Sources: Netflix is in advanced talks to join the Motion Picture Association of America and would be the first internet-based service to do so if it does
Steven Overly / Politico : Tweets: @politico , @politico , and @politico Tweets: @politico : The move will likely surprise many observers as the traditional media and tech industries have a longstanding and politically hostile feud over copyright protections http://www.politico.com/... @politico : This would be the first time an internet-based service joined the 97-year-old trade association, which represents six legacy Hollywood studios. http://www.politico.com/... @politico : Netflix is in advanced talks to join the Motion Picture Association of America as it expands the number of original television series and feature films it's producing http://www.politico.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Netflix spent years as Hollywood's disruptor — by 2016, studios and cable channels were already fretting it was headed for a near-monopoly — while the MPAA remained a club of six legacy studios that had fought Silicon Valley over copyright for decades. Joining would formally end that divide: the company whose growth terrified the incumbents would sit inside their own trade association.
The talks cap a visible political repositioning. By mid-2019 Netflix's [[a:944743|government lobbying had shifted to align more with Hollywood studios and less with Silicon Valley]], and once inside the MPAA it would be followed years later by Amazon's long-courted entry into what became the Motion Picture Association.
First-order effects
- Netflix gains a formal seat in the copyright-policy arena alongside Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros., converting its ad-hoc lobbying operation into institutional representation.
- The MPAA stops being purely a legacy-studio body: with Netflix as its first internet-based member, the association's positions on piracy and copyright now have to serve a distributor whose model depends on streaming rather than box office.
Second-order effects
- Rival streamers building original slates — most visibly Apple, which was already escalating talks with Hollywood execs to stand up production teams to compete with Netflix — face pressure to seek similar membership or lobby from outside a coalition that no longer speaks only for studios.
- As the member roster expands to include streamers, the association's agenda tilts toward issues that matter to subscription platforms, changing how Congress hears 'Hollywood' speak.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Netflix in 2019, Amazon by 2024 — the trade-association map of the industry converges with the actual market, leaving regulators weighing a consolidated streaming bloc's arguments during fights like the DOJ, EU, and state-attorney-general review of Netflix's proposed WBD acquisition.
- The old tech-versus-Hollywood copyright feud loses its institutional home, replaced by a single lobbying front whose internal disagreements are business-model disputes rather than industry-vs-industry ones.
The trend: Streaming platforms are being absorbed into Hollywood's traditional political institutions as they complete the transformation from distributors into studios.