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."

Aww, that's so cute

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when the monopolies... err I mean, monopoly and oligopoly fight.

Antitrust

[Klar]

Hell, I'd be afraid too if the Hollywood movie Antitrust [mgm.com] has much truth behind it.... watch out for the little geek people bigtime Hollywood types.

The enemy of my enemy is ... my head hurts.

[TheUncleBob]

With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer for.

I think it would be more accurate

[scotay]

If you replaced the word 'afraid' with 'jealous.'

The movie industry

[Anonymous Coward]

And the movie industry is the nicest bunch of people you'd ever want to meet. No vendetta's, no black listing, everyone operates above the board. Every movie star is the perfect role model for our children.

If they get mixed up with the likes of Bill Gates, I just don't know what this will do to our shining example of what Americans are really like?

Re:The enemy of my enemy is ... my head hurts.

[Short Circuit]

Use some strategy from C&C, man. Wait 'til both armies are on the battlefield, then nuke the field. :)

Re:Polish in the Right Places

[KontinMonet]

Some people have a great problem just with English so no doubt adding Polish might ruin things for them...

I'm more worried about Bill...

[FatSean]

...For all the accusations and hyperbole here, he seems a much more honest businessman than the hollywood crowd. Hopefully their sleazy(er?) practices don't rub off on Microsoft!

Re:Hollywood and microsoft

[GoofyBoy]

>** If they have brains. Or hearts. Or courage.

If movies have taught me anything, its that one quick trip to the Wizard of Oz can fix this!

terminate them all and let /. sort it out

[phyruxus]

So lemme see... Microsoft is feared by the one thing that sends shivers down republican spines... Hollywood.

Is Microsoft therefore scarier than republicans by transitivity?

I mean, I know there's shades of grey and then there's shades of grey... but this is grey.

Hey, neat, instead of my Uncle, Bob's my parent.

Re:Polish in the Right Places

[Webs 101]

I just saw a Canadian movie today called Shot in the Face (2001) [imdb.com]. Yes the fans at IMDB give it an under-rated 5.6/10, but to me the film had a unique plot, interesting characters and it was fun -- it was just low budget, but it still brought a smile to my face. Obviously not A-list by any stretch of the imagination.

But, really - just how big is the market for bukkake? And are you sure it only brought "a smile" to your face?

Blue Crush, Blue Streak, and now?

[tod_miller]

Blue Screen, coming to a cinema near you...

Slightly OT, but I saw this coming, alongside Microsofts patent scams, 'licensing' their API's (read, now they are established, pay for them biatch, whilst destroying other standards).

Microsoft are moving in subtle ways - they have the money to do this as well.

Now we can have bad movies that delete themselves, at least that saves us the trouble...

I wonder how long it will be before they dynamically or on the fly replace movie scenes and adverts within movies across the lifespan of the movie?

MPAA vs. Microsoft?

[dcavanaugh]

Henry Kissinger's comment on the Iran/Iraq war in the 80's: "Too bad they can't both lose."

a strange likeness

[RU_Areo]

We can't avoid Microsoft or Hollywood... maybe we should start complaining?

Easy Target

[neilb78]

Something is wrong...blame Microsoft.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I Hope Microsoft succeeds

[SpermanHerman]

I would definitely like to see the *AA get raped on licensing. Payback is a bitch!!

Microsoft using Hollywood business practices?!?

[TopShelf]

That could lead to:

Windows II: Webcentric Boogaloo
Clippy Strikes Back
The Neverending BSOD

And many others too terrible to imagine...

Re:The enemy of my enemy is ... my head hurts.

[Tackhead]

> With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer for.

Coming this summer to theaters:

MPAA v MSFT: Whoever wins, we lose

Re:Coming to a cinema soon....

[inkswamp]

I like "The Passion of the Clippy" better. You know... two-and-a-half hours of Clippy having the living crap beat out of him. Who wouldn't enjoy that?

"Hi... it looks like you're trying to pulverize me!"

Re:The enemy of my enemy is ... my head hurts.

[The_REAL_DZA]

With MPAA on one side and Microsoft on the other, I just don't know who to cheer for.

Oh, there're plenty of possibilities!!

1. The giant space rock from Armageddon
2. The giant space rock from Deep Impact
3. The giant space rock from Night of the Comet
4. The giant rabbits in Night of the Lepus
5. The giant spiders in Invasion of the Giant Spiders
6. The giant leeches in Attack of the Giant Leeches
7. The giant woman in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

And the list goes on and on and on...

Re:Polish in the Right Places

[Anonymous Coward]

But do you like bad movies. Suppose all the movies you saw were bad for the next 10 years. Would you still like movies and spend your free time and money on them?

Apparently you didn't see the final episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000....

dilemma...

[Bobzibub]

I'm not sure who to root for!
= )
-b

Re:The enemy of your enemy is your enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

So we send a short guy with hairy feet to Redmond to drop an old ring in the water cooler, and a bunch of rabid Redwoods to SoCal to level a few studios?

Works for me!

Re:Coming to a cinema soon....

[EvilTwinSkippy]

"To crash another day" - Agent 0x00000007 takes on a malevelant hacker to twart his plans to take over the world with a killer virus: the "Hi, can I infect your computer" worm.

"x=x+28 days later." A man wakes up from a coma to find all the computers in the world have been reformatted by a virus to run BSD.

Re:The enemy of your enemy is your enemy

[PsiPsiStar]

Microsoft was made in the depths of IBM. Only there can it be unmade.

Re:Polish in the Right Places

[abb3w]

Sure they can't own the movie industry...but they can certainly give themselves a stranglehold over its distrobution resourcse.

[sic]

Mmmm... no. On the one hand, Quicktime is competition; if backed into a corner by Microsoft, the movie industry would be humping up Apple's leg in no time.

On the other hand, "Hollywood" is not the whole of the movie industry. Leaving aside the black sheep of the family (pr0n! [asciipr0n.com]), there's also Bollywood, and a shlode of independents. Of course, they won't be spending $70M on production and $50M on marketing [boxofficemojo.com], but that doesn't mean that they can't put out good movies. The special effects may be cheezier, but heck, I still play Angband and NetHack [nethack.org].

I suspect that, much like lots of little Indie music bands putting out MP3s on the cheap-and-easy, some people may start putting homemade movies up in [insert favorite format] on the Torrents. They won't get rich, and 90% of everything up there will be poorly made crap... and thus, probably a better ratio than we get today. =)

Now, perhaps M$ can end up in control of Hollywood -- given "reasonable" terms, and perhaps a little backmail ("We've 30 billion lying around... maybe we should start a movie studio? Whadayathink?"); but they don't DARE try to drive Apple out of business-- they've already been a convicted monopolist once, they don't want to deal with that again. Ergo, the little guys will continue to roam wild and free... for a little while longer.

Choice quote..

[gillbates]

Microsoft knows how to do technology and software. They don't know how to tell a story.

I fear that this is actually false; they know more about telling stories than technology:

• They tell stories about "Enterprise Class" operating systems that must be patched on a monthly basis to remain "secure". Of course, the absence of auto-update on mainframes means that they must be inherently insecure; after all, nobody could code a secure OS from the start, right?
• They tell stories about managing your business with their software, yet disclaim any responsibility whatsoever for customer data after the install. Which is exactly what I want - right? I mean, if I lose a "mission critical" business system to a Blaster-type worm, the last thing I want, or expect, is for the vendor to take responsibility for their shoddy design practices.
• They tell stories about "low total cost of ownership", yet their analyses conveniently forget to include virus cleanup, constant patching, and damage due to loss of proprietary information through security breaches.

And no, a company which is not content with 95% of the desktop share wouldn't possibly try to buy Hollywood, now would they? I mean, that would be so out of character for them - those felonies, drumming competition out of business, etc... - those were just a few minor slips, right? I mean, gosh, deep down inside, Microsoft is really just a misunderstood giant...

Not that I'd cry for Hollywood, though. But it does seem a little insincere on Microsoft's part.

Good. Kill them All,

[gelfling]

I sincerely hope that MS charges Hollywood a billion dollars a picture to use MS products. I hope the people who brought you the commercial in your theater with the fat bald stuntman have to eat their own children.

Not held hostage to any one company

[DickBreath]

...studios say they need to encourage competition so they won't be held hostage by one company.

With the MPAA we aren't held hostage by any one movie studio.

With the RIAA we aren't held hostage by any single record company.

Microsoft needs to learn to innovate like the MPAA and RIAA.