The United States Justice Department is Appealing the AT&T/Time Warner Merger Even Now That It's Complete

AT&T recently acquired Time Warner. This was a small green-light for Comcast to compete with Disney to acquire 21st Century Fox. However, this merger went through to the dismay of the U.S. Justice Department who have filed a notice of appeal in an attempt to continue fighting the decision.

“Notice is hereby given that the United States of America, plaintiff in the above named case, hereby appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from the final judgment entered in this action on June 12, 2018.”

I can understand why the Justice Department doesn’t like this merger. It gives someone in charge of a lot of the physical infrastructure needed to deliver content, a lot of content. This could lead to a lot of problems for consumers and the industry. Some of you may point to the NBC Universal and Comcast deal that happened several years ago and I don’t know that I would’ve been happy about it had I known.

So, what does this mean for us geeks besides the fact that AT&T could potentially make it so you watch all the Time Warner content and no one else’s? Well, AT&T now have control of both Warner Bros. And DC Comics. All the DCEU movies are now owned by AT&T who could change things for any of the movies in development. It also means that AT&T has Harry Potter and a lot of other properties that you care about. Do you think that AT&T will take better care of things? Will AT&T be good and not abuse their powers as a content provider and infrastructure provider?