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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."
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>He didn't invent the technology.
>More important, he saw its potential to transform the industry.
Who invented the DVD technology? That's the news for nerds.
he got $10 million in severance pay.... if only I had such a rotten deal
- In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings,'' he says.
So the "father of the DVD" is predicting its demise. ("Father" is maybe less appropriate than "midwife" -- he didn't invent anything, he just convinced the industry bigwigs to adopt it...)If I discover a billion barrel oil field the super-major I work for gives me a 20% bonus. If I go for a powergrab they'll fire my ass. In most cases people like this do a lot of work, but there are a lot of other people and factors involved in popularizig dvds. I still like my job though...
people will always want something 'tangible' for their $$$, something to put in their DVD tower, to lend to friends, to resell if they want to, and to watch whenever and wherever. Given DRM and everything I really doubt video on demand will eclipse DVDs any time soon.
-- the cake is a lie
"He is a consultant to Microsoft, Toshiba and others on the next-generation DVD, which promises to pack even clearer images and more features onto the discs. It could mean another windfall."
I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in MIB I, when he says, he'll have to buy the White Album again.
Once the Industry has bled DvD for all it's worth, then we might seea bulk move to the newest, standards. Whichever they turn out to be.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
I think that story has a moral hiddden in it-No matter how much you have achieved,you should always have humility
I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
John Ruskin
Why does yahoo do this
I think the point of this article is not:
a) to provide geeks with another idol to fawn over
b) to provide geeks with another anti-christ to hate
I think the point is that this guy did what his employers paid him for, did a good job, raked in money for his employers, and then... got fired?
Yeah, I don't like region encoding or CSS all that much (especially region encoding, which just makes it harder to appreciate hard-to-find titles like foreign films), but chances are these were requirements this guy was given, and he implemented them because that was what his employer wanted. And that doesn't make him a tool, it makes him "employed".
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
So the manager who took credit for inventing DVD's was stupid enough to get screwed by his fellow sharks...
What about the poor shmoes who actually got the vershugginer thing to work who had to deal with this guy and probably got outsourced or lost their jobs due to the Time/Warner/AOL stock scam - I mean bubble...?
Well, to begin with I can't comment on Leiberfarb's work (and neither can you it appears) as I know nothing about him beyond the article. But adding a little logic to the equations: Corporations like to have 'Corporate tools' (as you put it) whether they are or aren't anti-consumer. The article mentions he was fired when he went for more money and Time Warner let him go.
I don't know if you have some information I don't given that you just blasted the guy. The article sort of implies that he was more of a business person that got people to agree on the format. The only mark I see against him is that in the article it mentions David Boise is his "star lawyer". Of course being a standard Slashdotter, thats a heck of a mark against...
Lieberfarb added billions of dollars to the company's value, says David Boise, his star lawyer, adding, "The question of how a company treats someone who has created that kind of value is interesting."
Not really. They didnt treat him any differently than they treat anyone else: with utter contempt.
"his gut was telling him that if movie discs were the size of CDs, were priced right and offered a better picture and sound than video, people would collect movies like books. The key was to make the discs cheaply, based on a universal standard."
my god, what a genius. If can give them something better, with the right price, people will buy it.
People where allready collecting videos like books.
Of course, his real accomplishment was to get everyone to agree on it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Corporate America. Times are good, times are bad. It just sucks when you get the short end of the stick.
--
11 Gmail invitations availiable
Keep in mind that he took payment in the form of options rather than getting cash. Considering that a lot of people in the AOL/TW merger watched their options lose all value, he was pretty fortunate to get a $10 million severance package. He gambled and lost.
Tell me a story about a guy making 50 grand a year who gets fired after demonstrably improving his company and I'll feel something. In this case, all I can think to say is this: "Congratulations on realizing the American dream and then whining about it."
PS- I would note that I was pretty early into the DVD scene and was a big fan of Time Warner for jumping headlong into the format giving me quite a bit of content, and many times more than other studios at the same time. So I'll offer my thanks to Mr. Lieberfarb for being instrumental in that process, and will also offer the hope that the door doesn't hit him in the ass on the way out and break the shell of his huge nest egg.
The key is to get other people to praise you for your "invention". Don't do it yourself or you'll never hear the end of it. The other trick is, well, I guess Al and this guy have something else in common.
What moron modded this guy up? He obviously didn't read the article.
This guy didn't invent anything. He didn't work for research and development (he was a business-guy). He didn't get fired over DRM or anything close. He was fired over a compensation dispute.
The
First, he took options instead of pay. Isn't that a warning sign? Nobody forced him to take options. He got greedy.
Secondly, he was senior management and had the people skills of a caveman. Do we want to feel sorry for bad managers who get fired? Taking sympathy to a whole new and undeserving level.
$135 Million
An interesting concept for unfair compensation
..and me (and the parent), however.
Personally, I would never see nor care any sum of money > 1 million dollars. If I was in some situation where I received 10 million dollars, I would take care of my family, put a few hundred thousand aside for my kids, keep 1-1.5 million, and give the rest to Amnesty International or some other worthy charity.
People who hoard money, while other people around the world starve half to death, really make me sick. Who cannot live an excellent lifestyle on the interest alone on a million dollars? No one.
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?
Money is just money. You can't take it with you, and it won't make you immortal. But it could save many other people's lives. So next time you run out to buy that newest hottest DVD, just think about how that 20 bucks could feed someone in Africa for a whole month. I am not saying impoverish youself to give to others, but if everyone just donated a small portion of their income, something they wouldn't even miss, you could pretty much wipe out worldwide hunger.
Americans have a work ethic of "Hire and fire at will."
I think that this is true in general. The US has a business culture that focuses entirely on 1) personal short-term gains and 2) shareholder short-term gains - in precisely that order. Ethics do not enter into consideration. When evaluating an employee, it's not "What has this employee done for me?" or EVEN "What has this employee done for me lately?" it's "What will this employee do for me, tomorrow?"
Personally, I believe that, if your concern is the long-term outcome, acting ethically in business (e.g. keeping employees happy and rewarded) is the best way to go for the company as well as all the employees. But this belief is not part of the culture that presently dominates Corporate America.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
$10 million cash severance package. You only need $3 million to be set for life and retire to some tropical island full of naked women just living on the interest from $3 million.
Repeal the DMCA!
AFAIK, the only relevant tech here is WMV, which is merely an implementation of the MPEG-4 standard, and as such cannot be patented or otherwise encumbered.
Methinks he'd be better off (read less likely to be screwed over) by talking to the good people at XviD. Indeed, if he can arrange licensing to permit official binary distribution of the best MPEG-4 codec, we could all win.
ANAM (I am not an MBA), but I've been reading some finance and business textbooks|magazines out of curiosity. [While this would normally invalidate my opinion, in Slashdot-land...]
IMHO, "seed money" has killed the American work ethic. People no longer have to put up their own money in a business. Corporate pirates are king. If someone were to put forward a business plan like Acacia Research Corporation 40 years ago, they would have got laughed out the door. Edison whored science; he didn't rape it. People no longer have to invest time into developing a company. Some other poor smuck will do it for them. As a result, long-term gain is not only ignored but also often avoided. How can you justify a 20-year investment of shareholder money? The system is rigged for abuse. Small businesses think (or should) long term. They have to develop close relations with clientele.
Frankly, I wish business schools would do a better job of teaching true entrepreneurship. If it did, I might actually attend one.
Sorry if this sounds snobby and pithy. However, like most Slashdotters, I'm sick of corporate America.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
While he worked his butt off and managed to get people to come together on the standard, he was compensated rather nicely. To the tune of several million dollars -- over $100M at one point.
I do not understand why anyone thinks they are "owed" when the lose their shirt gambling on the stock market. The only way he's got a claim is if he was prevented from selling the stock when he wanted to. Otherwise he's just another formerly rich dot-bomb victim, the same as a few million other people.
The only difference is he had direct control over $100M+ of stock, not a few thousand dollars in a "retirement plan" like most dot-bomb victims.
It seems he was raising hell throughout the company over his losses, blaming the company for the damage the stock value took after the merger. Again, if he had the option of selling his shares before the merger, he has no cause for complaint.
Regardless of whether he has a legitimite claim (because he wasn't allowed to sell his stocks), you just don't get issues resolved by ranting and raving throughout the company and making an overly public stink about it. You pick the key individuals who can provide resolution and badger them, not badmouth everyone who doesn't help you immediately.
If you make it as messy as he appears to have been doing, you get fired. Period. Any company, any nation, and industry. Nobody wants to keep an employee who spends their time bitterly complaining about how they're being abused, threatening to sue, or otherwise making it abundantly clear they don't want to work there.
I sympathize and think he deserved more at the end of the day, but did not handle the issue correctly. At worst, he should have initiated a quiet lawsuit for his damages instead of ranting.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If you're going to dislike the poor guy at least spell his name correctly. It's Boies (Yes, I realize you're repeating Newsweek's mistake). Also, though many Slashdotters might share your opinion that he's a scumbag for representing SCO, the same folks were probably cheering when he was helping to prosecute Microsoft's anti-trust case, or when he was representing Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.
--Obyron
He accepted stock, believing it to be worth more than it ended up being. A lot of people lost money in the merger. It wasn't anything personally directed to him.
I don't really understand why someone would think they deserve more from their employer than their salary, unless its spelled out that they will get bonuses or whatever for great ideas.
It is kind of a "chilling effect" not to pay bonuses to your idea folks, but that's the risk companies take... Those folks could just go on and form another company with their new idea, instead.
"It's a market mystery, much like the Internet was. The Internet was humming along for a quarter century, then all of sudden, whammo. Early adopters were there from the beginning, but there was something about the mass market that wasn't ready until 1994. What, I'm still not sure."
There wasn't an OS easy enough for idiots to use until 1995. Your question has been answered.
"Same with home theater. Back in 1983, There was a store down the road from where I live called "Future Tech" that was the inspiration to all us Northern Virginia nerds at the time -- half Atari home computers and half home theater (before that term was coined). In the back was a room plastered with foam sound panels, a 10 foot diagonal Kloss front-projection screen, LaserDisc, and surround sound. It wasn't that different than a DVD/big screen/surround setup of today."
People couldn't afford the price tags and the equipment was crap by todays standards. Maybe you can afford new speakers every year after blowing them but most of us can not. Projection screens were/are crap also, good for only a few years before warping/fading/losing quality. Nevermind the time period you are speaking of "BUY AMERICAN!" was on almost every bumper sticker you saw.
"Due to still being in school, it wasn't until 1988 that I had my own home theater. So when DVD/home theater became the rage in 1998, I'm like, OK, so what? The video quality is no better than LaserDisc."
Oh you mean those extremely large discs that scratched like mad? It's hard enough keeping a tiny DVD clean and in decent condition, surely something with 10 times the surface area must be better. LaserDisc was a step backward for people. No one wanted to use an entire shelf for relatively small number of movies. They also couldn't be carried in backpacks/purses or easily put on store shelves.
"Back in the 1980's we were all waiting for HDTV. Some were even holding off buying NTSC TV's because they thought they'd have to throw them out when HDTV came out just around the corner. Marc Wielage on CompuServe's CEFORUM (the moral equivalent of Commander Taco on Slashdot in the 1980's) kept trying to make bets that HDTV would not come out before 1990, and no one would take him up on it. It's 2004 and we still don't have pre-recorded HDTV movies."
Back in the 80's a significantly large segment of the population were still watching black and white TV's. You might as well have been talking about moonbases and cities under the sea. "You're living in a dreamworld Neo". You need the blue pill my friend.
"If it weren't for DVD's, I'm sure we'd have digital video HDTV LaserDiscs by now. DVD's may have made the studios money, but they're no friend of the videophile."
Videophiles are as utterly retarded as audiophiles. You assume others give a shit about every minute detail, you spend your entire lifes savings for a few extra pixels on a digital medium that isn't even real and blame others for not adopting your same pathology.
Most people behind technical innovations that make billions for their employers don't get even 100K bonus. I think the inventor of the LED made a few hundred. In this case the fellow brokered the adoption of a single format across all players in both the media and computer industry, which is a big deal for a manager, although he did not invent the technology.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Actually, he accepted stock options, which became nearly worthless when the stock plummetted. The downside to options is they expire, and most bonus packages that are issued as options have an exercise clause that forces the former employee to exercise them or lose them (I don't know if his did or not).
What I don't understand is, he took a gamble that the options were going to be worth a whole lot more later. If the AOL-TW merger was a smashing success and his options were worth $1.6 billion, would he return the excess to the company? He took a risk in his bonus and lost. He could have just as easily (according to the article), accepted $25 million in cash.
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
I see a lot of complaints here that this fellow didn't invent the technology, but I don't think people are giving enough credit for what he DID do.
First, he aligned several multibillion dollar international companies (both content and hardware) to agree on a standard. Many of technically minded here often disparage "PHB" type activities such as negotiation or selling because they don't understand how difficult it is or the nuance and diplomacy (or aggressiveness) it requires. It's tough work yet this guy's efforts at such high level meetings obviously paid off. I don't think anyone should minimize this accomplishment. It's harder than you think.
Second, it's often vision that is much more important that technology. It's really easy to think of the next evolution of a product, to make it faster, or cheaper, but it's difficult to see the next "revolution", especially the business model that comes with it. Again, this is one of those Slashdot things that gets ridiculed to Underpants Gnomes references--it's simply not as obvious as "3. Profit!". Finding the use or market for a technology is as tough as creating the technology itself. Often, it's harder, especially to make the link to established markets or models. This fellow figured out a way to make money off of DVD and to revive a sagging distribution channel.
with a $10 million severance! Come on! Many people get fired if they are too experienced and therefore require an inappropriately high salary. Managers always get fired when companies are being taken over. So what is this fuzz about? About one who would like to have a higher reputation? Silly.
I would say two factors: 1) The proliferation of modems as a built-in in new computers, and 2) much much more importantly, Winsock. The average person didn't want to connect to a unix prompt and run mail or pine. Being able to run Internet applications on their own windows pcs spurred interest in this whole Internet thing. And AOL sending a bazillion cds to every man woman and child in the US didn't hurt either.
Due to still being in school, it wasn't until 1988 that I had my own home theater. So when DVD/home theater became the rage in 1998, I'm like, OK, so what? The video quality is no better than LaserDisc.
Quality is only one consideration for the average person. Cost is a very important factor. As is convenience. Back then, laserdiscs didn't have either on its side.
The Indian outsourcing company I *USED* to work for thanked all of its American employees by sending their backoffice (Finanace and HR) jobs to India about two years ago. You remember, when the economy was REALLY bad. It was even worse in Michigan.
I don't work there anymore. I am now trying to clean my soul.
I like this part:
In mid-December, Lieberfarb was fired with $10
million severance. A friend at Time Warner
describes him as "a tragic figure," adding,
"It's very sad."
I wish my life was just 1 twentieth as sad as his. $500K would go a long way. These people live on a completely different planet.