Comment by ethbr1
1 year ago
> This "competition" increased prices
That would have happened anyway.
The only reason early Netflix was so cheap was because they negotiated streaming access to large swathes of content, because the rights holders thought licensing for streaming was worthless and leased them for a pittance.
That sweetheart deal was never going to last past Netflix's original gen contract expirations.
Right. This "competition" isn't, because most of it is run by the same folks that determine whether or not Netflix exists as an ongoing concern.
It's a HUGE fuckin shame that American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. was decided the way it was. Otherwise, Netflix could get out of the stranglehold that the movie studios surely have it in by buying DVDs and either mailing them or streaming their contents to subscribers. [0]
[0] The implication here is that the movie studios are threatening to refuse to renew streaming licenses for their movies if Netflix goes back to mailing DVDs at scale. If Netflix could format-shift those DVDs in real time with a one-customer-per-DVD setup, not only would Netflix have some leverage, they wouldn't be beholden to arbitrary and capricious licensing agreements at all.
Maybe not with the existing rules. I expect regions with more consumer friendly legislature might stop exclusive licensing deals (Game of Thrones exclusively on) and vertical integration (of course Disney content is exclusive to the Disney channel). Streaming has been around long enough and successful enough that you can consider it infrastructure and legislate it as such. Especially in countries where any 'lost revenue' was going to be lost overseas in any case.