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
The problem is content exclusivity. It would be great if all the content or at least most would be available on all platforms. At least eventually. That would be great for consumers. Mergers like this typically not.

>>tim199+Gt
We could do that by limiting copyright to just 10-14 years. All platforms could have all that content forever without paying a dime. New stuff and exclusives would still be a draw to attract people to one platform or another.

>>autoex+Sc1
Give 10 years of copyright for free, then a $1000 fee for the next decade, and make every subsequent decade 100x more expensive.

>>joelwi+Nk1
Nah, there's no reason why trillion dollar companies should be allowed to pay anything to keep our shared culture locked up. Doing so only hinders innovation and the creation of new works. 14 years was long enough back when global distribution was unimaginable and any distribution at all was highly expensive.

Today you can instantly distribute media to the entire planet at near zero expense. If you can't make money after a decade you have only yourself or your product to blame. Also, it's not as if once something goes into the public domain all income stops either. With even a small amount of effort creators can continue to successfully package and sell their stuff to the fans even when it's avilable for free. It's worked on me several times in fact.