Where are all the anti-trust anti-monopoly laws at? Anyone can see simply that the .01% are using their wealth to merger and acquisition their way into permanent power bases, and it's a dangerous, free-market undermining activity. We are going to regret not pushing back on this and similar amalgamations.
We also need to ask ourselves why the purveyors of cartoon animals are the wealthiest people in Western society. Is their contribution to society really that pervasive and important?
People will often explain this away by saying "Well, people are paying for it, so they de-facto deserve it." But these people neglect that our legal structures created this market and necessitated that people pay. There is no natural right to intellectual property. Naturally, intellectual content cannot be protected or maintained; naturally, intellectual information is possessed in equal part by all who observe or perceive it insofar as their memory and/or recording device allows, and all are free to share this as they see fit. IP is inexhaustible, an infinitely renewable resource. It is not a physical chunk of land that you can wall off and guard.
Thus, any "ownership" of IP is purely based in the legal grants we've given. And IMO, if you look at the disproportionate amount of wealth that goes to IP holders as compared to their social value, our laws need to be recalibrated. There's no reason that a cartoon mouse should continue to print money for a company 50+ years after its original author died. That doesn't encourage innovation.
I don't see Disney really making a huge amount off Mickey Mouse. Mickey is mostly just the corporate mascot.
I have no problem, though, with makers of cartoon animals making bunches of money. They provide happiness. I'm glad I live in a day and age where it isn't just the people who can make the best weapons that do well for themselves.
I'm sure there are more "noble" pursuits, but....how many people actually participate in them? Most people seem to just move money from one place to another, while grabbing a bit for themselves in the process.
For what it is worth, though, the cartoon animals that bring the most joy into my family are those on the cartoon Peppa Pig (I have a two year old daughter, but I find that I enjoy it myself, albeit on a somewhat different level). I hear the people who make it are making a killing, and rightfully so, in my opinion.
So let me clarify a little bit. I'm not opposed to intellectual property per se and I'm not opposed to people making money off of their creations. It's not really about creators receiving an immediate fortune or anything like that.
I kept bringing up cartoon animals as a form of rhetorical trivialization, but it's actually larger than any specific instance. The issue is the obscenely disproportionate value we've artificially assigned these supposedly-time-limited monopolies, which, in practice, never actually expire, and the consequences that flow out from that, like massive political and social influence. Media companies are among the world's largest companies not because of an organic or inherent value in the product they sell, but because we've decided to structure IP laws such that a nearly-infinitely renewable resource, a resource whose upkeep and maintenance costs are as close to zero as you'll ever get, is allowed to be guarded with hyper-protective legal sanctuaries that make it criminal not only to compete directly, but practically to test, study, or develop the subject.
The issue is not that someone is making money off of things that are trivial. The issue is that we've made it way too easy for them to become a dominant force upon completely baseless pretenses.
Law regarding physical property mimics and formalizes the natural consequences that you would expect in the real world -- it formalizes conventional human behavior and expectations, which is why it works as part of the framework that allow us to live in a cohesive nation instead of insulated tribes. It makes sense how laws regarding physical property came into existence and how they relate to basic human impulses. Most people obey the law regarding physical property.
IP law, on the other hand, has no fixed corollary or reference point (since, as above, intellectual resources are naturally un-ownable) and is non-intuitive. IP law is widely and flagrantly disregarded by most people, many of whom don't even understand they're doing something illegal every time they right-click and save-as a picture of Mickey Mouse, listen to an album on YouTube, or use commercial music in the background at an important event; our IP laws do not comport with a basic sense of fairness.
This is manifest when someone says "Why do we care so much what [$FILM_AND/OR_MUSIC_SENSATION] thinks about [$IMPORTANT_SUBJECT_X]?" or any of the many variations of that which people say.
The public understands intuitively that the IP cartels are not deserving of their social position, but they don't make the connection that their position is secured not by any goods that are intrinsically valuable, but solely by the artificial value that we've assigned to them via the fabrication of IP law.
Let me reiterate that I'm not opposed to copyright as such. I am opposed to the grossly disproportionate influence we allow media entities and rightsholders to wield over our politics and our culture, courtesy of excessively one-sided copyright and intellectual property laws.
We need to fix it. For starters, we should knock the copyright term down to 10-15 years.
My kids also love Peppa Pig and I'm also glad that their creators are making money.
Absolutely. Vertical integration can be a great way for businesses and consumers to save money on overhead, but it doesn't work like that for natural monopolies, and should not be tolerates for businesses that are gatekeepers to our intellectual interaction with the world (news, educational media, Internet)
Is there not a chance they're planning on doing this themselves? They spent all that money on the Xfinity rebrand. At this point, Comcast is essentially Xfinity + NBCUniversal.
