Father of DVD Gets Bitter Reward

Ant writes "MSNBC has a Newsweek article on Warren Lieberfarb, the father of DVD, transformed the movie business. And yet his reward was he was fired."

Comments

Is that really such a bad thing?

[sockonafish]

The article doesn't mention CSS or Region encoding, but if he's truly the father, then Lieberfarb must've had something do with it.

I say good riddance to anti-consumer corporate tools like that.

Re:That's the difference between you (and him)...

[adam872]

Fine, then do that. Give money to charity and non-profits. But don't tell others that they aren't allowed to earn what they are worth and that they should give it away. That smacks of the failed socialism experiments of the 20th century. I actually applaud Bill for giving so much money to charity (even though I find the business practices of Microsoft to be dubious at best), but I would never ask him to give away a large proportion of his net worth just because I felt it was "moral" to do so.

Imagine if you were on $60k a year and somebody said, you must give $20k away every year. Oh that's right, that's what progressive taxation is. It would most likely create a disincentive for you to work harder and invest to create wealth for your family's future and your own retirement. It makes *me* sick when people project their value systems on others who are better off than they are and have acquired those circumstances through their own hard work.

I have given money to charity in the past and will do so in the future (and have included some organisations in my will), but let *me* decide how and when that happens.

Re:That's the difference between you (and him)...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It irritates me even more when someone like Bill Gates or some incredibly weathly celebirty donats something like a few tens of thousand to someone or a charity. WTF? Gates could donate 20 billion and still be worth billions. Whats he need it for? bragging rights?

You know, I don't like Bill Gates either, but there's no need to lie about his charity work. $7B is a lot of money, afer all.

if everyone just donated a small portion of their income, something they wouldn't even miss, you could pretty much wipe out worldwide hunger.

That's just naive. The problem isn't that we don't send enough food for people to eat. the problem is that local warlords use the food as a means of control. African hunger will never be solved until the political side is addressed, just like Africa will not be united until its people stop killing each other.