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Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#281

Post by iso1631 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #23

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.

Quite. I DCCed Trek and SG1 episodes in the late 90s and early 00s because they weren't available in the UK.

I don't do that with Discovery, Picard, Wandavision, etc, because they are available.

Then they completely cocked up Lower Decks and wouldn't take my money. Bittorrent to the rescue.

There is always competition.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#283

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

anoncow wrote: post #178
midasuni wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think Mars will have better laws?

If Musk playing with BTC is any indication, Mars would've been an interesting socio-political experiment if we had the terraforming technology.

Monarchies ruled by billionaires sounds horrid.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#284

Post by cgriswald »

ElFitz wrote: post #174
mythz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> if they did and all content is licensed to everyone, there will be nothing distinguishing the different services. Pricing and UX? But even though some companies are incapable of making good UIs, UX isn’t much of a moat. At the same time, differentiation through pricing leads to races to the bottom and unsustainable / worthless markets (and, in our case, probably diminishing content quality).

Curation, which you may be including in UX. I’d pay $$$ for decent curation. As it stands, I apparently want to watch every low quality period piece known to man because I enjoyed Downton Abbey.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#285

Post by vlunkr »

jbay808 wrote: post #272
divs1210 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS. Forcing consumers to sign up to 10 platforms to watch 10 movies will no doubt lead to a shift back to torrents. YouTube is pretty good in this regard, as it allows paying for renting a single movie for a weekend for a reasonable price.

Blockbusters used to be really good for this. You could even get a movie for a whole week for less than YouTube will rent it to you for 24 hours. Maybe they'll make a comeback?

Well blockbuster itself no longer exists, so don't count on that one.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#286

Post by hnbad »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #84
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How about something legal instead?

How about we make the platform exclusives illegal instead?

What is and isn't legal is not an unchangeable property of the universe. These things can change. Piracy for personal use was (and still is) legal in many places before the RIAA/MPAA started exerting political pressure. Heck, piracy was the primary selling point of VHS recorders and tape decks. Only recently have we shifted to read-only media that's hard to copy.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#287

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #180
xiaolingxiao wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that the government had to step in and break the movie theaters from the movie studio in a famous anti-trust case. I wonder how it'll play out in this case. Presumably Amazon may still license Bond movies (for example) to Netflix. In fact Netflix is included in my Prime bundle I believe...

Yes - and this is by far the strangest aspect of it all. My local telecom advertising that Netflix is bundled into the cell service. Netflix licensing shows from BBC or ordering content from other outfits. Netflix being built on top of AWS infrastructure. Streaming brands being available as “apps” on AppleTV. HBO becoming a property of Paramount, and both being owned by ATT. So many examples of complex relationships…

All this superficial cooperation is a front to hide the anti competitive and price gouging that’s happening. Joe average doesn’t understand that the marginal cost of delivering a 4K stream is a few cents, nor does he think critically about why it costs 9.99 to “buy” a decade old movie that’s liable to be removed his account at any time.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#288

Post by margaretdouglas »

tomjen3 wrote: post #256
margaretdouglas wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cable providers were charging you $80/mo for commercial laden network aggregation. You cut that cord and complain when paying less for more content, without commercials, and is on demand, because it is unbundled and you need to manage each $5-15 "network" fee individually, instead of a single itemized bill. This is like complaining you have to pay for NBC to watch Friends when you'd much prefer to watch it on ABC so…

We never paid for networks, we paid for a handful of shows that were worth watching, which happened to be on different channels because physics. Now they are on different platforms, because no good reason at all. A copyright holder of a creative work should be able to set the price, but should not be able to use their monopolistic powers to control who pays the price. Let each channel decide if they want to buy a giv…

> which happened to be on different channels because physics.

So why do we see wars for who gets to stream Friends/Seinfeld/The Office/etc now? The networks don't own that content, it was just physics?

> Let each channel decide if they want to buy a given show at a given price.

That's not how this works now, nor has it ever worked this way. If Network A is paying for the exclusive broadcast rights, then Network B doesn't also have an equal Right to also purchase the exclusive broadcast rights. This has always worked this way. If Disney produces Disney Mouse Club Cartoon it has no obligation to allow any network purchase the exclusive rights to broadcast that show because it already purchased them in the form of owning the original production, and therefore copyright, from its inception.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#289

Post by sumedh »

fullshark wrote: post #162
question000 wrote: post #122

As a football fan I hate this, now a major broadcaster (Amazon TNF) owns a gambling company (MGM sports book) not good for the sport.

Why? I watched a few sporting events recently and I was surprised how often sports gambling was mentioned during the broadcast. Does that annoy you too?

Watch Australian TV during, lot of gambling ads during prime time.

Re: Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

#290

Post by NegativeLatency »

adamrezich wrote: post #280
jbay808 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockbusters used to be really good for this. You could even get a movie for a whole week for less than YouTube will rent it to you for 24 hours. Maybe they'll make a comeback?

what will users insert physical media into, these days?

USB ports?
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