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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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This guy wasn't fired because he was smart. He was fired because the company knew that they had shortchanged him and they didn't want him hanging around to hassle them about it. He was exploited and, when he demanded fair compensation, he was shown the door.
Most research companies that you work for state that anything you discover is the full intellectual property of that corporation when you get hired. I'm sure he was payed well,and was given $10 million severance. Guessing from expirience they probably wanted him to implement DRM and control functions, he said no and they let him go.
Doesn't that say it all? Yo, music industry!
But hey, if we're making assloads of money the way we do things now, why risk something new?
The church was mad at Galileo becasue he didn't follow procedure with his findings. Plus he was a 'in your face pope' kind of guy.
The church did create the first public observatory.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Can anyone else see the possibility of large hard disks (or their equivalent newer tech) becoming more difficult to buy retail? The googles and 'distributors' of the world will have bulk deals directly with the manufacturers, the majority will watch 'on demand' and the nerd/geek minority will have to pay more as hard disks are no longer a 'consumer item'. Copyright interests would no doubt see this as improvement, as 'average Joes' would lose the ability to store stuff themselves, having to 'pay per view'.
Thoughts anyone? Will there be a mainstream application that will require privately owned data storage, keeping data storage as a consumer item?
Not because he's wealthy, but because he seems like just one of the many high energy, ego-driven assholes who inhabit the business world. He seems to have treated his peers just as poorly as they've treated him.
Let's put this in our terms. Say you're making $50,000 a year and you're due a bonus of $125,000 (I dunno why, but this is what happens) but then your immediate superior says, 'Hey, you can get $1 Million in stock options instead of the bonus.' And seeing as how this is a good bit more than what your bonus would be, you say "Fuck yeah!" and do it, but then the company does something retarded, and your stock option become completely worthless. Then, on top of that, they fire you, and give you one year's pay severance. So, instead of getting $1.05 Million, or even $175,000 in bonus and severance, you're stuck with the $50,000 in severance. I think I would be pissed in this situation. Now for this guy, it's the same situation, just that there is a lot more money involved. Instead of getting $25 Million bonus, or getting the $125 million in options, he gets $10 Million in severance. There's a big difference between $125 Million and $10 Million. So, in his shoes, I would be bitching, too.
Right, putting Papal quotes into the mouth of "Simplicus" and publishing the work in vernacular Italian (meaning "Simplicus" would be pronounced as a word meaning "stupid") didn't have anything to do with it.
There's a differnce being persecuted for nobly insisting on scientific truth, and being persecuted because you flamed the local absolute ruler in an era where freedom of speech was a concept yet to be invented.
The relevant paragraph:
Now rewrite that with laserdisc in there and we're making sense. not to mention getting our milestones and perspective right. Sorry i stopped reading after that 'cos the article is... long but i did check & there's no mention of it. wtf.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
As Homer is walking through a landfill:
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"People" may go for online delivery, but "collectors" assuredly will not. I don't download music or movies, even though I know where to get them for free. The _only_ reason for this is that I like the packaging and artwork that goes into producing a quality CD/DVD, and I like to see it sitting on a shelf next to my DVD player. I don't have cable TV, and have never subscribed to a music site.. hell, I don't even hire movies at the video store.
Obviously you've never watched '24'. DVD is the ONLY way to watch the show without pulling your hair out at the end of every episode because they leave you hanging. The guys who write for that show have definitely mastered the art of the cliffhanger, and that's what it takes to keep the audience coming back for more.
I have never watched 24 during a broadcast, only on DVD (I own both season 1 & 2 and have avoided watching season 3 so I can watch it all on DVD) yet it's probably my favorite TV show. It's just a lot more convenient for me to be able to watch 2 or 3 episodes in a row on the weekends instead of being in front of the TV when FOX wants me there.
--Stupid Sig Here--
No. It makes him a tool. At best, it makes him painfully naive.
Let me tell you a little story, nigh upon 20 years old at this point. My employer at the time developed a piece of software that was leased, not sold -- elaborate support contracts and all that. To ensure that a client didn't just stop payments and continue using their copy, I was ordered to create a copy protection system that would kill the application in 90 days. The idea was that clients would receive an updated copy every 60 days, provided they kept up with the payments.
Technical problem: Most of the users would not quit the program when they were done for the day, they would shut the machine off, preventing usage metrics from being written to the disk. I would detect such a case and subtract a day's worth of usage time. Some time later, Management decided that they wanted to encourage orderly shutdown of the app, and ordered me to change it such that ten days worth of usage would be lost if the machine was simply shut off. So I did. After all, they were Management, and it was My Job.
Do the math: 90 days total usage divided by 10 days per power-off equals... An important client's installation self-destructed, per Management's specifications, after two weeks.
Guess whose ass got fired for it.
I have since sworn an oath that I will never, ever design or facilitate copy protection measures again, for one simple reason: There is no honor among thieves. Copy protection is a deliberately introduced flaw, a capacity for failure that would not otherwise exist. They are stealing reliability from you. They are stealing your rights from you. I like to think of myself as a man of good character, and I will not burden my conscience or soil my reputation by participating in such reprehensible practices. I suggest you seriously consider doing the same. It's your future, after all...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Actually, if you read BMI music's website, they claim that when you buy a CD or DVD, you are buying the right to watch that item. You do not actually own the content or the item. Just the right to view it. This is why you aren't allowed to take it to yoru company or school and show it to other people. In fact, some day you might have to buy additional rights to show your wife or kids or friends the movie or listen to the music when they're at your house or you go to theirs.
It always rewards those who are the most capable, smartest, and most productive. Never fails! It is surely the most efficient of any economic system! /snicker
Hey, slashdotters, when are you all going to learn that "lasseiz faire" freemarket, corporate capitalism is a "turtles all the way down" Ponzi scheme? You want a better country? Just look to the Scandanavian countries....
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
Well its pretty inacurate to say the rich "Sit" on money, most of them put it into banks or other investments, or buy things with it. This money then goes into other peoples pockets for the services that they do. Ultimatly of course that rich person still owns the money, but they rarly keep large amounts of real cash on hand. Hell I'd be willing to bet that if bill gates could get his hands on 1 billion in cash. And sat on that money, it would seriously hurt our economy to have that much money suddenly out of circulation.
Cable my friend, cable! They already have Comcast on demand here in Oregon. Pick the movie, start it when you want. I know of several companies that are working on true VOD - stop, pause, FF, etc. Most homes already have a damn big pipe in with Cable Coax, it's the ghetto (and if you've ever seen a cable head end, you'll agree) cable co equipment that's the limitation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I am kicking myself now for forgetting his name too.
/. type geek here. If anybody can remember his name, I (and the /. crowd here) would totally appreciate it.
I met him at COMDEX while I was visiting the Toshiba booth back in '97. I was in the process of writing a DVD-Video authoring system, and it was refreshing at the time to talk to somebody who actually had a clue regarding the internals of the format, and I got a few pointers from him at the time. What was particularly interesting, besides having him wander around the corporate booth unescorted by salesmen, was the fact he was hiding out in a comparatively obscure corner of the 10,000 sq. foot booth hanging around a bunch of chips and data sheets. A definite
While Lieberfarb may get the credit, it was a bunch of geeks working primarily for the founders of the DVD Forum that actually got it working, and it was not an easy accomplishment. The Kareoke features of DVD, in particular, as well as oriental character encoding (which is why DVD uses sub-pictures rather than ASCII to encode text... a good idea BTW), show a strong bias toward Japanese companies and some really strange bureaucratic design compromises. I wish I knew more about the history of DVD-Video, but the format certainly whent through several design changes before it was formally released, including some major design goals that changed mid-way through the development process. I would like to see that story fully told.
Good point, but there are good reasons for both working for a large corporation versus running your own company. In my case, I like geology so I'm drawn to the geoscience part of the business. Most small comanies can't get their way into large deepwater projects that involve all sorts of awesome 3D seismic data among other things. I will agree that you can make much more money working for your own company. All these corporations started somewhere. Good luck, hope you make your bilions!
That's just the currency I know about. There are others. If you're concerned, a 5% return is fairly easy to obtain in most situations, without too much risk.
I don't see why it would not be possible to 'keep' a movie for good, on demand. A larger fee simply not to have to be paid again.
Think that it would not happen, well the GP gives a wonderful argument why it would: the majority of veiwers who buy the movie for a larger fee would probably use it only slightly more than one time content. Equating to good profit. I suppose some trust is there, but no more than paying for cable for a year and assuming that they will not pull the plug.
I see the goods and services argument becoming fuzzy with downladable games etc. I think it would be incorrect to lable a cd game and the same game downloaded differently. I don't doubt with larger bandwidth streaming game content is far off. [maybe with ptp networking picking up the bandwidth]
I appeal to the wisdom of fellow
I decided to investigate this matter a little.
Often new words are formed by using roots from a single language, often either Greek or Latin in the West. Mixing Greek and Latin is often viewed as bad form. When I see mixed constructions, I most often find that the person either is kidding or never learned such a fine point. It is not a significant failing not to know, but my ears certainly perk when I hear someone reveal how subtle his or her sensitivity to language is by speaking well. It is only so impressive when someone does it without calling attention to it. My rambling assumes that I know enough myself to notice, and I doubtless do not in many cases.
"Heliocentric" definitely is the common word. The "-centric" prefix, according to Merriam-Webster, is Latin, as is "sol." Kentron is a Greek word. It appears to me that the relevant suffix from either Latin or Greek is "-centric," but all the fairly common words I found with this suffix are built from Greek.
I am not a linguist. I just like words.
I have since sworn an oath that I will never, ever design or facilitate copy protection measures again, for one simple reason: There is no honor among thieves.
I have all kinds of respect for that position. It doesn't really solve the problem, though. Had you refused to make the changes that management required, they'd surely have fired you for that instead. Sounds like you just found yourself in a no-win situation. As you say, there is no honor among thieves.
Don't overlook the opportunity to become an "expert in the field" -- that's essentially what I've done, which does rule out making billions because it reduces the opportunity for much growth beyond being a one-man operation. But it lets me get consulting work with big and little corps alike. FWIW, I "outsourced" my backoffice stuff to a company that specializes in it, other than schmoozing for new clients, the daily work is almost the same as being a wage-slave. But I can come into work late and instead of getting hassled it just increases my mystique as the "expert consultant."
PS, my speciality is in high-performance computing systems, but mostly DoD rather than petroleum. FWIW, my grandfather was a seismologist at philips, but that was long before 3D imaging and even most computers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
iTunes is different that Video-on-Demand (assuming, as I am, that with VOD you aren't allowed to record the video for playback later)
With iTunes Music Store, you purchase the right to listen to those bits as many times as you want without paying again, and to commit them to a more permanent media than your hard drive. That's a very different thing.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
I can't speak to this individual, but often times there are rules about when and how stock can be sold. For instance, if a company goes public, it is often 3-6 months before employees can cash in their stock, and as much as a year before executives. I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar restrictions in effect in this case.
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't restrictinos either either, but things like this are often 'negotiated' as part of termination settlements. 'You don't sue us, we give you $100M in stock, but you can't sell it for a year.'.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Well, here's the thing. I'm your average Joe...Not fabulously wealthy, but I do OK. I do not give to charity anymore. Oh, once I did, but then I got stuck on some sucker list and they practically started banging down my door for more donations. I am also of the school of thought that charities themselves are corrupt, taking a large portion of donations for themselves in the form of "administrative fees", which normally involve paying some fool six, sometimes seven figures.
Apparently the IRS agrees with me on this.
If I had something insane like $10M I'd sooner set up my own foundation than give any of it to charity.
-R
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. Already, services like RealNetworks can offer "Finding Nemo" online, and TiVo offers connections to Internet movie sites.
This is the Hollywood Insider's wet dream. No longer will content be owned by the consumer, rather the consumer "pays as they go". Imagine a world where everytime you want to toast some bread your bank account is automatically debited $0.05 per slice. I think the pay-per-use model is doomed. Though it has enojoyed some mild success in the cable TV business, consumers will always prefer the flat-rate, pay once model, especially when they can hold, look and feel the end product.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
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.
Agreed.
During the tech boom, like thousands of others I was offered a decent salary and large number of stock options to leave my current job and move into a new company.
I accepted the offer. In the end, after stock splits, acquisitions/mergers, delays, blahblah the stock options weren't worth much. I was a bit surprised but then again I was naive. I'd do the same again: taking a certain degree of risks tends to increase opportunity from my experience. It wasn't a Bad Thing at all either: I gained so much from that job, including a great deal of respect from work colleagues, management and other people in IT.
Getting paid in options is a gamble and I doubt this guy has any more of a legal leg to stand on than anyone else. Some dude told him "I'm gonna make you rich". Heh, same here. Bad luck. That's life.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
"
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."
"
Oh so sad. Go cry me a river.
Gotta go now, to sell my car to pay the rent.