How Amazon Controls Virtually Everything You Watch – The American Prospect

Because these separate business lines have no relationship to one another within Amazon, this could only be coordinated at a very high level, suggesting that it s an executive-led strategy. And we actually have a way to find out about this, thanks to the Amazon-MGM merger proposal. The Federal Trade Commission, newly aggressive with the installation of Lina Khan as chair, has begun to conduct a review of the merger. The FTC also has an open investigation into Amazon s business. Through such investigations, we could find out about these media deals now involving Amazon, the role of AWS in negotiations, and whether any flexing of market power was involved.

The House Judiciary Committee recently advanced legislation that could lead to the structural separation of business lines with a conflict of interest. If AWS was influencing Amazon s deals over Prime Video and Fire TV, it could be a candidate for divestiture. House Antitrust Subcommittee chair Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who wrote the structural separation legislation, did not return comment by press time.

Political cartoons in the Progressive Era, when the antitrust laws were first written, often depicted large companies as a giant octopus, with different tentacles constricting rivals. Amazon controls the back-end delivery of filmed entertainment, runs key distribution channels for it, runs a streaming video network, already has a movie studio, and now is trying to buy another. The octopus imagery is apt. Now, regulators can find out if it s also illegal.

via prospect.org