The case for breaking up Disney

Disney has always been a problematic company, from its crypto-minstrelsy (and not-so-crypto-minstrelsy) to its perpetual copyright extensions to its censorship activities to its gender stereotyping to its anti-union work and so on, but, as anti-monopoly activist Matt Stoller (previously) writes, under CEO Bob Iger the company has changed into an entirely different kind of corporate menace: a monopolist committed to crushing competition, rather than an entertainment company that -- whatever its other sins -- was ferociously committed to making movies, TV shows, theme parks, art and toys.

Stoller points to Iger's acquisition spree -- ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Lucas, Pixar, Fox, Maker Media (and licenses for Muppets, Avatar, etc) -- as the key to understanding the change in the company's nature. Where once Disney was a powerhouse of proprietary, studio-created stories and characters (albeit many of them based on public domain fairy tales), under Iger the main sources of new Disney products and stories has been other companies that it purchased. And of course, none of those purchases would have been permitted under the version of antitrust law that led to the founding and growth Disney -- it wasn't until Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork, and every US president since systematically dismantled antitrust that these kind of acquisitions became possible.

This growth strategy warps the competitive landscape in all kinds of ways (not just would would-be animation studio founders, who are now gasping for market oxygen in a monopolized marketplace). Disney is now reportedly insisting on "block booking" from cinema owners -- that's the (once) illegal practice whereby a movie studio only permits cinemas to exhibit its top films if they also agree to take its turkeys -- while simultaneously clawing back all of its (and now, Fox's) old films from exhibition in the nation's 600 struggling independent cinemas. Read the rest