Content-Internet Mergers and the Death of Net Neutrality: Monopoly or Public Utility?

Abstract

Netflix, GoT, Hulu, Star Wars, Amazon, Dexter, YouTube, Breaking Bad, HBO, …we crave content and content is everywhere these days. You can access content on anything, anywhere, any time from a variety of streaming and digital services. It’s hard to even keep track anymore but Disney may have just changed all that by ending its relationship with Netflix, starting its own streaming service, and purchasing 21st Century Fox in a time where “net neutrality” has gone extinct and other media-comm giants have already merged. Does this affect the availability of content moving forward and are there economic and legal consequences? A discussion of recent media mergers and decades old U.S. Supreme Court cases provide some clarity to this contemporary query; combined content-internet providers must either be monopolies or instead, and more likely given the politics of the U.S. Supreme Court, a public utilities.