> The state needs to make some changes to how content is licensed to prevent monopoly.
Why? Nobody _needs_ Mickey Mouse. If the price for Mickey Mouse is too high, just don't buy it.Now you could argue that some (much) older works are part of culture, and being exposed to that culture is necessary to function in society. But that then becomes an issue of how long copyright is necessary or reasonable. New works most certainly should be allowed to be monopolized by their creators - even if that means that some potential consumers are priced out of experiencing them. You don't need to see every Disney movie. In fact, not seeing some of them will raise the bar to make better movies and will cause competition to emerge. |
That's not the point. The parent was saying "if you own content and display content, you must license it", not "the price needs to be reasonable".
Typically, there are ways to do this. One way is forcing a company's distribution and streaming to be separate, and this already exists in some other parts of the market.
So if Disney sells Mickey Mouse content $x to its own streaming service for $5, they have to do the same for Netflix. Disney can still set the price. It just has to pay it as well, and that reflects on its own balance sheet. The problems involved in regulating this have already been solved in other markets, it's a solved issue.
Now, you can typically enter volume sales agreements still. So Disney streaming can buy 100k 'streaming options' for $4 if they hit the volume. But that means the same agreement has to be available to, say Netflix.
Of course, the same will be true for any Netflix created content!
Nothing is perfect, but this is the sort of common carry stuff that separates out 'cable companies' from 'TV studios', and there's been loads of legislation about this over the years.