Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer Sounds Off
PreacherTom writes "Steve Ballmer shares his thoughts on the Web 2.0 phenomenon, Zune, XBox, Vista, Bill's upcoming 2008 retirement, the future of Microsoft, and other subjects. For example, regarding the GooTube deal: "Right now, there's no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion. And what about the rights holders? At the end of the day, a lot of the content that's up there is owned by somebody else. The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google." He's blunt, if nothing else."
Videos on YouTube go up like 3-5 minutes after you upload them. Google Video goes through a process that takes a day or two. This helps slow down impulse uploading. Why show off a cool video to your friends online that isn't yours on Google Video that will take a day or two. It's faster to post it on YouTube where it will be up in minutes and you are still excited about it.
Can I bum a sig?
I thought the iPod model was where content get monetized through hardware. Unless Ballmer is equating content with software. Maybe I'm looking at this differently but in my world view content is faciliated by software but not an integral part of it. A novel is more than the word processor used to create it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Notice that this is also the sort of thinking that has kept MS "late and last" to the web space for so long.
You have to waste some money up front if you want to be #1. And MS badly needs to become #1 somewhere in the online space to really deliver value to their advertisers. They may have "learned their lesson" from the Xbox, but they wouldn't have been competitive in the console space without it.
The ______ Agenda
That's because you're either not up to date on US law or you've been listening to Ballmer for too long. Title 2 of the DMCA creates a "safe harbour" which exempts Google (and any other "Online Service Provider") from liability for this sort of thing, so long as they comply with certain rules. Google almost certainly plan to follow these rules to the letter, as they do for all other other services, which means nobody can take them to court in the US for anything posted on YouTube by a third party.
Basically, if you post something to YouTube, it's your fault and not theirs. They are not obliged to screen the content. If somebody sends them a "takedown" notice, they are obliged to presume guilt and remove the content (without investigating). If you then send them a counter-notice, they are obliged to presume innocence and restore the content (still without investigating), and then you and the person who sent the notice get to fight it out in court.
(This is the "good" part of the DMCA, providing a form of common carrier status to hosting companies; Title 1 is the "bad" part, enslaving the US to DRM)
No. Only for trademarks. Patents and copyrights last regardless of how you enforce them. Trademarks do expire from unenforcement.
I uploaded (personal) movies at both YouTube and Google, and they came up instantly. The file that I uploaded to Google was under 100 MB, so I don't know if this presumed reviewing of content is only taking place once the filesize gets bigger than the 100 MB: But under 100 MB there doesn't seem to be any manual reviewing going on at Google.
Corporations used to have severe limits and no rights. Corporations were created by the European Monarchies when they realized that the new merchant class had supplanted the nobility as the power they must court. They kings of european states knew they would need financial help to realize their dreams of empire, and that help could only come from the merchants.
But the monarchs knew that a corporation was essentially a landless, peasantless fiefdom. Corporations would have enormous power, so in exchange for the limited liability which would attract investors to risky, long term projects like colonization, they would say that corporations could only do the business for which they were chartered, in the region their charter covered. The East India company could neither trade in the Americas nor grow crops in the East Indies. And corporations were limited to the lifespan of the original founders: when the last of them had died or sold their shares, the corporation would be dissolved.
Finally, a corporation had no legal rights as a person seperate from its officers. This was one of the biggest limitations, and one of the last to go. But money buys power, and over time the concentration of money available to corporations allowed them to buy politicians who would enact legeslation expanding their power, allowing them to make more money and buy more laws in a vicious cycle.
Now, a corporation has always been able to own things, and to owe money. Seperating ownership and liability was the whole purpose of corporations and the thing that made them different from partnerships. But in exchange for that, severe limits were originally placed on what they could do. Now those limits have been erased and corporations have all the benefits with none of the societal responsibilities.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton