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Hollywood afraid of Microsoft
prostoalex writes "Associated Press claims that media industry has been quietly avoiding Microsoft and trying to keep the movie and music industries to their own. However, these days there's little chance of doing business without Microsoft and the movie studios are afraid of digital piracy more than they're afraid of Microsoft. The biggest fear? Microsoft will use its desktop PC monopoly to charge Hollywood outrageous fees and basically own the movie industry. Microsoft refutes the accusations, saying that it's only interested in selling more copies of Windows and applications for its platform, and providing movie content would promote the platform. Also noteworthy that among the four video-on-demand services that New York Times reviewed recently two that got the journalistic acclaim (StarzTicket and CinemaNow) are run by technology companies - Real Networks and Microsoft."
I love it when the monopolies... err I mean, monopoly and oligopoly fight.
Hell, I'd be afraid too if the Hollywood movie Antitrust has much truth behind it.... watch out for the little geek people bigtime Hollywood types.
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With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer for.
If you replaced the word 'afraid' with 'jealous.'
And the movie industry is the nicest bunch of people you'd ever want to meet. No vendetta's, no black listing, everyone operates above the board. Every movie star is the perfect role model for our children.
If they get mixed up with the likes of Bill Gates, I just don't know what this will do to our shining example of what Americans are really like?
Some people have a great problem just with English so no doubt adding Polish might ruin things for them...
Did he inhale?
...For all the accusations and hyperbole here, he seems a much more honest businessman than the hollywood crowd. Hopefully their sleazy(er?) practices don't rub off on Microsoft!
Blar.
>** If they have brains. Or hearts. Or courage.
If movies have taught me anything, its that one quick trip to the Wizard of Oz can fix this!
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Is Microsoft therefore scarier than republicans by transitivity?
I mean, I know there's shades of grey and then there's shades of grey... but this is grey.
Hey, neat, instead of my Uncle, Bob's my parent.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
But, really - just how big is the market for bukkake? And are you sure it only brought "a smile" to your face?
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Blue Screen, coming to a cinema near you...
Slightly OT, but I saw this coming, alongside Microsofts patent scams, 'licensing' their API's (read, now they are established, pay for them biatch, whilst destroying other standards).
Microsoft are moving in subtle ways - they have the money to do this as well.
Now we can have bad movies that delete themselves, at least that saves us the trouble...
I wonder how long it will be before they dynamically or on the fly replace movie scenes and adverts within movies across the lifespan of the movie?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Henry Kissinger's comment on the Iran/Iraq war in the 80's: "Too bad they can't both lose."
We can't avoid Microsoft or Hollywood... maybe we should start complaining?
Something is wrong...blame Microsoft.
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"xXxP" - Vin Diesel returns as the tattooed secret agent. This time he's after Open Source Communists and he's only taking DRM for an answer...
"The XP Men" - see the superpower team of Dr DLL, Outlookman, Captain Codec, Blue Screener and The Worm battle the "Freedom Force" of Stallman, the Perlmonger, Apache and Python...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I would definitely like to see the *AA get raped on licensing. Payback is a bitch!!
That could lead to:
Windows II: Webcentric Boogaloo
Clippy Strikes Back
The Neverending BSOD
And many others too terrible to imagine...
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But do you like bad movies. Suppose all the movies you saw were bad for the next 10 years. Would you still like movies and spend your free time and money on them?
Apparently you didn't see the final episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000....
I'm not sure who to root for!
= )
-b
So we send a short guy with hairy feet to Redmond to drop an old ring in the water cooler, and a bunch of rabid Redwoods to SoCal to level a few studios?
Works for me!
Microsoft was made in the depths of IBM. Only there can it be unmade.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Mmmm... no. On the one hand, Quicktime is competition; if backed into a corner by Microsoft, the movie industry would be humping up Apple's leg in no time.
On the other hand, "Hollywood" is not the whole of the movie industry. Leaving aside the black sheep of the family (pr0n!), there's also Bollywood, and a shlode of independents. Of course, they won't be spending $70M on production and $50M on marketing, but that doesn't mean that they can't put out good movies. The special effects may be cheezier, but heck, I still play Angband and NetHack.
I suspect that, much like lots of little Indie music bands putting out MP3s on the cheap-and-easy, some people may start putting homemade movies up in [insert favorite format] on the Torrents. They won't get rich, and 90% of everything up there will be poorly made crap... and thus, probably a better ratio than we get today. =)
Now, perhaps M$ can end up in control of Hollywood -- given "reasonable" terms, and perhaps a little backmail ("We've 30 billion lying around... maybe we should start a movie studio? Whadayathink?"); but they don't DARE try to drive Apple out of business-- they've already been a convicted monopolist once, they don't want to deal with that again. Ergo, the little guys will continue to roam wild and free... for a little while longer.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Microsoft knows how to do technology and software. They don't know how to tell a story.
I fear that this is actually false; they know more about telling stories than technology:
And no, a company which is not content with 95% of the desktop share wouldn't possibly try to buy Hollywood, now would they? I mean, that would be so out of character for them - those felonies, drumming competition out of business, etc... - those were just a few minor slips, right? I mean, gosh, deep down inside, Microsoft is really just a misunderstood giant...
Not that I'd cry for Hollywood, though. But it does seem a little insincere on Microsoft's part.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I sincerely hope that MS charges Hollywood a billion dollars a picture to use MS products. I hope the people who brought you the commercial in your theater with the fat bald stuntman have to eat their own children.
...studios say they need to encourage competition so they won't be held hostage by one company.
With the MPAA we aren't held hostage by any one movie studio.
With the RIAA we aren't held hostage by any single record company.
Microsoft needs to learn to innovate like the MPAA and RIAA.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.