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Why movie theaters are in trouble after DOJ nixes 70-year-old case:
By the late 1930s, the majority of power in Hollywood was concentrated in the hands of eight film studios, with the so-called Big Five—Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and RKO—holding the lion's share of the market. The studios not only locked actors into contracts and controlled film production and the distribution of those films, but also they bought up and founded movie theaters all over the country and thus controlled exhibition as well.
The DOJ [US Department of Justice] filed suit in 1938 alleging the eight studios were violating antitrust law in two key ways. First, the DOJ said, the studios were part of an unlawful price-fixing conspiracy, and second, they were monopolizing the distribution and exhibition sectors.
A federal District Court found in 1940 that the studios were indeed in violation of the law, which ended up leading to a whole long series of other legal challenges and appeals. In the end, the US Supreme Court in 1948 ruled 7-1 in favor of the DOJ in United States v. Paramount Pictures. The agreements the studios reached with the government, called consent decrees, required the studios to divest all their stakes in movie theater chains. They also had to end the practice of block booking, in which studios would require theaters to book a whole block of content—films and shorts—if they wanted to exhibit any of that content.
[...] In April 2018, the Justice Department announced it would undertake a review of "legacy" consent decrees put in place during the late 19th and 20th centuries as part of an agency-wide modernization initiative.
[...] Small theaters and independent theater chains all submitted comments to the docket, the overwhelming majority of which supported keeping Paramount in place.
[...] District Judge Analisa Torres, however, did not agree with any of the comments, and on Friday she agreed to terminate the decrees "effective immediately."
Torres' ruling (PDF) found that, basically, because we now have home video and Netflix, we don't really need to worry about competition in the movie-theater sector the way we used to.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DrkShadow on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:31AM (5 children)
Brought by the United States, reviewed by the DoJ (the United States), and brought back to court to discuss the remedy as no longer being necessary..
Gotta love how the government continually acts against the interest of the people.
If any movie studios try to take advantage of this change, the large movie theater chains (if any survive) will have to pull this all the way back through the courts again, and they will win, again. If they survive the financial hardship. I don't see any streaming provider or anything else that offers release-day movies. Certainly not Netflix, maybe Disney+ for Disney movies, but the whole premise is incorrect.
Mostly such a re-decision will hurt smaller towns. Sure, Disney will build a Disney theater in Austin, TX -- but to hell with the smaller towns. Those theaters need to have movies from multiple studios just to have enough on offer that people want to see; viewership isn't high enough to have five theaters from five studios, so zero studios will build theaters in smaller towns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:22AM (1 child)
> Gotta love how the government continually acts against the interest of the people.
Believe me it could be worse:
Against energy? No *anything*? I'll take my chances being raped by billionaires [home.blog], thanks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday August 13 2020, @01:50PM
POEs law is strong in this parent. I can't tell whether he's serious or trolling.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)
Indeed. As they say back where I come, "Where eighty people go, so goes the whole country."
Weren't you one of the ones bitching a while back when Ajit Pai sided with the millions of public comments against net neutrality? Come on man, make up your mind!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 13 2020, @03:08PM
Ought to put sarcasm tags around that. Some might not know or remember that there was a giant astroturf campaign to make it seem like the public was against net neutrality.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 14 2020, @12:59PM
Google claims 328.2 million people in the USA, some of which are even citizens, and somewhat less than 80 of them (not 80 million, not 80 thousand, 80... as in 0x50 hexadecimal) does not quite define the will of the people.
Its probably worth considering that the "competition" is cable TV where this business behavior is normal. So you have the classic regulatory problem, where the best way to ensure large scale competition against a monopoly competitor is to eliminate anti-trust at a very small scale to encourage competition at a larger scale.
It'll be more like the small town experience of Walmart and Target. Not every two horse town with a gas station and bar has BOTH a walmart and a target, but on average most folks are less than 10 miles away from each. Essentially all small towns have access to both Target and Walmart, just maybe not both right down the street.
What minimal social effect will occur is the idea of going to see a superfan movie will be a road trip for most participants. Which is somewhat cool in its own way. Personally I would not want to drive home two hours after being up all night watching some hollywood propaganda but whatever.