Hollywood afraid of Microsoft

Found on Slashdot on Sunday, 15 August 2004
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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.

Of course MS wants to sell more Windows licenses, seeing how they lose more ground on the desktop market to Linux. I understand their fears: MS is nothing but a money machine for Bill. And why on earth should someone chose Windows when he needs a reliable and stable system?