It seems that there is never a dull moment in LA at the moment. Following the high profile collapses of Pop, DEN and NY?s Pseudo, the rumour mill is firing up on the news that AOL is lining up to acquire IFILM in the rapidly converging media shake out.We once again take the lead from those magic media moguls at IndieWIRE to tell it how it is ...Rumours that America Online may acquire IFILM chatter across message boards and offices but most everybody connected to such a deal is saying, officially, "No Comment." By which they lend credence to the rumours.In response, people in the online film industry are looking at such a deal in two different ways: the buyout of the industry's most successful company could be just another form of the dot-com-death experienced by DEN and Pop; or, a high-profile deal could validate the industry and elevate it from its current low point due to those deaths. So, both good and bad.There are a variety of rumours, including Yahoo! and even publishing company Cahners. The greatest of them is of an outright buyout by online-skyscraper AOL. Currently wading the muddy waters of its merger with off-line media juggernaut Time-Warner, AOL would not comment on a possible acquisition nor its plans for IFILM, were it to be acquired.However, the rumors do conjure up images of a tentacled AOL, reaching into all areas on the Internet and preventing diversity of content. One might fear that AOL's goals mirror those of Time-Warner, which controls an array of media companies and thereby saturates television and print with its content.In May, AOL-owned Moviefone.com launched an "Internet Movies" section of its site, saying, at the time, that the site was not at all competing with IFILM or other sites like it.In a May interview with EB Insider, Moviefone's general manager, Matt Bromberg, called the site's goal very different from that of IFILM. "We're introducing movie-goers &£45;- movie-lovers who may not be 'Net heads' ? to something new." But as that newness wears off and online film becomes more commonplace &£45;- something that is happening before our eyes &£45;- the two sites may become more and more alike, in appearance and intent. Moviefone.com currently showcases several films borrowed from IFILM, as well as shorts from Shortbuzz, MediaTrip, CrapTV and others. In the AOL world, it looks like IFILM would fit nicely into the niche Moviefone's "Internet Movies" page has carved out.