Hollywood

Depending on where you stand, President Obama either showed tremendous courage when he distanced himself from SOPA and PIPA--or a complete lack of it.

Last Saturday, the White House announced it would not support important provisions of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, the anti-piracy bills being debated in the House and Senate. The legislation would make it easier for the federal government to block access to overseas sites accused of piracy. Much of the tech sector opposes the bills.

Where Hollywood is concerned, though, the president's stand is nothing short of a betrayal. And … Read more

Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary committee, today said he expects the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act to resume sometime next month.

"To enact legislation that protects consumers, businesses, and jobs from foreign thieves who steal America's intellectual property," Smith said in a statement, "we will continue to bring together industry representatives and [members of Congress] to find ways to combat online piracy."

Smith suggested that further debate in the U.S. House of Representatives over the bill, which is designed to speed up the legal process involved with getting an … Read more

The headlines from CES about Hollywood's digital efforts are likely to make readers believe that the major film studios are fixated on selling movies instead of renting.

Readers might also have the impression that the studios' strategy on UltraViolet (UV), the plan to promote the use of digital lockers, was hurt by Netflix's decision to drop participation in UV.

Both are true to a point but much more nuanced.

I wrote this week that Netflix decided not to renew its membership in the consortium behind UV and some pundits are taking it as a sign that UV is … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Hollywood should offer Jeff Bezos the keys to the city.

The Amazon CEO and his troops rode to the aid of the five major film studios backing UltraViolet, the name of the effort to promote the studios' vision of digital lockers and create the next generation home-entertainment format.

In the fall, when the studios began releasing movies for UV, conspicuously missing was participation from any significant Web retailer. But today, Bill Carr, Amazon's executive vice president of digital, said during a panel discussion at CES, that the merchant had signed a deal with one of the major film … Read more

Netflix is out of the consortium that created UltraViolet, the technology platform designed to make digital movies accessible to any device or service.

Sources told CNET that the highest-ranking executive representing Netflix within Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a group of more than 70 companies connected to the film industry, recently did not renew his membership. Current members include Hollywood studios, software and hardware makers, film distributors, and retailers.

While Netflix may maintain some low-level DECE presence in the future, the company in large part cut ties to DECE a while ago, the sources said. Netflix executives have rarely, if … Read more

NEW YORK--Lots of people watch HBO. Not everyone watches it the way Reed Hastings does.

Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, sees growing competition between his company and HBO, a darling of the cable world and, with its HBO Go service and attendant mobile app, a rising star in online video.

"The competitor we fear the most is HBO Go," Hastings said today at the UBS Media conference here. "They aren't competing directly with us now, but they can. HBO is becoming much more Netflix-like, and we're becoming much more HBO-like."

Netflix is in … Read more

Hollywood continues to try to lay the foundation for UltraViolet, the technology that studio managers hope will replace the DVD.

Sony Pictures on Friday issued Blu-ray versions of "The Smurfs" and "Friends With Benefits" and also provided disc buyers with access to UV copies of the films. The studio will do the same with the release of the revenge flick "Columbiana" on December 20.

In addition, Variety, a film industry trade publication, is reporting that Sony Pictures will release a UV version of the Brad Pitt hit movie "Moneyball" on January 10. … Read more

Rest easy Steve Ballmer.

All that speculation in June about how Microsoft should dump its CEO in favor of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who is a member of Microsoft's board of directors, was probably just talk. Regardless, if Hastings' name was on anyone's short list, he is an unlikely successor now.

As things stand, Hastings may not even be a lock as CEO of Netflix.

After a string of setbacks and missteps, Netflix delivered more bad news on Monday. The company is in need of cash. Netflix announced that the Web's top video rental service would raise $… Read more

LOS ANGELES--An online locker service accused by some of Hollywood's biggest film studios of "massive copyright violations," has made counter claims that generated a lot of press attention last week.

Hotfile, a Florida-based online storage service sued by the studios in February, alleges that one of its accusers, Warner Bros. Entertainment, made numerous false copyright claims as part of attempt to remove content from Hotfile's site.

Some media pundits have suggested that Warner's actions are an example of how the studios abuse copyright law and have even drawn comparisons with Hotfile's situation to the … Read more