've not been able to justify the effort it takes to maintain automatic content downloads and a streaming server. But that maintenance cost isn't higher when I want content from an additional platform. If I'm gonna pirate an Amazon/MGM exclusive then I'm gonna cancel Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ too.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#100
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will be my prediction: the usage of piracy to consume this type of content will increase. And they will blame PLATFORM X (or just the ol'piratebay) for the losses of revenue, when in reality it's just a matter of people not being able to access content because everything has a paywall gate. It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions.

> It's like they want to bring cable TV back to the internet, and you had massive bills just for channels subscriptions. Basically, yes. More precisely we have a handful of companies who worked to "disrupt" the cable TV business only to realize that in fact, they could become the new cable TV.

The defining part of cable TV is that you had to deal with the company who owned the wire coming into your house, or the 2 satellite companies available in the US, assuming you could put satellite dishes on your residence. And you could not watch on any of your devices at any time and subscribe and cancel at your whim.

None of that applies anymore. Content was always going to be owned and sold by someone. What other situation should we have expected?

Post reply on HN