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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
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.
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.
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.
What makes you think F/OSS is any less secure? Because you can see how the lock is made? If it's made right, it shouldn't matter. If it's implemented right, it shouldn't matter.
And if it isn't, then someone can find out quickly and without fear of DMCA enforcement and let the coders know there's an issue.
Because in its long history, PGP has been hacked HOW many times?
GTRacer
- P.S. It's naivete.
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
Because in its long history, PGP has been hacked HOW many times?
:-)
That's because the problem PGP solves is... well... solvable. DRM is the art of giving information to someone without giving it to them. Not just impossible, plain stupid. Now I'm as much a FOSS fan as the next (/.) guy, but I don't think it can do the impossible.
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
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
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 **