Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Temporarily Closes Video Site Soapbox
Weather Storm writes "CNET News.com reports that Microsoft will be closing its video-sharing site, Soapbox, to new users for up to two months so it can create better safeguards against pirated content. Since the test version of Soapbox was launched last month to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies, the site has filled up with unauthorized clips. 'No new subscribers will be accepted, but anyone who has already signed up for Soapbox can continue to access the site, said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online-services group.'"
What else did they expect? Private videos of people showing their houses and family and children and inviting the rest of the internet to dinner for pedos and sicko's?
People want entertainment. And if they don't get it at Soapbox because their lawyers are too lazy defending MPAA then the people will go elsewhere.
It must be a PR stunt. Can anyone seriously believe that project managers at MS didn't see this coming the moment the first person suggested opening such a site?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I know I didn't know they even *had* a video site until now.
With this announcement they can appear to be good concerned corporate citizens (after all, pirated content finances terrorism!) and gain exposure in one fell publicity swoop.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Does anyone else find it ironic that a service with this name is aiming, "to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies"? What about the common users trying to voice "impromptu ... speech"?
Microsoft is under no more obligation than youtube to safegaurd against "pirated content".
Microsoft is extending DRM way beyond anything required by the DMCA.
Microsoft perhaps has a theory that if they can protect content providers, those providers will be more willing to distribute through Microsoft. When Vista has a certain critical mass, look for deal with a major provider to distribute their content through Microsoft. This is likely to come in the form of DVDs playable on a Windows-only hard-ware DRMed platform.
Vista will probably be the most hacked OS ever. The content providers are going to find out their content is no more protected from unauthorized access than an average computer is against spyware and consumers are going to encounter all kinds of problems watching legitimate content.
But probably, what's more likely to happen over the next few years, given the history of Napster-->Gnutella-->BitTorrent, is that the whole landscape will change. And Vista's 'secure' content will likely seem irrelevant.
Some wise media folks already know it's better make money by selling content than suing people. We're already starting to see freely distributed content, funded by embedded advertising. There's a lot of opportunity out there, but people need to abandon the old ways of the last century and start being a bit more creative. That includes Microsoft.
Maybe Microsoft is trying to help Viacom's case against Google, by at least trying to implement a copyright protection scheme. Now Google can't say, no one else is trying to do it. It is a conspiracy theory but what the hell.
Having never heard of this before, I went to check and found that my hotmail password gets me in the door. One of the first things I found was Metallica. Now that's pretty funny.