<story><title>Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-snaps-up-james-bond-owner-mgm-845-bln-streaming-war-heats-up-2021-05-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DrBazza</author><text>&amp;gt; Piracy is competition to bad content behavior&lt;p&gt;I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.&lt;p&gt;Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;d had easy free sharing of movies, it&amp;#x27;s not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies.  Now it&amp;#x27;s honey pot torrents all over the place.&lt;p&gt;No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable&amp;#x2F;satellite fee either.  Paying 200 GBP&amp;#x2F;USD a month is utterly absurd.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I&amp;#x27;m actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are &amp;quot;free to air&amp;quot; in my country.</text></item><item><author>WarOnPrivacy</author><text>&amp;gt; We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution.&lt;p&gt;Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It&amp;#x27;s a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.</text></item><item><author>scyzoryk_xyz</author><text>So what we&amp;#x27;re seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930&amp;#x27;s-1950&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s VOD.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kangaroozach</author><text>We have not yet approached the  pre-streaming willingness to pay (WTP).  People used to pay $150 to $200 plus onDemand for the whole package with their cable provider.  Today you can have YouTubeTV, HBO, Netflix, Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, and Spotify for less than that.  So perhaps the average will hover around $100 with many paying closer to $200 a month.  We are creeping back up to those numbers because people will pay.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-snaps-up-james-bond-owner-mgm-845-bln-streaming-war-heats-up-2021-05-26/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DrBazza</author><text>&amp;gt; Piracy is competition to bad content behavior&lt;p&gt;I really wish we had the bandwidth we have now, back in the Napster-era.&lt;p&gt;Napster, and others forced, persuaded and cajoled the music industry to consolidate, whether they liked it or not, on Spotify, and iTunes.&lt;p&gt;If we&amp;#x27;d had easy free sharing of movies, it&amp;#x27;s not hard to envisage something similar to what we see now in the music industry forced on the movie companies.  Now it&amp;#x27;s honey pot torrents all over the place.&lt;p&gt;No customer wants to spend X on Shudder, Y on Netflix, and Z on Prime, plus Hulu, HBO, and your cable&amp;#x2F;satellite fee either.  Paying 200 GBP&amp;#x2F;USD a month is utterly absurd.&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I&amp;#x27;m actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are &amp;quot;free to air&amp;quot; in my country.</text></item><item><author>WarOnPrivacy</author><text>&amp;gt; We could really use laws that force, once again, some sort of separation between production and distribution.&lt;p&gt;Piracy is competition to bad content behavior. It&amp;#x27;s a meaningful consumer response to monopoly, balkanization and other anti-consumer practices.</text></item><item><author>scyzoryk_xyz</author><text>So what we&amp;#x27;re seeing is a repeat of the film industry from 1930&amp;#x27;s-1950&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s VOD.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnchristopher</author><text>&amp;gt; Frankly, I&amp;#x27;m glad I have a waning interest in modern movies as I get older, and I&amp;#x27;m actually more interested in watching old black and white movies that are &amp;quot;free to air&amp;quot; in my country.&lt;p&gt;My mother recently gave me a sub-account to Netflix and while I was thrilled to rewatch some shows I liked (like the OA or good old star trek) I was quickly submerged by the sheer amount of YA novels adapted in TV shows or movies that are really mediocre. Now I see there&amp;#x27;s a lot of content on Netflix but I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of never ending content produced with the same recipe.</text></comment>