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."

Comments

Re:Deleted Scenes from the Interview

[mrchaotica]

interesting how those guys manage to actually create all that IP in the first place, that people enjoy so much they want to add it as a soundtrack. You know, what with them sitting on their ass all day.

The guys sitting on their asses all day are the copyright holders, who are generally not the ones who "actually creat[ed] all that IP[sic]" (and therein lies a large portion of the problem).

Methinks it takes longer for peter jackson to create the LOTR movies..

Actually, the vast majority of the (new -- not including the story itself) creative effort was done by all the CG artists, set designers, etc. working under Peter Jackson, and was "work for hire." They don't get royalties; they get paid for their time, and that's it. In fact, Peter Jackson and that 'kid on youtube" you deride have a lot in common: all either of them did was "stick together" somebody else's work!

Re:Deleted Scenes from the Interview

[mrchaotica]

I must have misread sarcasm or something. You can't be this far off-base, surely.

It was half-sarcastic. I completely agree that the magnitude of the work that Peter Jackson did was much greater than the average Youtube video maker, but I do believe it was similar in kind. From your post, it seems as though you agree: you mention all the time he spent "approving, suggesting ... reviewing" and praise his project management skills. It's laudable, but it's mostly management, not art -- it's not the same as creating something from scratch by himself.