Yet more media consolidation Peanut Gallery brings up the "diverse viewpoints" again claiming that the anti-"piracy" screed in this year's Grammys (which I did not see) and subsequent lack of alternative reporting on CNN demonstrates how consolidated media is systematically attempting to manipulate public opinion. I would say it demonstrates how little people care about abstract technical debates so long as they can still download mp3s. Oh, and newspapers were full of stories on this stuff. Don't assign to brainwashing what you can assign to apathy.

He also brought up Time Warner distribution blocking ABC content as an example for why my economic rationals did not hold. But I never said content owners and distributors wouldn't haggle over price, I just pointed out that even a monopoly distributor would let other people use its pipes for the monopoly price. Businesses aren't reliably smart, but they are reliably greedy. Thanks to Stanton for some good email coversations. And now I'm putting this dead horse to bed.