> Several observers noted the story was timed in such a way as to provide maximum publicity for a bill that the New Media Alliance has been promoting to Congress, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The proposed legislation would exempt newspaper companies from competition laws, which prevent industry-leading entities from collaborating to set prices. The NMA argues this would allow publishers to lobby Google and other platforms for better financial compensation together instead of individually.

On one hand, you can’t make this stuff up. A “competition” bill that exempts companies from competition laws. On the other hand, this is the problem with the “content middleman” business. By leveraging its near monopoly over eyeballs, Google can negotiate to receive an outsized share of the revenues from people viewing say NYT content, relative to the value Google adds to the transition.

That is also why I welcome the rise of competition in movie/TV streaming, even if it means subscribing to multiple services. The value added by any particular streaming service is pretty minimal. (Except for Netflix original content, Netflix is streaming say NBC’s content from Amazon’s servers over Verizon’s wires to an app using video codecs developed by Sony/etc.) Netflix, etc., isn’t adding nothing, there is a value to the curation and licensing deals, but it’s status as a middleman would allow it to wrestle a much larger share of the profit from the transaction than the share of value it adds.