Now That Amazon Has Bought MGM, Will It Turn Against The Internet?

from the hopefully-not dept

As you may have heard, Amazon recently reached a deal to buy MGM Studios for $8.5 billion, expanding its in-house content studio, which is already quite massive, given its efforts to build up its Prime Video streaming service. For a variety of reasons (notably, everything Amazon has done with Prime, as well as increasing video streaming competition from Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Media/Discovery, etc.), the deal isn’t that surprising.

I do wonder, however, if this deal brings Amazon a step closer to turning its back on the open internet. I mean, we already had Netflix join the MPA and start overreacting to piracy after being a good internet steward for many years. At this point, it seems like it may only be a matter of time until Amazon goes down that path as well — though I’d hope they think better of it.

That said, it is notable that MGM is not a member of the MPA. It somewhat famously left in 2005. So maybe that helps keep Amazon on a path of actually supporting the open internet, and remembering the rest of its business (and how much it relies on an open internet). Still, watching how much the internet and the entertainment business has converged over the past decade or so suggests that we might finally get a realignment on these issues. It would be nice if that came with Hollywood finally recognizing the open internet is not the enemy, rather than the new tech players turning their backs on the open internet… but I’m not at all confident that’s how this will play out.

Filed Under: , ,
Companies: amazon, mgm, mpa, mpaa, netflix

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Comments on “Now That Amazon Has Bought MGM, Will It Turn Against The Internet?”

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19 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Amazon and Netflix rely on the Internet to reach customers easily on many devices and apps, if one company understands the Internet its amazon
Why would it attack the web?
It bought many company’s
It, ll probably use the mgm catalog to enhance its videos services maybe we, ll see reboots or TV shows based on
old mgm ip and characters
Amazon is not the riaa or Nintendo
It’s more like Google the more people that use the Web the more
money it makes

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

Well, yeah, my friend is not so bright, but he’s my friend, and I listen to what he says. Mike has a lot of friends, they listen to what he says. But when I read the Complaint, and then I read what Mike wrote about StreamScale, well, they can’t both be right. Strange how people can look at the same facts and see very different things.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Re:

From your question about "said complaint", I assume you are probably a lawyer. How does the law apply in this case, in your opinion? Mike continues to post facts about StreamScale that are completely contrary to a filed Complaint.

Should he persist in his publication? Should he take down his article about StreamScale? Or is it OK to publish facts that you know to be wrong?

It must be so interesting to be a lawyer.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:4 Re:

Hard to tell who’s real around here and who’s not. But court documents, well, they’re real.

I share this view of reality: When confronted with new facts, face them quickly, or peril will surely haunt your dreams. If you made an honest mistake, just say so, apologize for the misunderstanding, and everyone will move on.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:5 Re:

When confronted with new facts, face them quickly, or peril will surely haunt your dreams

Your support of Prenda Law says otherwise.

If you made an honest mistake, just say so, apologize for the misunderstanding, and everyone will move on.

Same for the Trump presidency.

Seriously, Jhon, you’re a terrible liar.

sumgai (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re: Re:ot

Strange how people can look at the same facts and see very different things.

No, not strange in the least – that’s the very definition of our adversarial system of justice.

But here’s the rub…. I read the complaint, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one laughing, almost to tears, at what the complaint alleges is covered by a patent. "That is only a 33% utilization of storage capacity". (A direct quote.) As if this guy had ever even spelled "data manager", let alone had been employed as one.

I mean, can you honestly look your boss in the face after a data corruption disaster and tell him/her that "No, I didn’t save any further back than one iteration, that’d be a waste of disk space." Even PHB’s know about Grandfather-Father-Son backup schemes. And that’s because they know their collective asses are on the line, should an "event" occur that would affect the bottom line in a not-so-desirable way.

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