Hollywood: Jobs out, Gates in?
The big movie studios may not exactly be on the cutting edge of technology, but they do know one thing: learn from the music industry's mistakes. That may be one reason the studios are leaning toward Microsoft, at least for anti-piracy technology, something that was once--and maybe still--considered tantamount to doing a deal with the devil.
After all, then-Disney chief Michael Eisner may as well have been speaking for all Hollywood peers when he wrote in his 1998 book "Work in Progress" that Bill Gates' Microsoft "may be our most daunting competitor."
In that light, it would have been understandable if back-lot executives chose to align themselves with someone friendlier, such as their old pal Steve Jobs at Apple. But as recent developments have shown, even long-standing relationships can be a very fragile thing in Tinseltown.
Blog community response:
"If Microsoft and Hollywood had it their way, your music and movies will be locked down tighter than a medieval princess' chastity belt.
Windows Vista is set to implement a whole new raft of copy-protection measures designed to keep hackers busy for at least a week-end, while at the same time inconveniencing all the law-abiding netizens who actually pay for DRM-encoded media. They just never learn, do they."
--Bad Comedown
"Microsoft seems to be pulling out all the stops when it comes to locking down their next version of Windows. And for good reason too--assuaging the copyright-enforcement concerns of the Hollywood paranoiacs studios means big money for a company at the hilt of The Battle For The Livingroom."
--ReviewDynasty.com
"I suppose a system process is okay to hide; however, blocking anything that relates to entertainment will probably slow down my machine, if not cause it to break. I expect full support for that DRM chip from Pentium soon. I can only hope Apple refuses to let their excellent OS suffer the same fate as Windows."
--Insert Blog Here
"No, no, no, no, no. This is so incredibly stupid that 4-letter words immediately spring to mind to further describe the idiocy that a certain Seattle-based company is exhibiting. Hopefully the fine folks in Cupertino won't succumb to the same pressure and shoot themselves in the foot. Everywhere around us we see wonderful examples and works of art that come from living in the finely-coined 'Remix Culture,' yet Hollywood (and the RIAA too, I'm sure) feels that it can impose itself on the software industry and order them to develop ways in which to dull the hammer of the 21st century digerati."
--Paulofierro.com
