Monday, September 19, 2005
Hollywood to sink $30 mil into tech lab to foil pirates, yarrrr!
Of course, some will say the $30 mil to save Hollywood's future might be better spent figuring out how to make movies that don't suck:
The six major Hollywood studios, hoping to gain more control over their technological destiny, have agreed to jointly finance a multimillion-dollar research laboratory to speed the development of new ways to foil movie pirates.Link to NYT story.The new nonprofit consortium is to be called Motion Picture Laboratories Inc. - MovieLabs for short - and will begin operation later this year. According to Hollywood executives involved in its establishment, MovieLabs will have a budget of more than $30 million for its first two years. The idea arose out of Hollywood's contention that the consumer electronics and information technology industries are not investing heavily or quickly enough in piracy-fighting technology.
The lab is modeled after CableLabs, which since 1988 has spearheaded pivotal innovations in the cable television industry - hastening the adoption of fiber optics, cable modems, telephony and digital video
(Thanks, Roland Dobbins, whose sigfile aptly quotes Doug Gwyn: "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.")
posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:40:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
