FEDS MOVE TO LOOSEN MOVIE DISTRIBUTION RULES, WHICH COULD HURT INDIE THEATERS:

The Justice Department is moving to terminate legal rules that have governed the movie industry since the late 1940s, a step that could shake up how movies are distributed and the terms on which they hit the big screen.

The department’s antitrust division has concluded that the rules, laid out in long-ago legal settlements known as the Paramount consent decrees, have outlived their usefulness in a world where the movie business has changed considerably.

“As the movie industry goes through more changes with technological innovation, with new streaming businesses and new business models, it is our hope that the termination of the Paramount decrees clears the way for consumer-friendly innovation,” Makan Delrahim, the department’s top antitrust official, said at an American Bar Association conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

I’m OK with this, provided the Hollywood tax cuts are also repealed.