Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard hits a bump as FTC seeks to block it

i dont like it, they should allow Microsoft to acquire Activision, Sony is steady buying up single studios and everyone is worshipping it

I must have missed the existence of Sony churches. Really, I've never heard anyone say much good about Sony . . . does that actually happen?

i dont like it, they should allow Microsoft to acquire Activision, Sony is steady buying up single studios and everyone is worshipping it, now Microsoft wants to compete its a problem, its so weird, i believe Blizzard will be in better hands with Microsoft compare to Activision.

Everyone saying microsoft if a Terrible company, just remember what Micheal Jackson said about sony, they both are bad.

This is not about which company is good or bad, this is about a merger having the potential to create a monopoly or a near monopoly in the market. So it also have zero to do with the amount of studios being bought (still MS have bought up more studios then Sony), instead it have to do with the huge size of Activision Blizzard, that is the single thing that activated FTC and why they are trying to block it. It's the size, nothing more.

No its not the size of Activision blizzard they are fighting about, its about the Call of duty Franchise, they dont care about the Blizzard games, its all about COD, cause if microsoft leaves says they dont want COD Sony wont have a problem with the acquirement.

i dont like it, they should allow Microsoft to acquire Activision, Sony is steady buying up single studios and everyone is worshipping it

I must have missed the existence of Sony churches. Really, I've never heard anyone say much good about Sony . . . does that actually happen?

although the news seem promising, I don't think stopping Microsoft from buying Blizzard now will prevent someone else to buy it later,

This deal is for $69 billion. The largest acquisition there's ever been in the games industry was Take Two buying Zynga for $12.7 billion. No other games company could afford to buy ABK. Only a tech platforms company like Microsoft, Google or Apple.

And activision blizzard isnt even worth that much anymore, they are selling because World of Warcraft, and COD is slowly dying, and Activision knows this, thats why they waant the cash out now.

i dont like it, they should allow Microsoft to acquire Activision, Sony is steady buying up single studios and everyone is worshipping it

I must have missed the existence of Sony churches. Really, I've never heard anyone say much good about Sony . . . does that actually happen?

i dont like it, they should allow Microsoft to acquire Activision, Sony is steady buying up single studios and everyone is worshipping it, now Microsoft wants to compete its a problem, its so weird, i believe Blizzard will be in better hands with Microsoft compare to Activision.

Everyone saying microsoft if a Terrible company, just remember what Micheal Jackson said about sony, they both are bad.

This is not about which company is good or bad, this is about a merger having the potential to create a monopoly or a near monopoly in the market. So it also have zero to do with the amount of studios being bought (still MS have bought up more studios then Sony), instead it have to do with the huge size of Activision Blizzard, that is the single thing that activated FTC and why they are trying to block it. It's the size, nothing more.

No its not the size of Activision blizzard they are fighting about, its about the Call of duty Franchise, they dont care about the Blizzard games, its all about COD, cause if microsoft leaves says they dont want COD Sony wont have a problem with the acquirement.

You are talking about why SONY is concerned about the merger, I was talking about the FTC. The size of the deal is what made the governmental regulators like The FTC to start their investigation and they did this long before SONY said anything.

SOMY might be completely fine with the deal if COD is left out of the deal, The FTC will not. Key to this all is point #96 in their suit:

96. The Proposed Acquisition is reasonably likely to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in the Relevant Markets by creating a combined firm with the ability and increased incentive to withhold Activision’s valuable gaming content from, or degrade Activision’s content for, Microsoft’s rivals. The combined firm would have the ability to exclude Microsoft’s rivals from access to some or all of Activision’s content in the Relevant Markets. Microsoft would have the power to decide if, when, and to what extent Activision content will be available on competing products. The Proposed Acquisition is likely to increase entry barriers, thereby dampening beneficial rivalry and innovation. If permitted to make Activision a captive supplier, Microsoft would have a substantially increased incentive to engage in strategies to that would likely lead to reduced consumer choice, higher prices or lower quality products, and less innovation.

Especially damning for MS is point #12 however as I understand it the EU commission have come out and clarified that they think that the FTC have gotten this wrong in that the EC allowed the deal without such a promise:

12. Microsoft’s past conduct provides a preview of the combined firm’s likely plans if it consummates the Proposed Acquisition, despite any assurances the company may offer regarding its plans. In March 2021, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media Inc. (“ZeniMax”), the parent company of the well-known game developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks LLC (“Bethesda”). Microsoft assured the European Commission (“EC”) during its antitrust review of the ZeniMax purchase that Microsoft would not have the incentive to withhold ZeniMax titles from rival consoles. But, shortly after the EC cleared the transaction, Microsoft made public its decision to make several of the newly acquired ZeniMax titles, including Starfield, Redfall, and Elder Scrolls VI, Microsoft exclusives.

This consolidation of power is never a good thing for consumers as a whole.

I would challenge this. Windows customers get access to a much larger library of games on Game Pass for the same value, which only has a positive impact on them. There's the worry that companies with so much power over an industry will use their position to enact anti-customer policies, but realistically, what will Microsoft do? Increase the price of Game Pass? The only reason it's so well-loved is its low price, so they can't increase it by that much, and even if they do, it has enough value that it would be warranted. They're a company, in the end, and their mission is to make a profit, so they do actually have to cater to their customers.

Actually, one could argue that Epic challenging Steam's stranglehold on its market has had a negative impact on most customers. They need to go to a separate store, install a separate launcher, and create a new account just to buy an exclusive game they want. Customers actually prefer monopolies because they are more convenient.

Certainly, there's the more practical concern that Microsoft will publish more exclusives, and they're in a great position to do so, but this makes little sense to do right now. Microsoft makes hardly any money out of Windows from the general audience because they usually get it for free; they make money out of Windows licenses through OEMs and more importantly, big businesses. No, money from general audiences comes from software and services. That's why they've made such a large investment in Game Pass, and why they don't care if Steam Deck users buy it as well. The more people that buy their service, the better. Making games exclusive to Windows makes no sense in the current climate, but making them exclusive to Xbox does.

Even then, it seems unlikely Microsoft would stop publishing to the PC market now, because there's a lot of money in it, so it would really mean starving out Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's Switch platforms. That's why they've shifted big name games like Halo to Steam in recent years. I'm not excited about another Amazon, of course. But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

I'm not sure I find "we wouldn't be the first victims" all that reassuring.

For anyone thinking MS aren't all that bad and have "turned over a new leaf" with all their "MS Loves Linux" BS, even now they are spreading lies about the competition under the guise of "guides".

For example: they are targeting Steam Deck users with "guides" stating:

Since modding games on the Stream Deck is not as safe as on the PC, you need to back up the game you want to mod before installing mods. Otherwise, there will be a risk that necessary game files will get corrupted, and you will not be able to play the game anymore.

(that "guide" is the top result on bing for "mod games steam deck" and hosted on msn.
url: https: //www.msn .com/en-us/news/technology/how-to-mod-games-on-steam-deck/ar-AAZzDCX
TL/DR: not worth reading - they just tell you to use the steam workshop or nexus)

Not only are they straight-up telling people that Linux is somehow more susceptible to file corruption than windows (blatantly false - their garbage ntfs doesn't even support per-file checksums, while the most common filesystems on linux do - not to mention snapshots on the likes of btrfs, zfs, etc), they intentionally avoid mentioning Valve's file-integrity-check or any possible resolution for that supposed threat.

I hope they are blocked from more acquisitions of popular game studios. The more games available on multiple platforms (as opposed to being made into xbox/gamepass exclusives), the better.


Last edited by lectrode on 13 December 2022 at 12:30 am UTC

But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

I'm not sure I find "we wouldn't be the first victims" all that reassuring.

Hey, someone had to argue for the other side. I tend to agree with this, but my argument is that monopolies are not bad for customers as a whole. Windows and Xbox users would welcome this change because it makes their lives more convenient, with more value for their money. In actual fact, it turns out that monopolies tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers. It's competitors and their customers (or in this case, free software users) that it tends to affect negatively.

Monopolies have produced some great things. Take AT&T and Bell Labs, perhaps the most prolific monopoly in history, which resulted in UNIX, something that continues to have a ricocheting effect on operating systems today. Even Microsoft started with a UNIX-based operating system. Bell Labs are responsible for a great many technological innovations, which challenges the common wisdom that monopolies encourage stagnation and discourage innovation. It turns out that AT&T had so much money that they just let their scientific employees do whatever they wanted, because that tended to result in interesting stuff being discovered, which tended to make them more money.

Of course, you could make the argument that thanks to the US Government's antitrust regulations, UNIX followed a path that it otherwise wouldn't have: selling source code licenses to universities, resulting in interesting stuff like Berkley's Software Distribution of UNIX. But ultimately, I don't think it would have made any difference to Linus Torvalds whether UNIX's source was available or not, because it was still extremely expensive, and it certainly didn't help BSD eat the world. Had UNIX been commercially exploited from the start, I think the only difference would be an increased urgency to develop a free software operating system (and a more standardized environment for AT&T customers).

Not all monopolies are good. I can think of a few off the top of my head that make my life worse. But some of them can have a lot of positive impact on customers.

Do I want Microsoft to have this much control over gaming? No, but I certainly wouldn't feel sorry for Microsoft's customers if it happened.

Edit: And if you're familiar with the fable of Microsoft v Netscape, there's a monopoly that ended well for customers everywhere. Thanks to Microsoft, they standardized the idea of browsers everywhere being free-of-charge, which forced Netscape to pivot into Mozilla, which resulted in a great free software browser (that was also free-of-charge) that subsequently took market share from Internet Explorer because it was a better browser that supported open standards (some of which it had invented itself, like JavaScript) better than the competition.

If Netscape won, what would the world look like? Microsoft would have had to charge for Internet Explorer instead of bundling it with Windows 95 and future editions. Netscape wouldn't have been forced to innovate. Mozilla Firefox wouldn't exist, nor would any of Mozilla's other great free software programs.


Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 13 December 2022 at 12:59 am UTC

More authoritarian measures from The State to BLOCK private acquisition for Intellectual Property?

Yeah dude, THE SAME FTC that has kept frequencies under ban for decades only to AUCTION THEM OFF TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER for BILLIONS recently?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/31/5g-spectrum-auction-bids-total-80point9-billion-winners-revealed-soon.html

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3600828/fccs-5g-frequency-auction-prompts-2-billion-in-bids-on-the-first-day.html

Oh I'm sorry did I break their White Knight Shield of Virtue circle-jerk party?

I'm all for "Fuck Microsoft" but this isn't a win for the little guy -- just another battle of the great houses.

Every regulatory body is captured, corrupted and simply function as tools to make sure the money keeps flowing to "the right places" -- modern mafia.

Activision Blizzard is a horrendous company with a long history of harassment and a CEO that did not take responsibility for any of it.

I am glad that Microsoft takes it over and I have faith in them addressing that problem properly.

On YouTube 90 percent of the comments seem to be in vavour of the acquisition... weird but true.

YouTube is full of paid shills.

But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

I'm not sure I find "we wouldn't be the first victims" all that reassuring.

Hey, someone had to argue for the other side. I tend to agree with this, but my argument is that monopolies are not bad for customers as a whole. Windows and Xbox users would welcome this change because it makes their lives more convenient, with more value for their money. In actual fact, it turns out that monopolies tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers. It's competitors and their customers (or in this case, free software users) that it tends to affect negatively.

Monopolies have produced some great things. Take AT&T and Bell Labs, perhaps the most prolific monopoly in history, which resulted in UNIX, something that continues to have a ricocheting effect on operating systems today.

I don't find that argument very convincing for monopolies in general. AT&T was a kind of monopoly we don't see nowadays: a very highly regulated monopoly with profits limited by law. Those can have positive effects, particularly if, like AT&T, they're so-called "natural monopolies". Bell Labs became a thing because AT&T was able to make far more money than it was allowed to have exist as "profit", so they had to find something to do with it. Although, AT&T had its downsides as well. But if you're going to allow a "natural monopoly" to exist, largely because duplication of infrastructure is inefficient, then it's probably easier and less prone to abuse to just make it public than to try to regulate it effectively enough to stop it from abusing its power.

In general, though, near monopolies only fail to abuse their customers if they are in the process of trying to achieve the real thing. Once they've got a lock, they jack up the prices, slough off the service, and stop innovating. Monopolies do not tend to have positive impacts on a business' customers. It may happen now and then, but it is far from typical, and any positive impacts from structural factors will tend to be swamped by negative impacts, certainly if the monopoly is at all solid. And Microsoft certainly is no exception; Linux and Apple are probably the only reasons Windows doesn't suck far more than it does.

Finally, a sample of common sense!

Dont go that far nobody has stepped in yet to stop thq nordic from buying deep silver and whole slew of smaller studios and publishers including codemasters. Ms has the money for the ftc to go okay thanks for new office we have decided nothing to see here. Given MS has an exclusive relationship with EA now in terms of EA games as a service gets bundled with game pass having actvivision as well gives them a whole raft of gaming exclusive series if thats how they chose to take it thankfully a pc gamer so i get all their games regardless but it would suck if i was a console gamer.

But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

I'm not sure I find "we wouldn't be the first victims" all that reassuring.

Hey, someone had to argue for the other side. I tend to agree with this, but my argument is that monopolies are not bad for customers as a whole. Windows and Xbox users would welcome this change because it makes their lives more convenient, with more value for their money. In actual fact, it turns out that monopolies tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers. It's competitors and their customers (or in this case, free software users) that it tends to affect negatively.

Monopolies have produced some great things. Take AT&T and Bell Labs, perhaps the most prolific monopoly in history, which resulted in UNIX, something that continues to have a ricocheting effect on operating systems today.

I don't find that argument very convincing for monopolies in general. AT&T was a kind of monopoly we don't see nowadays: a very highly regulated monopoly with profits limited by law. Those can have positive effects, particularly if, like AT&T, they're so-called "natural monopolies". Bell Labs became a thing because AT&T was able to make far more money than it was allowed to have exist as "profit", so they had to find something to do with it. Although, AT&T had its downsides as well. But if you're going to allow a "natural monopoly" to exist, largely because duplication of infrastructure is inefficient, then it's probably easier and less prone to abuse to just make it public than to try to regulate it effectively enough to stop it from abusing its power.

In general, though, near monopolies only fail to abuse their customers if they are in the process of trying to achieve the real thing. Once they've got a lock, they jack up the prices, slough off the service, and stop innovating. Monopolies do not tend to have positive impacts on a business' customers. It may happen now and then, but it is far from typical, and any positive impacts from structural factors will tend to be swamped by negative impacts, certainly if the monopoly is at all solid. And Microsoft certainly is no exception; Linux and Apple are probably the only reasons Windows doesn't suck far more than it does.

I'll concede that I was wrong to say that "monopolies tend tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers". I should not have implied that, in general, monopolies tend to do more good than they do bad. Good points on AT&T. I agree that, in the long-term, Microsoft's power over the industry would be bad for their customers. However, I don't think that monopolies are bad in every situation. Counter-point: streaming.

While I don't do much streaming myself, I've heard a lot of complaints from people saying that it's so much harder now that every company has its own streaming service, each with its own ever-shrinking pool of shows. When it was just Netflix, costs were far lower, and you got access to far more shows. Now, everyone has pulled their shows off Netflix, Netflix has raised their prices significantly, is trying to integrate draconian monitoring software from Adobe to ensure viewers can't share their logins with people in another house, and in general produces worse original shows. This is because there is a lot more competition now. Back when Netflix had a near-monopoly on the streaming industry, customers paid less, got more shows, and could share their logins with friends. And because of how successful Netflix was, they could attract better talent to produce better originals.

Let's take another example from the anime sphere (in the west, at least) that has gone in the opposite direction. Just two years ago, we used to have Crunchyroll, HiDive, Funimation, and AnimeLab. Each of these companies streamed a mostly-different pool of anime because they tended to deal in exclusive licenses. Many hate HiDive because it's just another streaming platform they have to subscribe to if they want to watch a particular show, even if they have some of the best features in the industry. Now, AnimeLab, Crunchyroll, and Funimation have consolidated into one company. While Crunchyroll has stopped their free tier and slightly increased their prices, this is far better for customers because they get many more shows for a similar amount of money all in one place, save for the occasional shows that HiDive and Netflix 'take hostage'.

Why is all of this an issue, you might ask? Because of a 'creative' monopoly called 'copyright'. When you create a work, you have an exclusive right to commercial exploitation of that work, and streaming companies generally negotiate an exclusive license with the copyright holder to stream that work. Now, you could argue that if the government didn't allow the copyright holder to sell exclusive licenses, this wouldn't be an issue, but that's also not true. If we did that, the environment would greatly favour Disney, because they produce and own much more content than any other one company, and why the hell should they put themselves in a worse position by selling licenses to use their own work to Netflix?

So, the crux of this issue is that copyright exists as a monopoly. Naturally, this argument applies to patents as well. So given that, I'm curious what you think the normal state of affairs should be to improve the situation for customers—should copyright be abolished, or drastically shortened from the death of the author + 75 years? Or is this a scenario in which you would prefer to preserve this 'creative' monopoly and have one company (perhaps government-owned), like Netflix, stream all media? I believe that the copyright period should be a little shorter than what it was before 1926, and that all copyrights should be registered.

(I initially considered including this in my last comment but thought it was quite long already, because this situation is why I believe what I do about monopolies)

Edit: And if you're familiar with the fable of Microsoft v Netscape, there's a monopoly that ended well for customers everywhere. Thanks to Microsoft, they standardized the idea of browsers everywhere being free-of-charge, which forced Netscape to pivot into Mozilla, which resulted in a great free software browser (that was also free-of-charge) that subsequently took market share from Internet Explorer because it was a better browser that supported open standards (some of which it had invented itself, like JavaScript) better than the competition.

If Netscape won, what would the world look like? Microsoft would have had to charge for Internet Explorer instead of bundling it with Windows 95 and future editions. Netscape wouldn't have been forced to innovate. Mozilla Firefox wouldn't exist, nor would any of Mozilla's other great free software programs.

The IE monopoly had zero to do with if a browser should be free or not, browsers had been free to download and use for some years before Microsoft decided to bundle IE with Windows and thus using their monopoly on the OS to gain leverage in the browser market. Nor was "give anyone a free browser" the aim of Microsoft, their goal was to shift enterprises to use their web server ISS instead of the Netscape Web Server (and in the end they both lost out to Apache anyway).

The problem was never that MS developed IE or that they released it for free, it was all about them abusing their monopoly. Fully agree that we probably in the end got it better with Firefox than if Netscape Navigator had survived (although we will never know since we don't have access to that parallel universe) but that is a "despite of" and not "thanks to" the market abuse by MS.

But I don't see Microsoft making any big moves on the PC market until years down the line.

I'm not sure I find "we wouldn't be the first victims" all that reassuring.

Hey, someone had to argue for the other side. I tend to agree with this, but my argument is that monopolies are not bad for customers as a whole. Windows and Xbox users would welcome this change because it makes their lives more convenient, with more value for their money. In actual fact, it turns out that monopolies tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers. It's competitors and their customers (or in this case, free software users) that it tends to affect negatively.

Monopolies have produced some great things. Take AT&T and Bell Labs, perhaps the most prolific monopoly in history, which resulted in UNIX, something that continues to have a ricocheting effect on operating systems today.

I don't find that argument very convincing for monopolies in general. AT&T was a kind of monopoly we don't see nowadays: a very highly regulated monopoly with profits limited by law. Those can have positive effects, particularly if, like AT&T, they're so-called "natural monopolies". Bell Labs became a thing because AT&T was able to make far more money than it was allowed to have exist as "profit", so they had to find something to do with it. Although, AT&T had its downsides as well. But if you're going to allow a "natural monopoly" to exist, largely because duplication of infrastructure is inefficient, then it's probably easier and less prone to abuse to just make it public than to try to regulate it effectively enough to stop it from abusing its power.

In general, though, near monopolies only fail to abuse their customers if they are in the process of trying to achieve the real thing. Once they've got a lock, they jack up the prices, slough off the service, and stop innovating. Monopolies do not tend to have positive impacts on a business' customers. It may happen now and then, but it is far from typical, and any positive impacts from structural factors will tend to be swamped by negative impacts, certainly if the monopoly is at all solid. And Microsoft certainly is no exception; Linux and Apple are probably the only reasons Windows doesn't suck far more than it does.

I'll concede that I was wrong to say that "monopolies tend tend to have positive impacts on a business's customers". I should not have implied that, in general, monopolies tend to do more good than they do bad. Good points on AT&T. I agree that, in the long-term, Microsoft's power over the industry would be bad for their customers. However, I don't think that monopolies are bad in every situation. Counter-point: streaming.

While I don't do much streaming myself, I've heard a lot of complaints from people saying that it's so much harder now that every company has its own streaming service, each with its own ever-shrinking pool of shows. When it was just Netflix, costs were far lower, and you got access to far more shows. Now, everyone has pulled their shows off Netflix, Netflix has raised their prices significantly, is trying to integrate draconian monitoring software from Adobe to ensure viewers can't share their logins with people in another house, and in general produces worse original shows. This is because there is a lot more competition now. Back when Netflix had a near-monopoly on the streaming industry, customers paid less, got more shows, and could share their logins with friends. And because of how successful Netflix was, they could attract better talent to produce better originals.

Let's take another example from the anime sphere (in the west, at least) that has gone in the opposite direction. Just two years ago, we used to have Crunchyroll, HiDive, Funimation, and AnimeLab. Each of these companies streamed a mostly-different pool of anime because they tended to deal in exclusive licenses. Many hate HiDive because it's just another streaming platform they have to subscribe to if they want to watch a particular show, even if they have some of the best features in the industry. Now, AnimeLab, Crunchyroll, and Funimation have consolidated into one company. While Crunchyroll has stopped their free tier and slightly increased their prices, this is far better for customers because they get many more shows for a similar amount of money all in one place, save for the occasional shows that HiDive and Netflix 'take hostage'.

Why is all of this an issue, you might ask? Because of a 'creative' monopoly called 'copyright'. When you create a work, you have an exclusive right to commercial exploitation of that work, and streaming companies generally negotiate an exclusive license with the copyright holder to stream that work. Now, you could argue that if the government didn't allow the copyright holder to sell exclusive licenses, this wouldn't be an issue, but that's also not true. If we did that, the environment would greatly favour Disney, because they produce and own much more content than any other one company, and why the hell should they put themselves in a worse position by selling licenses to use their own work to Netflix?

So, the crux of this issue is that copyright exists as a monopoly. Naturally, this argument applies to patents as well. So given that, I'm curious what you think the normal state of affairs should be to improve the situation for customers—should copyright be abolished, or drastically shortened from the death of the author + 75 years? Or is this a scenario in which you would prefer to preserve this 'creative' monopoly and have one company (perhaps government-owned), like Netflix, stream all media? I believe that the copyright period should be a little shorter than what it was before 1926, and that all copyrights should be registered.

(I initially considered including this in my last comment but thought it was quite long already, because this situation is why I believe what I do about monopolies)

You make some good points, and in these particular arenas I don't really disagree . . . I do think that if Netflix had managed to maintain its effective monopoly and create some serious barriers to entry so it could continue to do so with little fear of competition, the story would have gone a less positive direction in the end.

As to what I'd prefer to see . . . depends. There's what I'd really like to see, in a complete blue-sky kind of way, and then there's what might be practical as limited improvements on the current dispensation . . .

I have a better idea of the blue-sky thing. So: Federal governments set aside a pool of money for creators that's somewhat bigger than what they get now from all the companies they sell their works to. Maybe subdivide it into kinds of things, like movies vs books, maybe not, I can imagine arguments either way. Citizens of the country each get to dedicate an equal share of that pool to whatever artists they wish. Governments maintain a big "Kickstarter" style website where artists put up their stuff and the citizens get to direct their entertainment money. The pot gets split up based on the people who show up to have an opinion. Individual artists get money according to what was voted, except at the high end where you have massive votes there's a sort of soft cap of diminishing returns. In return, no copyright (except in the sense that things like misrepresenting someone's work either by pretending it is yours or pretending they wrote it differently from how they did would stay illegal) and all citizens get access to all the country's artistic production, for free. Ideally, countries sign treaties with each other for use of each other's creative output.

Creators get paid, a bunch of worthless middlemen do not, everyone gets all the stuff. But it couldn't happen without society being in the throes of a major transformation.

Finally, a sample of common sense!

Dont go that far nobody has stepped in yet to stop thq nordic from buying deep silver and whole slew of smaller studios and publishers including codemasters.

Where are those companies from?

Counter-point: streaming.

The early, more comprehensive, catalogue of Netflix wasn't because they'd cornered the market, it was because they were small. The rights holders just got free money for doing nothing. It was only when Netflix got bigger that those same rights holders worked out that they could get more money by rolling their own streaming service that had exclusive access to their content, or by playing the different streaming services against each other with exclusive contracts. The issue is the exclusivity - the monopoly. The music industry has compulsory licensing: people get to use your music and you get a royalty (whether the specific implementation is good or not is outside of the scope of it being a solution that exists). Video streaming will need similar, or at least regulation to prevent exclusivity, if video streaming services are to be able to compete. Far from being the solution - as you're arguing - monopoly is the problem.

The issue is the exclusivity - the monopoly. The music industry has compulsory licensing: people get to use your music and you get a royalty (whether the specific implementation is good or not is outside of the scope of it being a solution that exists).

Because I've never been particularly interested in music, I know nothing about the industry, so it's good to hear another perspective that I never would have considered otherwise. Thank you for introducing me to a new tentacle of copyright law; I'm always looking to learn more.

Video streaming will need similar, or at least regulation to prevent exclusivity, if video streaming services are to be able to compete.

I disagree that regulation to prevent exclusivity is all that's needed. As I argued in my previous comment, this would overwhelmingly favor Disney, who owns multitudes more content than any other one company. They don't have an exclusive license with the content creators; they are the content creators. Copyright by its very intention created and preserves this monopoly. I point this out because outlawing exclusive licenses alone would ease but not solve this issue because Disney has an unassailable advantage. The only way it could work is if, as you say, compulsory licensing was implemented.

Far from being the solution - as you're arguing - monopoly is the problem.

My position is that copyright and patents, which are `intellectual` monopolies, last far too long, and is mostly what has resulted in this unfavorable situation for customers. Because I doubt many people (least of all Disney share my extreme opinions about copyright and patents, I proposed a solution that further enforces this monopoly—one company, government-regulated or otherwise, controlling all media. As I saw it, without nullifying the intent of copyright (which many parties are heavily invested in protecting), this was the only real solution. I like the idea of compulsory licensing more now that it has been presented to me, and even though it contravenes copyright law, most people seem to accept it.

What I would really like to see is something similar for books.

I disagree that regulation to prevent exclusivity is all that's needed. As I argued in my previous comment, this would overwhelmingly favor Disney, who owns multitudes more content than any other one company. They don't have an exclusive license with the content creators; they are the content creators. Copyright by its very intention created and preserves this monopoly. I point this out because outlawing exclusive licenses alone would ease but not solve this issue because Disney has an unassailable advantage. The only way it could work is if, as you say, compulsory licensing was implemented.

This in turn raises the question: Should corporations actually be able to hold copyrights? It's not like "The Disney Corporation" ever wrote a song, after all.

Screw Micro$oft and their EEE politics, they are back to their old schemes.