EU Objects To AOL-Time Warner Merger

A reader writes: "Reuters has a story on the European Commission having drafted a report opposing the merger of AOL and Time-Warner, in grounds that the new company would be too powerful."

Comments

Probably a good thing.

[jregel]

There are some people who are probably thinking what right does a European entity have to interfere with a US company? As a European, I'm quite pleased to see the EU make a stand in this. Time Warner are very powerful and very influencial. AOL have a huge amount of mindshare partly due them swamping the market with CDs and a "the internet's safe with us" advertising campaign. Combined, these two companies can be very destructive, and I don't think many Europeans fancy having such a pervasive US company (or any company) controlling the media.

Am I in favour of governments interfering with companies? If they protect the consumer then I do. Are governments to be trusted? No, but at least they're more accountable than multi-nationals. If I have a problem, I can write to my MP or MEP (and I did with regards to the RIP Bill in the UK - I also got a response). If I have a problem with the MPAA, who can I complain to? I can boycote products but when companies get as big as Time Warner/AOL, that can be pretty difficult as who knows what other brands they own? And we've already seen that the MPAA don't seem to respect local laws.

It's not a US vs EU thing, it's about stopping a big, monolithic, and IMHO ultimately malignent corporation from pushing their views to people ignoring local politcal and legal institutions in the process. This is not in the interests of the consumer and I think it's a bad thing(tm).

All IMHO naturally.

Re:Probably a good thing.

[Skim123]

Child labor, workplace abuse, etc. is different. In those situations, a person's basic rights were violated: right to life, libery, pursuit of happiness/property. How does the fact that AOL now owns TimeWarner violate anyone's unalienable rights?

There have been several boycotts that have worked perfectly well without government intervention. Do you see the government making a big fuss over the Firestone tires? Nope, Firestone is recalling them on their own. Savvy consumers == business that operate morally/ehtically. When you have ignorant consumers that demand the government to protect them from corporations, everyone looses some of their freedom to the government. While the ignorant consumers may be willing to loose some freedom so that they don't have to be intelligent consumers, so that they don't have to think about what they are spending their money on, savvy consumers loose out.

Re:Probably a good thing.

[Skim123]

Am I in favour of governments interfering with companies? If they protect the consumer then I do

I don't see why the government would need to "protect the consumer" from a corporation unless this corporation was waging battles in the streets of America (or abroad). In a capitalist economy, we have something more powerful than government: our dollars. If you do not want to see this merger go through, boycott Time-Warner and AOL and encourage your peers to. There's absolutely no need to get the government invovled.

Why do people think they need to government to protect them from companies? The government is there to ensure our basic freedoms: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness/private property. A government's purpose is not to meddle with a free market: rather, let the consumers dictate how the market plays out.

Slashdotters amaze me

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone suggests that the multithreading of Linux's TCP/IP is 0.1% less efficient than that of Solaris, 674 comments raise an outcry at this offensive assertion.

Yet in this story it seems 90% of slashdot readers find it perfectly OK to say some really horrifically offensive, misinformed, uneducated, stereotypical, innacurate, unrealistic and frankly ludricous shit about Europe.

FACT - Europe is not "socialist". Most of you probably dont know the meaning of the word. Why are legal posts always preceded by "IANAL", yet no-one makes the disclaimer I Am Not A Social Scientist/Historian/Politician/etc? Seems everyone thinks they know about such subjects already. Trust me - you dont. Go do a degree in them, then come back and read this site, and try and keep a straight face.

FACT - Europe has a right to say something about companies operating in its arena. They are not "American" companies, dont make me laugh, what a hilariously naive idea, how can any of you seriously believe that. M-U-L-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N-S.

FACT - slashdotter's decry the actions of TimeWarner, AOL and many, many other multinational conglomerates at every opportunity. But when someone tries standing up to this, ahh heck, your brainwashed GAWD BLESS THE YOO ESS OF AYY nationa^H^H^H^H^Hpatriotism kicks in.

Like another poster commented... if your government wasnt "0wned" by big business, it would be doing something about this too.

And in other news

[Captain Pillbug]

The US DOJ has drafted a report opposing the merger of Great Britain, France, Germany, etc. on the grounds that the new government would be too powerful.

Who owns what.

[Money__]

To get an idea of just how much Time/Warner media you consume every day of your life, take a look at this list of Time Warner assets.

OT: Slashdot Copyright notice changed?

[Shaheen]

I'm sorry this is OT, but I thought that people would be interested and Slashdot would probably not make a story out of it. I just wanted to point out that the Slashdot Copyright notice at the bottom of the page has changed - it now says "... The Rest Copyright OSDN"

OSDN is the Open Source Developer's Network. So, I'm guessing that VA's corporate structure has changed or something like that and Slashdot is now not its own entity. Am I right? I wonder if it means some changes are coming around the bend...