The DOJ asked a court last month to terminate the decrees, put in place in 1948 after years of antitrust litigation. It led major studios at the time to divest their ownership of theater chains, and was one of the factors that led to the demise of the studio system in Hollywood’s golden age.
In their statement, the DGA said that “In this new Gilded Age, the Department of Justice’s recent move to end the Paramount Consent Decreesis a step in the wrong direction. While the motion picture and television industry has changed in the 70 years since the first Decree was signed, many of those changes – precipitated by new tech giant entrants – call for greater, not lesser, antitrust oversight.
The DGA said that it would continue to monitor the issue. The DGA joins the Writers Guild of America, West in expressing misgivings about terminating the consent decrees, which also prohibit such practices as block booking and circuit dealing. The WGAW filed comments during a DOJ review period last year in which it said that the DOJ “should continue to use all of the tools at its disposal to prevent or fight against anticompetitive practices in this market.
The DOJ’s Antitrust Division argues that the consent decrees are long out of date, and that lifting them will lead to more experimentation about distributors and exhibitors to account for changes in technology and consumer habits. A federal judge still has to sign off on the termination.
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