“By all accounts, Steve Jobs gave a socko performance, delivered with his usual charm and controversial style, Jan. 9 at Apple’s annual Macworld gathering. Apple TV, which Jobs says has licked the problem of linking your TV to content downloaded from the Internet, was introduced as thousands cheered in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Among the faithful were some tech companies, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) Chief Executive Robert Iger, and a smattering of TV executives,” Ronald Grover reports for BusinessWeek.
Grover reports, “Most of the rest of Hollywood was conspicuously absent. Only four months back, when Iger announced that Jack Sparrow and the rest of Disney’s movie characters could be downloaded to Apple’s video iPod, it looked like Jobs was on his way toward taming the beast called Hollywood. A prototype of Apple TV, then code-named iTV, would soon link to the iPod and ship movies from Steve’s world to our TVs—or so the whiskered one led us to believe.”
Grover reports, “But no other Hollywood studio has yet joined Disney in giving Jobs their most precious commodity: new-to-the-home-market movies, which continue to be the studios’ hottest sellers in the still-robust $32-billion-a-year DVD market. To be fair, Jobs & Co. did manage to lure a second studio, when Paramount Pictures announced it was joining the iPod brigade. The Viacom unit, eager to overcome its image as a digital Neanderthal, said it would license to Apple 100 or so of its older movies. You want Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Mean Girls, you can get them. But try to get Dreamgirls when it comes out on video in a few months, or Shrek 3, which Paramount will release this summer for DreamWorks Animation.”
“Paramount may eventually give Apple its hot new flicks, but not yet and not until it sees how its maiden iPod voyage goes. But as Jobs was making his starlit announcement at Macworld, I was several hundred miles away in Las Vegas, getting the lowdown at the Consumer Electronics Show from studio executives who aren’t likely to join Paramount and Disney anytime soon,” Grover reports.
“Hollywood, I was told, still doesn’t trust Steve Jobs with its crown jewels. Yes, everyone loves that ratings for shows like NBC’s (GE) The Office and ABC’s Lost seem to be up thanks to the promotional exposure of being available via iPod download. But while just about every TV network quickly followed Disney’s 2005 decision to give its TV shows to Apple, few have yet to join the Mouse with movies. When you have a piece of content than can cost upward of $100 million to produce, you don’t give it up without a lot of soul-searching and number-crunching,” Grover reports. “What does Hollywood want from Steve Jobs? For starters, more protection for their films.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Hollywood movie studios demand Apple strengthen DRM limitations before joining iTunes – November 29, 2006
Disney sells nearly 500,000 movies via Apple’s iTunes Store in less than two months – November 09, 2006
Disney sells 125,000 movie downloads via Apple’s iTunes Store in first week – September 19, 2006
Fire up those TPMs, Steve – here’s the reason why you got em.
F$&k Hollywood.
I mean it.
Really. In this day and age, we get better films from the indy scene.
F$&k Hollywood.
Time will tell. First Disney, then Paramount and increasing number of titles. Miramax? should be in the pipeline already.
The funny thing is “Only four months back”. Jeez, is this guy idiot or what? FOUR months. FOUR MONTHS. For Hollywood to make a move pretty much 4 months amounts to 4 hours in effective times. FOUR MONTHS and the idiot spouts “where is Hollywoood”.
FOUR MONTHS MORON. Layers take the double time to just devise the title of the agreement, lobster!
People who rail against DRM always seem amusing to me. They simply don’t understand the way business people think. DRM exists not to lock people to a platform but because intellectual copyright holders (and of course even THEY differ) wish to have SOME kind of protection against widespread free reproduction of their works. When the investment is higher, that need for protection is even more intense.
It’s true that some music is available as a non DRM mp3 file. Quite a lot of it actually. But those people are less concerned about not making money on their product. Those that ARE concerned will always demand some kind of DRM.
Having been in the music, television AND news industry personally I can tell you that the investment in producing content is higher than you think. It’s not going to be freely distributed, willingly by the producers as long as there’s a profit to be made by controlling the distribution, which DRM provides. Without it, there has to be some other source of revenue. Can it come from live shows? Theatrical distribution? Advertising? Not very likely.
mw=needed as in DRM is still needed
Here’s to the rippers, may Gawd bless them, one and all.
Every time I hear a Hollywood studio exec fret about “more protection for their films,” I laugh my butt off. Despite your best efforts, YOU DON”T HAVE ANY NOW! NONE! ZIP! NADA! So what’s all the fear and fuss about, dumbasses?
F$&k Hollywood
@ Randian
Yep.
And here we are CRITICIZING APPLE FOR FORCING DRM ON US.
Thanks a bunch, Hollywood.
I still don’t understand what “protection” they want. All you have to do is type “rip dvd” into a google search and it’s clear that the “protection” of physical DVDs is a joke.
I would think that they would love to sell movies with no costs (dvd, packaging, distribution, returns, etc.).
I have to believe this is more about the risk thhey are taking in transitioning their distribution systems from the “big box” retailers to online downloads.
Each of the studions is terrified to be the first mover and have Wal Mart and Target pull their movies while selling those from the competition.
Unfortunately it would be illegal for all the studios to get together and collectively tell Wal Mart to f**k off.
why would we wait 6 months or more for films to be put on itunes?
we download movies before the release date now!!!!
if the studios arent carefull they will lose the entire market
drm hurts movie studios
“What does Hollywood want from Steve Jobs? For starters, more protection for their films.”
That’s a laugh. They have zero protection now with DVDs. They want the only thing that matters to any business, more money.
As I said to MDN when I alerted them to this article, the hollywood studios won’t be happy until we’re a nation of renters.
And Jobs forsaw this. He adopted Intel for its TPMs as a hedge, and the danger of him giving in to them – ie using the DRM hardware in every Macintel for more than just OSX installations – grows with every new online video download sold at iTS.
The rename to “Apple Inc”, as much as it makes sense from a business perspective, is to me also an indication that Apple is moving on from its roots. And I think that’s dangerous in some ways. SONY went down that road, and the journey took them from being a truely great electronics company to becoming a media conglomerate whore. It’s no less possible for Apple to similarly lose it’s way, and start viewing technology as nothing more than a way to lock people into a revenue stream.
Don’t underestimate the power of greed. It can corrupt anything or anyone that was once good.
pr: People who rail against DRM always seem amusing to me. They simply don’t understand the way business people think. DRM exists not to lock people to a platform but because intellectual copyright holders (and of course even THEY differ) wish to have SOME kind of protection against widespread free reproduction of their works. When the investment is higher, that need for protection is even more intense.
Yeah, I don’t understand why I, who purchased legit DVDs, must sit though the FBI warning, all movie previews and advertisements that are not skippable while those who pirated it can remove all the crap. I don’t understand why people who bought legit CDs get their computers rootkited while those who pirated it can avoid all the inconveniences. See, as a paying customer, I don’t like to be treated like potential thieves. I guess you are right, we don’t understand how business people think and I don’t need to as long as I am the customer. The days when customers are kings are dead, so it seems. Name one advantage a DRM brings to paying customers. Even the most lenient DRM that is transparent for most people like FairPlay does not bring any advantages to customers.
DRM isn’t about copyright protection. It is about the ability to charge multiple times for the same content. Paramount and all the other major studios do not want to you watch a movie on your computer and then watch it on your iPod. They want better “protection” which will make you pay once for a “higher quality, movie like experience” at home and then pay a second time if you would like to watch the same movie “on the go.” They want better DRM so you will download ONE movie on iTunes then be asked to pay for it a second time if you try and move it to an iPod.
Maybe Hollywood should make something I want. I have old gift cards for Blockbuster which are expired because they’re unused. It isn’t like I haven’t tried. I walk into Blockbuster, scan everything from A to Z on the new releases wall, then after disappointment and disinterest, walk out empty handed. The product is so bad I can’t even spend free money on it.
Perhaps I’m not in the target market for Biodome 2.
Reasonable article. It boils down to the fact that Hollywood is just a tougher nut to crack than the music industry and TV. Jobs will progress but at a slower pace. What do people think he is….a god or somthing
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…delivered with his usual charm and controversial style,
What’s controversial about the way Steve Jobs delivers his keynotes? Would Business Week be happier if he was a dull as the other presenters who came on to stage? Is he controversial because his keynote don’t suck? What is this crap?
Absolutely no advantages for consumers with DRM. It’s not a benefit for consumers at all.
But DRM IS about numbers. It’s important to keep things in perspective. There is a large segment of the population… probably the overwhelming majority for whom computers and anything remotely technical are very intimidating. Then there are a huge number of people who COULD get around DRM but don’t based on moral grounds (“Isn’t that stealing?”), some of whom won’t even accept a gift of music not paid for.
So… what percentage of the world’s population do you think understands how to Rip DVD’s or visit a bit torrent site? In the big picture it’s not that many…which is why iTunes has, in part, done so well. People WANT to follow the rules for the most part. That many people used Napster because it was so easy and that 500,000 people (just a made up number, it could be higher clearly but it’s NOT the majority) regularly rip DVD’s or use peer to peer is of concern to Hollywood and the music industry… they want to KEEP that number low.
Apple can and likely WILL license FairPlay since of all the schemes out there…it is still the most reasonable since it’s liberal and with a little effort can be easily defeated. The copyright owners are depending on the morality of the audience, the fear of technology and the hassle of defeating DRM from cutting further into their profits.
why pay for movies at all?
watch them for free:
http://simplisticsmovielinks.blogspot.com/
it’s like Napster all over again and the studios didn’t learn the lesson from afar…
More protection?
WTF! movies from itunes are already more secure than 95% of the dvds out there- look at mactheripper and handbrake.
you have the studios bellyaching about not enough protection and on the other hand a bunch of dweebs bit@ching about apple’s green monster drm program.
LP–>Cassette–>CD
VHS–>DVD–>HD (Blue Ray, HD, download)
Death, taxes, and paying for the same content over and over.
You should be able to return your old copy on the previous format to the store and get the new format for the cost of the media (since the value of the “content” on the media hasn’t changed).
“What does Hollywood want from Steve Jobs? For starters, more protection for their films.” Soooo, why is the press still beating up SJ for DRM? Shouldn’t the press be asking Hollywood the dreaded DRM question?
“His user rules just scare the heck out of us,” one studio executive told me. Indeed, under Apple’s video iPod digital-rights-management scheme, folks can share their flicks with as many as three other iPod users.”
Right. We should really be paying for every time we see the movie.
3 other iPod users! Wow. I know when I watch a DVD, I am careful that only 1 person that did not pay for that DVD watches it. Come on, asswipe. A consumer wants some freedom to put movies on THEIR devices.
Undercutting DVD sellers:
Well, let’s see. The version Apple sells is inferior in quality to DVD. Why the fuck should it cost the same?