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How would you break up Disney’s monopoly?
- Thread starter Uzumaki Goku
- Start date
THey don't have a monopoly. They are however the primary benefactor of nebulous copyight laws that are pushed, bent , and stetched solely to benefit them. It's especially gross because so much of their success is built on them capitalizing on fairy tales and stories that become part of the public consciousness, while sageguarding their own from being used in the same way.
List of assets owned by The Walt Disney Company
Disney is huge, even if you just limit what they own to media and distribution. Even doing napkin math you can get a rough picture of just how big of the pie they are, and I'm sorry, it just feels disingenuous to say "we can't measure the importance of Star Wars, Marvel, and the entire Disney Catalogue." Can you measure it down to a t? No, but then doesn't mean we can't get a decent estimate based on the buzz generated online, the amount of merchandise made/sold, the number of tickets sold, the number of subs, etc. that these properties generate.
I don't get how the size of gaming is germane to this conversation. The existence of a larger market doesn't make the potential domination of a smaller one not an issue. Relatively speaking it's a smaller fish to fry, but that doesn't make the size of Disney is not an issue because...
..they become the sole mediator of a lot of important culture. Regardless of the esteem that you hold something like Marvel or Star Wars in, they are still tremendously important for a lot of people, and allowing a single entity to control broad stretches of pop culture gives them quite a bit of influence over those people. Disney gets to dictate the terms of engagement, and we know they aren't above some pretty heavy handed mediation of their properties. What happens if Disney decides to vault the Avengers? What if they decide to reboot the Star Wars EU again because new leadership wants a fresh start? For the same reasons that people are leery of consolidation in the games industry, we should be just as cautious around traditional media.
That doesn't make consolidation in popular not an issue though. You're bringing up a completely unrelated point to the current argument.
Nah, Sesame Workshop owns their muppets, and the Jim Henson Company still makes muppet stuff (without the muppet name).
It's germane because you're just giving me a list of properties. I can get a list of plenty of companies which have properties. You're suggesting that they have undue influence. It's not as simple to demonstrate that by just saying "they have this much". Ok. How are you measuring influence? Why is "media" only things that Disney does well, and not things they're less active in? It's not needed to have absolutely precise numbers, sure, but you're not doing any comparisons at all when comparison is the entire point.
I think this has already happened like a dozen times on that Disneyland Twitter account
This quite literally doesn't matter in any business or legal sense. It's not in the same galaxy in terms of concern as, say, Disney strong-arming theaters in what is essentially an anti-competitive way.
Instead let's go back to Fox aquistion and have them take Fox news as well, and proceed to destroy it In the eyes of conservatives by exercising the slightest amount of moderation.
Sorry, I edited that part. I meant to say I don't see how the size of gaming is germane. I'm suggesting they have a great amount of influence via their ownership of the Disney Catalogue, Marvel, LucasFilm, and 21 Century Fox, the cultural cache they derive from those properties, and the amount of money those properties generate. Their closest competitor would be, what, Paramount? Paramount has its movie arm, CBS, and Viacom's stable of brand(Nick, MTV, BET, Comedy Central probably being the largest). Paramount's IP is not nothing, they own the rights to a lot of classic films, Spongebob, South Park, Star Trek, etc.
My gut would say Disney is the bigger presence of the two in regards to how influential/well regarded their IP, but that's a hunch so let's say they're equal. I would levy much of the same concern I have for Disney at Paramount honestly. Maybe it's marginally better that there's two massive media conglomerates instead of one, but just barely.
I don't recall ever saying any of this matters from a business or legal sense.
WarnerBros Discovery is significantly more meaningful than Paramount, as is NBC Universal.
Well, I bring up gaming because you're saying they have undue influence in media. To which I say, ok, why is "media" only areas where Disney does well? Why not look at gaming? Are you saying games don't have impact on culture? It seems very oddly constrained and I don't know why that would be the case.
Similarly, how are we assessing cache at all? Box office? Eyeballs? Markets? Merchandise? Average Q score? I don't see how Disney is so massively ahead of their peers, nor how it's problematic.
I didn't bring up gaming because this thread was about Disney. Come the fuck on man. This is some strawman bullshit.
Ok so you're just not even reading posts then. Got it.
Right, and your posts are about how Disney has undue influence. Why would gaming not be an arena in which they could have undue influence? Why is it that the area wherein we consider improper amounts of cultural sway is somehow limited? If it's not going to include gaming, why is this such a worry when the likes of, say, movies are so much smaller as a market?
So you'd say revenue? Why?
Sure, either of those will do, but it doesn't change basic criticism I have. There should be scrutiny for those corporations as well as they continue to grow.
...Because Disney's gaming presence is practically non-existant. Why would I bring up their ability to wield influence over a sector that they're barely involved in? Do I really need to explain how the money generated by a property can be linked to the popularity and influence of the property? Revenue isn't the only thing I listed as contributing to influence either.
you mean him parroting and basically cheering the GOP in florida?
Because you're suggesting they have an improper amount of impact on media and culture. Media and culture is more than movies and TV.
Revenue or merchandise or whatever you'd like to look at, you're not making an argument as to why Disney is improperly impactful at all. You haven't actually brought up even vague comparatives of any metric at all beyond "number of properties", much less explained why that metric is important nor how Disney so massively exceeds their peers or how, in doing so, they're doing something wrong.
I am suggesting they have an amount of influence deserving of scrutiny, especially as they grow. I said nothing about it being an 'improper' amount. If they are not involved in a specific kind of media, their cultural impact via that medium is not relevant in their overall output. If it's not relevant, which is to say, their impact in that medium is low to non-existant, then I see no reason to discuss it in this conversation. It's dwarfed by their efforts in movies, TV, comics, and books.
Right, but that doesn't mean gaming has no impact on culture. So again, besides the fact that Disney is not very impactful in gaming, why would I not include gaming if I wanted to get a sense of which companies are unduly influencing culture? That Disney is not in gaming is an argument against them being improper in how they affect culture. Why would I only want to look at movies and TV when trying to direct scrutiny based on influence? This is like those arguments people were making fun of up above; yeah, sure, if you arbitrarily slice "media" in a way that just so happens to include the efforts of a large portion of some company, then you can make any entity look bad.
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Literally did not say this. Just a straight up strawman argument.
Why wouldn't you include it? Because it was never part of this conversation to begin with, and you'd have to argue that the cultural impact(not just financial) of games is dwarfing all other mediums, which is something you have yet to substantiate.
But I'm done. It's clear we don't agree on this and that neither of us is going to be convinced of what the other has to say, so there's no point in continuing this exchange.
It's not a strawman. You said that they have too much influence on culture. You refuse to look at gaming, for reasons I don't know other than Disney doesn't have influence there. Ok, so they don't have too much influence. It *is* part of the conversation, because you said they had an effect on culture. Gaming is included in culture. Your failure is accurately present your side or make an argument besides "No I don't want to talk about that section of media, despite making claims about media, for no reason other than it proves me wrong" is entirely that.
I mean, you said "Maybe it's marginally better that there's two massive media conglomerates instead of one, but just barely."
But there aren't two, or even four or five. There are a lot of massive entertainment companies in the world, and filmed entertainment actually has a ton of decentralization, with lots and lots of independent production companies, distributors, and so on.
I've always been strongly against corporate consolidation, but it's important to have an accurate reading of the situation. Disney isn't a monopoly, or anything close. They are a very large player in a very big and crowded field.
Kinda surprised at a lot of the posts here. Sure, Disney may not be as threatening as meta, amazon or Microsoft, but that doesn't mean they aren't harmful overall, ie copyright law as an example.
I think it would be in societies best interest that many of these mega corporations be broken up. It'll never happen though.
I think it would be in societies best interest that many of these mega corporations be broken up. It'll never happen though.
They are it's the content library for the rest of Disney plus outside of the United States.
If they want to vault the Avengers, they vault the Avengers. What's wrong with that? If they want to reboot Star Wars let them. I love all these things. I love Marvel, I love Star Wars, I love Disney movies. But I can live without them.
Yeah even that doesn't work, that's like saying Disney has a monopoly on Disney. Jim Henson Creatureshop still exists as it's own thing, and makes puppets for all kinds of other movies and TV projects. It's specifically the Muppet characters themselves that Disney owns. Which is why the Elmo cameo/joke from The Muppets had to be scrapped ):
I don't know why people are arguing with trashbandit. He's obviously not acting in good faith. For example, he ignored this post:
Disney is nowhere near a Monopoly in cinemas, when it is one of the American movie companies that releases the fewest movies per year! How would it have a monopoly when most of its competitors release more movies?
Disney is nowhere near a Monopoly in cinemas, when it is one of the American movie companies that releases the fewest movies per year! How would it have a monopoly when most of its competitors release more movies?
What are y'all smokin, disney is evil company, and I'm not saying this because of their assets.
Why does Star Wars and Lucas film belong to Lucas and his estate? They willingly sold it. It doesn't belong to Lucas and co. anymore. I don't get why you would think that
I think it's a shame he sold SW but I agree. Can't do anything about it if the man doesn't want it, any more.
is this a stealth "I don't like star wars post sale" thread?
Why does it "belong" there? Lucas sold it for 5 billion USD.
If anything it should become an independent company.
Because they dictate unfair competitive terms to theaters. For example, you have to show a Disney movie for at least 3 weeks. Small theaters are giving up a screen for a long time because they know they won't survive without the revenue from that. How is that a fair dictation to the other studios competing with Disney?
Also lmao at people in this thread accusing OP of parroting Republicans. Just because Disney is in the cross hairs of culture war bullshit doesn't mean that them being as big as they are and the fact that they've basically written copyright law in the US are good things. They're not.
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To add on to this, Disney is a supporter of the Muslim Genocide down in china, They don't actually give a flying fuck about us queerfolk, they make sure that all LGBTQ+ rep is as obscure as possible on their kids movies, they won't hesitate to censor out promotions, scenes, episodes, or even fucking entire TV shows (like they almost did with planning to abruptly cancel the owl house) for having minority representation that is controversial, because people don't know how to treat people with kindness despite their differences.
Cartoon Network shows have positive crossdressing characters, some of which are kids. If some TV show pulled this on Disney, they would take it down in a hot sec, because they want to appeal to the people that think crossdressing = pedophillia, or some other BS excuse people use to hate others for being different. Hell I still think Disney almost canceled TOH because they saw Raine Whispers, and they were like "Hol up, you can't add a character with a third gender." and they forced Dana Terrace terrace to not address the elephant in the room with why her show was cancelled as exchange to have a couple more episodes aired for the show (Thankfully they decided not to do it, and let her continue with full 2nd and 3rd season). Not to mention that they temporarily banned an episode of Star VS. for a gay kiss scene, they heavily censored Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durlands romantic relationship, and removed a lesbian couple from Gravity Falls against Alex's wishes.
If you ask me, Clown Mouse Studios are the right wing extremists, that do a really BAD job at pretending to care about us just for a quick buck, and somebody should definitely intercept Disney for the shit i've mentioned, and for the bad deeds I haven't mentioned here.
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