Slashdot Mirror
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."
> 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.
This is FUD. Microsoft can't own the movie industry because the movie industry doesn't even own the movie industry. The customers own the movie industry and if Hollywood continues putting out crap films, studio execs will only have themselves to blame for the fall of Hollywood. Obviously Microsoft doesn't want that to happen. They want to keep doing business with Hollywood and Microsoft is afraid of Open Source, so Billy's army of one will only have to start competing with Open Source in a way that is fair and honest (not "Best Practice", True Practice), or Microsoft too will only have themselves to blame when the palace of cards comes tumbling down.
I see some parallelism here between Hollywood and Microsoft. Both are too big for their own good and it's about time they realize it and start acting like they have something to lose if they don't change their tactics.
I just saw a Canadian movie today called Shot in the Face (2001). Yes the fans at IMDB give it an under-rated 5.6/10, but to me the film had a unique plot, interesting characters and it was fun -- it was just low budget, but it still brought a smile to my face. Obviously not A-list by any stretch of the imagination. My point is that large organizations take something unique out of films, and they also take something unique out of software and operating systems. Polish sometimes ruins things, and both these industries have ruined their products by either having too much polish in all the wrong places, or by have not enough polish in the places that matter.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well, the BBC has rightly identified this risk, and is politely telling MS, and the other "controlled" DRM pay-per-hour-encoding people where to shove their technology.
DIRAC, the BBC-technology project to bring a new, royalty and patent free open source codec into life, has got to be worth looking into.
Surely someone with an ounce of intelligence in Hollywood could put 2+2 together and make 4. ie, Hollywood has money. DIRAC looks good, and could do with industry support and resources...
As our American cousins would say, "you do the math".