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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."
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.
Yes, yes, the will all only have themselves to really blame but who will they blame instead? Any outside force that they can; the weather, the people, the pirates, the actors, the staff, Microsoft, the theatres, the lavish party planners, whatever.
Bad movies are put out because people still go and watch them either in the theatre or later on DVD. They will always have a market because there really isn't competition out there. It's not exactly as if we have a large group of movies to choose from every week...
Simple. Don't buy into their DRM scheme. Release movies on the net with a proprietary or with another vendor's IP for DRM.
Hollywood is generally the greediest of them all. After all, if they had their way:
So I guess they really have two outputs: Movies and FUD.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Microsoft has shown time and time again that it's primary objective is making money in the long term. It'll do that through whatever opportunities present themselves. Now, the players in the movie industry aren't stupid. They've seen how MS has locked others into their proprietary formats and they don't want their revenue streams subverted similarly.
As for MS's "noble" intentions...pure bullshit. Where did MSNBC come from if MS wasn't interested in encroaching on Hollywood?
With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer.
Mutual annihilation (nuclear weapons optional)?
If the Media Cartels and Hollywood mutually destroyed one another, we'd not only see the renaissance in software we've seen in the free software world accelerate even faster, we'd see a renaissance in cultural expression as well.
Unfortunately the two are very likely to work out a sweetheart deal that destroys both and leaves us with nothing but a cultural wasteland in both arenas.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Indeed, if Microsoft introduces a video/audio player with it's one proprietary encryption, then just gives it away Hollywood* would likely embrace it. Once all the investment is made, to convert media to this format and a few iterations of releases Microsoft, there could be no backing out and Microsoft would be calling the tune. I expect Windows Media Player is exactly this.
So what are the alternatives? Real or anyone else proprietary? Same kind of problem, really. Open Source? Don't make me laugh at your naivity, Hollywood wants super secret encryption and content control, don't think they could possibly own that with something open source, which could be bypassed with a minor hack. Looks like they're in between a rock and a hard place. Maybe they should change their business model -- make money on the performance and increase product.
AVP II anybody?
*Actually all AV media in a general sense
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If Hollywood really are so afraid of Microsoft, maybe the first thing they should do is stop helping them? You now, small things like not allowing WMA9 to be an official standard in the latest specs, pushing WMA9 content to digital projection cinemas. It's a bit of a "Duh!" moment, really.
I wish everyone here would stop equating "not microsoft" with "vehemently opposed to microsoft on an ideological level and smoking the open-source pole" - it is possible to just not choose MS and still think for yourself.
Are you saying that wolves cannot be trusted to treat hens with respect?
Used DVDs. That's how I usually scratch my moviegoing itch. Usually one can buy them for about $10...that's less than what it costs for two people to go to the movies even during matinee performances. The MPAA doesn't get my money, the pigopolists don't get my money, I get to see a recent movie, and if I like the movie I can watch it again whenever I want to.
If you rent instead of buy, there is a rental sales list that is published weekly, so the MPAA can keep track of what people rent. However, they don't have a list (yet) for used DVD sales. And unlike used VHS tapes, they can't dirty up your DVD player. Just give the DVD a nice wipe with a static-free wet wipe before you first play it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The AC raises excellent points.
>Competition in MOVIES not in other media formats.
I think the AC was addressing;
>Bad movies are put out because people still go and watch them either in the theatre or later on DVD.
The competition is in how you spend your time and money.
You don't go to the opera or the latest polka festival (if you do, lets assume you don't). Its not becuase there is a lack of competition in those areas but its because you have better things to do with your time.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
No, there hasn't. And the productivity suites that run on Unix/Linux still haven't caught up -- and even if they did, we still lack a coherent, consistent, elegant and usable "desktop" interface.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
But more than any-any-anything else, it fears losing money. So find an application (like, oh say, linux rendering servers) that saves significant money, and that crowd will jump at it. Give them a linux movie client that returns real dollar to them and they will jump at the new distribution media.
Remember: Hollywood will go with Linux if it Makes Money.
Personally, I favor MS Word 5.1 for the Mac, which is over ten years old. No word processor, before or since, on any platform has matched the power, simplicity and functionality.
Now of course Linux can have productivity apps that don't suck. It's just that no one has written them yet.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Are you implying that an industry would turn down something free (as in beer)?
I think what he means is that a typical suit doesn't believe in the 'no-strings-attached'. A suit usually work for money and think money. Anything that isn't in this realm of thinking is mysterious to them
"How can you can a product/service without spending ressources? How can such a thing survive?"
It's not that they will never adopt Linux, it's just that they can't project anything about it. If everything was Capitalism this 'linux' thing wouldn't be. So why is it? They can't quite grasp the concept of altruism or doing things 'for fun' because they gave up this concept of 'fun' years ago.
At least, this is what I see from personnal experience... Once you get high enough in any buisness, you tend to lose touch with the 'hard' reality and everything becomes numbers: Spendings, profits, time, etc... And it's becoming hard for them to see what they exactly do... it's just money going around.... Well, except for Linux...
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
All those divisions just sort of "happened" too.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Hollywood wants super secret encryption
Firstly a stupid question is one that questions a premise that everyone falsely believes to be true so here goes
If encryption is a methods to allow two trusted parties to comunicate without an untrusted third party understanding the communication; how could Hollywood, use it to comunicate with an un-trusted consummer? Obviously they can't. Some how, some way Hollywood has to give the decryption key to the untrusted for viewing and no matter how obfuscated the key is, it has to be available and therefore breakable.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Almost every company who did business with Microsoft basically was screwed by them in the end. IBM, Stac, Borland, Sun (who had to fight tooth and nails so that M$ didnt take over java), Mosaic (who had to fight for years to get a decent compensation for the Mosaic code, Netscape and a ton of others I think Hollywood really should try to avoid them as much as possible
Yeah, this hasn't ever happened before:
Microsoft: "Hi there! I'm Microsoft, and I just want to play friendly and build up value for my own products. I have no interest in your markets. You don't have to worry about us!"
The number of companies that have been subsequently crushed or eaten goes on and on and on...
May we never see th
Well , there is of course one obvioius solution to that isn't there? Its so blindingly obvious that Open Source is one solution to Microsoft extortion.
...
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Maybe, but the people just down the hall from the people in charge of enormous corporations like to have someone at whom to point the ominous finger of blame if (and inevitably when) something goes wrong. Sooner or later, somebody (and I'm not saying it might be someone in the employ of everybody's favorite villain. I'm NOT saying it. No way!) will launch an attack against everyone's favorite open-source OS and find some nasty little holes that nobody's ever noticed -- that's not a criticism of any individual, the open source "community", humanity in general, or anything else -- that's just plain common sense; nobody's perfect and therefore nobody's OS is perfect, no matter how hard we try to make the perfect one. That realization and the fact that Mr. IT Manager Dude doesn't want this script to play out in Mr. Bigwig's office someday:
is what's maintaining the "status quo." He'd much rather it went something like this:
"CYA" is still "Management-101" in a lot of books!
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It's like a Godzilla movie. Neither monster is the good guy (OK, Godzilla vs. Mothra aside), you just hope not to get trampled under foot.
** Sig-a-licious **