The Comcast/TWC Merger Is About Controlling Information 107
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Consumerist:
"Comcast and proposed merger partner Time Warner Cable claim they don't compete because their service areas don't overlap, and that a combined company would happily divest itself of a few million customers to keeps its pay-TV market share below 30%, allowing other companies that don't currently compete with Comcast to keep not competing with Comcast. This narrow, shortsighted view fails to take into account the full breadth of what's involved in this merger — broadcast TV, cable TV, network technology, in-home technology, access to the Internet, and much more. In addition to asking whether or not regulators should permit Comcast to add 10-12 million customers, there is a more important question at the core of this deal: Should Comcast be allowed to control both what content you consume and how you get to consume it?"
Synergy. (Score:2, Interesting)
Exelon owns both Energy Production and Distribution companies.
When fracking made running nuke plans unprofitable, they pushed off maintenance on their nuclear fleet. Now that they're at the point they must do maintenance or risk a meltdown, they are engaging in lots of labor and finance chicanery with their distribution business units to funnel cash into their Nuclear Fleet. Because they are a Chicago based company and very close to the local government, if you are an outsourced employee, they have carte blanch to do illegal things to you like move you between out-sourcers and skip paying paychecks. The net result is the organization is becoming increasingly dysfunctional and talent is either jumping ship or avoiding it. The Electric Grid in Chicago is beginning to fall apart because vital maintenance tasks are not being performed. We will see a repeat of weeklong outages of the 90's.
Besides the conflict of interest in a broadcaster and content producer owning any substantial percentage of the national market, TWC and Comcast are both badly dysfunctional companies with terrible reputations to both customers and labor. The only reason they exist is because they have a de-facto monopoly on their respective markets.
Small ISP's are popping up offering 4G to your home; these services promise to be as inexpensive as landline cable or internet. What will happen to TWC when Comcast is unable to compete?
Right on (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as motion pictures were concerned this was decided in 1948 (Paramount vs United States). Simply put, movie studios can not own movie theaters. Another interesting anti-trust action was the dissolution of United Aircraft and Transportation into Boeing the aircraft manufacturer, Pratt and Whitney the aircraft engine manufacturer and most importantly United Airlines. So a single company can not both manufacture airplanes and run airlines. Unfortunately I fear our current political climate is so corrupted by the concentration of wealth that these actions could not occur today.
I don't CONSUME content (Score:3, Interesting)
If something is "consumed," it is no longer there after consumption.
Viewing content, whether over the air or internet, is not "consuming." Viewing, subscribing, or using — maybe — but consuming, it is not.
Similarly, "stealing" something (an MP3 or CD) means that IT IS NOT THERE AFTER THE ACTION. It may be copyright infringement, or fair use, but is is definitely NOT stealing.