What should happen, if we're doing "shoulds", is that it shouldn't be permitted for one company to own both distribution and production, nor for such companies to create long-term exclusivity agreements with one another.
In certain ways yes, in certain ways no. The monopoly provided by copyright does really hinder effective competition. Requiring non-discriminatory licensing would radically change the competitive landscape in this space.
Interestingly, competition is worse for consumers in some respects here. It's resulting in fragmentation of the market such that people are too many services for 1-2 shows each
I really think services like YouTube are going to win out. For every hour of video I've watched on Netflix or Hulu I've probably watched 40 on Youtube. The variety of content there is absolutely incredible and so much of it is very deep educational content.
I hate YouTube for their recommendation system. I watch few things and then get million recommendations of the same thing by different author. I don’t want that, I want to see other topics and must actively search for them.
I think people are watching a lot more video in general. There are multiple generations, at this point, that mostly wouldn't pay for cable or even bother with rabbit ears even if TV & movie streaming services didn't exist, but do pay for a streaming service or three. I don't think YouTube's going to beat that entire market, unless they shift tactics pretty substantially. I think they expanded the market, though, grabbing almost all of that new territory for themselves in the process (at least until TikTok came along)
I absolutely detest YouTube and the only reason I sometimes use an Invidious instance to access it is that people basically don't put video anywhere else anymore.
Until very recently (a year or two ago?), the US didn't allow film studios to own movie theaters. Hadn't for something like 70 years. That was due to antitrust action over a situation pretty similar to what's happening with streaming services.
I think it's a good idea to mitigate the downsides of the monopoly granted by copyright, when possible. We saw similar problems with studio ownership of movie theaters, and solved that by not letting studios own movie theaters (via an antitrust suit). That's only very recently, and in what may be the twilight of the movie theater itself, changed.
In the current environment, I suspect we'll see (are already seeing, to some extent) history repeat itself, but not do anything about it this time, because we're so skittish of regulating markets now.
I don't think you should have to own an extensive catalog of content to launch a streaming service. Nor that you should effectively have to grovel for the patronage of one of a handful of integrated production+distribution mega corporations to undertake production of new media. But that's rapidly where the market's heading, and I don't see any mechanism to change that course short of anti-trust action.
There are, as usual, some benefits to the rents the current monopolistic system produces (extra cash sloshing around to throw at projects, for example—extra R&D money is a typical benefit monopolies produce, and in this case, because the monopolies are on particular content rather than on all content [so far—Disney's getting alarmingly close], there remain incentives to actually spend that money on, if you will, R&D, or the closest thing to it in media production) but at the cost reduced competition on cost & quality, and of making it much harder to enter the market, for new players.
bin_bash|3 years ago
bawolff|3 years ago
echelon|3 years ago
ss108|3 years ago
usrn|3 years ago
lnsru|3 years ago
brimble|3 years ago
brnt|3 years ago
zbuf|3 years ago
bradstewart|3 years ago
So they the only thing they could and started producing content.
onionisafruit|3 years ago
brimble|3 years ago
ChrisLomont|3 years ago
In other words, we want as many middlemen as possible in the chain?
brimble|3 years ago
In the current environment, I suspect we'll see (are already seeing, to some extent) history repeat itself, but not do anything about it this time, because we're so skittish of regulating markets now.
I don't think you should have to own an extensive catalog of content to launch a streaming service. Nor that you should effectively have to grovel for the patronage of one of a handful of integrated production+distribution mega corporations to undertake production of new media. But that's rapidly where the market's heading, and I don't see any mechanism to change that course short of anti-trust action.
There are, as usual, some benefits to the rents the current monopolistic system produces (extra cash sloshing around to throw at projects, for example—extra R&D money is a typical benefit monopolies produce, and in this case, because the monopolies are on particular content rather than on all content [so far—Disney's getting alarmingly close], there remain incentives to actually spend that money on, if you will, R&D, or the closest thing to it in media production) but at the cost reduced competition on cost & quality, and of making it much harder to enter the market, for new players.