A Love Fest In Las Vegas
Hollywood, Technology Companies Embrace A Future Together
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Play CBS Video Video Honda's Walking Robot Only On The Web: Meet Asimo, Honda's humanoid robot. It is capable of running, moving in circles and even walking up stairs. Larry Magid has more details.
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Video Build Your Own Robot Only On The Web: Have you ever wanted to build and program your own robot? With iRobot's latest offering, you'll be able to do just that. Larry Magid reports.
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Video Recharging On The Go Only On The Web: Have you ever needed to charge your iPod or your cell phone, but didn't have your charger with you? Larry Magid shows a few products that can solve this problem.
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CSI creator Anthony Zuiker speak during a kenote address by CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 9, 2007, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (GETTY IMAGES/Justin Sullivan)
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Actors Matthew Fox, right, and Evangeline Lilly, both from ABC television series "Lost," join Robert Iger,left, president and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, during Iger's speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday, Jan. 8. 2007. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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Photo Essay Gadgets Galore There's so much to see at the CES it's enough to make your head spin
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Section Consumer Electronics Show The hottest tech trends for 2007 are on display in Las Vegas
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Blog Technology Blog Blog postings on the latest technology news, tips and tidbits.
Disney's Iger sparked much of the current rapprochement in October 2005 when, only weeks after being named CEO, he signed a deal to sell individual ABC-TV episodes on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store.
The groundbreaking deal sparked a flurry of similar deals, with networks selling shows on iTunes, Google Inc.'s video store and elsewhere. This week Apple said it would sell movies from Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, increasing Apple's online selection from about 100 to about 250.
Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., even agreed to distribute its content using peer-to-peer technology from BitTorrent, but only after the once-renegade company agreed to share revenue.
"Change is always difficult for people who have invested millions or billions of dollars in basic business models," said Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which lobbies on behalf of the studios. "Companies that keep up with what consumers want will make money."
The animosity between the two camps goes back a long way.
Studios initially feared television in the 1950s, refusing to produce shows for the medium that executives were convinced would kill the motion picture business. Studios sued to block the videocassette recorder, convinced the technology would do nothing but lead to rampant piracy. The legal case eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court and established the rights of consumers to "time shift" content - record it at one time and watch it at
another.
Today, studios make far more money selling movies on DVD than they do in theaters.
But not all the hatchets have been buried. Studios still lobby aggressively for laws to strengthen copyrights and force TV manufacturers and other electronics makers to plug digital holes through which content might leak onto the Internet. Studios and record companies also worked to pass the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which can assess penalties of $150,000 for every song or movie illegally downloaded.
"This revolution is not a done deal," Shapiro said during his opening keynote address this week. "Piracy is wrong. But ordinary consumers are not pirates. And private conduct may not be authorized, but that does not mean it is piracy."
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Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
