zlacker

>>meetpa+(OP)
Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).

From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.

>>afavou+Jd
> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers

This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)

>>noneth+Rp
I think you're right, but I've always been a bit skeptical of that vision -- it implicitly relies on the assumption that "THE streaming service" will choose to make as much content available as technically and legally possible; they're imagining something like "Spotify but for movies and TV shows". But I was always worried about "Apple's App Store but for movies and TV shows": one company with ultimate gatekeeper status over what you can and can't legally watch. (The movie and television business is not like the music business; the financial incentives don't, as far as I can tell, support the same kind of distribution models.)

I'm not particularly thrilled about this kind of consolidation, but given that Warner was going to be bought by somebody, Netflix may be one of the least worst outcomes.

>>chipot+gy
HBO owns Westworld and stopped streaming it to avoid paying residuals.

>>themer+KV
If they don't make their content available legally, then it should go into the public domain.

Don't want this to happen to your content? Then don't release it to the public.

We need to bring back explicit copyright registration and renewals.

>>joquar+Jd1
Hoarding is never good for society. It is wild that we've adopted laws to reward it.