Tim Wu

I want to ask, but I want to build on this and ask Tim about a separate but related question.

Tim, you mentioned a second ago, sort of the entertainment industry.

And one of the questions about to come up is whether Netflix should be able to buy all of the assets of, or all the entertainment assets, I should say, of Tim Warner.

And this is one where I think people who care about the quality of the media we consume seem, for reasons that seem compelling to me, very, very worried about having that happen.

How would you think about that?

And is this a place where we need to be, say, making values judgments that are different than our antitrust judgments?

Is this a place where the antitrust laws can suffice?

Is everybody just worried about something they don't need to be worried about?

How do you see it?

Yeah, no, I think this is a place where if the antitrust laws are enforced correctly and fairly, that the acquisition would be blocked.

And I'd say that this is not a particularly exotic situation in the sense that you have the number one

premium streaming company wanting to buy the number three or number four.

And if you do the numbers under the guidelines, which the government issues to tell people when their mergers are presumptively illegal, the result is that this is a presumptively illegal merger.

The reason I do think it's bad is I think that Netflix and Time Warner have, frankly, over their history, been some of the most innovative, interesting outlets.

And often in an oppositional role, you know, this goes way back, but like, you know, Time Warner took a chance on sound film back in the 20s.

In the 50s, they took a chance on television, which people thought was, you know, useless.

And then prestige television, early thousands with HBO and the golden age.

So they've taken a lot of bets.

Netflix has done a lot of

innovative stuff, really interesting, obviously.