Europe probes anti-competive practices of Blu-ray and HDDVD - Page 2

But since Universal is inexorably tied to HD DVD's success or failure don't you think Toshiba & Co. would give Universal a cut to keep them exclusive?




Two people who agree with me, weird! I'm gonna end up wasting all my money buying you guys E-Beers

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

H.L Mencken

This companies exist to make a profit. With DVD sales declining the advantage isn't with the studios it's with the consumer that has upscaling DVD players that are acceptable. In the scheme of things companies following the "rules" is more important than me getting HD on a shiny optical disc.

that would be a form of pay-off, wouldn't it? perhaps they could swing it, but there has certainly been no official mention of this from either tosh or uni that i've seen. i'm assuming the hd prg is a transparent organisation and that the divvying up of royalties is conducted in the open. wouldn't it be pretty obvious if uni was getting a slice of the pie?





at least they have the advantage of being less fattening than the real thing. here have one back at ya.

I suspect the key difference is in the case is Sony is using their position in one market (movie studio) to create a competitive advantage in another market (BD). This is not necessarily anti-competitive, however under the right circumstances it can be. It certainly will look bad if they are found to have used their position as a content owner in conjunction with colluding with other content owners to create an unfair advantage in entering a new market (BD).

I think its more of If you want to sell Blu you CAN'T sell Red.
Just like they did microsoft for only being able to sell windows on a companys PC.

The EU commissions get plenty of money from Microsoft. The however many million per day fine currently levied is not just punishment for Ms, it is funding for the competition commission.

I agree here. I think Sony is the studio that could be the focus of the investigation. Sony is leveraging two different industries to create an anti-competitive market. their movie studio, and their video game marketshare. I think Fox, Disney, and Universal are within their rights to only support one format, but Sony and maybe even MGM could be forced to support both formats as part of anti-trust laws. I'd be curious if they are asking for communications between divisions of Sony to find out if they have legitimate reasoning for not supporting both formats other than financial. I'm not saying Sony is doing anything worse than any of these other companies, the problem is that theirs are all under the same umbrella.

A comparable case could be Netscape vs. Microsoft and United States vs. Microsoft. Microsoft was forced to turn over api coding information to Netscape but in turn, AOL which was the parent company of Netscape, was forced to include IE with AOL service instead of Netscape so they wouldn't face the same charges.

http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw....ft12202cmp.pdf

Makes me wonder why Sony has laid off some employees. Maybe they were tied to all this.

Who's more likely to have been paid off to remain exclusive?

Fox and Disney who have pulled releases waiting for BD+ while HD DVD catches up, or Universal who has/will dump a hundred catalog and new releases with little regard for sales?

How many posters claimed that Fox and/or Disney would announce neutrality at CES 2007? IMO if there were restrictive agreements in place those rumors would have not gotten off the ground. And if Fox was paid off, the BDA should ask for their money back.

As far as the CEs, the article said the EU was looking at the HW studios' agreements to see if they were restrictive it didn't mention anything about CE support.

Regardless of the EU's ruling, if Toshiba wants Disney and Fox they are going to have to implement region coding and come up with a new copy protection scheme.

I think some people are missing some points of the article. It's not just Sony Pictures Studio that is being interrogated, it's "several" studios.

Regardless, this is probably not a big deal, but it does raise some questions. First, did the HD DVD group push to get this probe started? The WSJ implies it did with unnamed sources. The AP story has the investigators saying they did not:


If the HD DVD group did in fact lobby for the probe, do they have some kind of evidence for them to do so or is it just an underhanded strike at the BDA?

Finally, we need to get on the same page as to what is being investigated. It's not against the law to align yourself with another company and exclusively support a product, as long as there is no strong-arming from the other company. A perfect recent example of this is the AMD vs. Intel antitrust case. Look it up and see how things went down.

Re:
2) They probably are looking at Universal as well, but the difference is, Universal is exclusive to HDDVD because of past issues and dislike for Sony, not ecause of the possibility that Toshiba bought their exclusivity. What is being said is that the EU will be looking at all studios as there has been one of the sides may have used illegal tactics such as paying off certain people to be loyal to their format, we cannot through stones at either side.

[quote=Numanoid101]It's not against the law to align yourself with another company and exclusively support a product, as long as there is no strong-arming from the other company. [quote]

And this is why it looks like the investigation is happening. It seems like there is some inkling improper tactics may have been used somewhere along the lines. Sony has more exclusive studios and more studios all together. Again, I don't think there is any law that states that a studio does not have the right to choose to align themselves with either side. But if the wheels had been greased so to say, it is the right of both sides to have this brought to light.

Yep cause they stopped releasing movies on DVD the moment CSS was hacked...

So, do you have a link to this allegation you're making?

I never made an allegation. I said it makes me wonder.

Also it is no secret the the "Father of the Playstation" was fired, and Sony recently fired 80-100 employees at it's US headquarters. If you don't believe me, google it. It was also here in the AVS forums about the lay offs.

I edited the original message to make it the way it should have been.

I find the WSJ article curiously lacking in that there is no direct mention of any European studios involvement (as either a complaintant or a target of investigation).

Money passing hands isn't the issue. You can pay someone as much as you want to ensure they carry your product. What you can't do is make the offer contingent on NOT carrying the competitor's product. That's what would have to be proven. Which is probably going to be hard to do, because if you're doing something you know to be illegal, you typically don't document it in writing. Instead of writing a 5-year contract that requires exclusion of competition, you write a 1-year contract with option to renew for 5 years, with no mention of competition, and handle the exclusion part through innuedo, winking, etc. Make it clear that if you carry the competitor's product, you won't get renewed. And unlike Intel vs AMD, you don't have a giant telling the little guy that your CPU 'discounts' will go away if you carry the competition, and there's nothing you can do about it. That builds resentment, and once someone takes the first step, others will come forward and talk. These are all big boys, all capable of taking care of themselves. If anything is going on, they're all in on it together, and nobody is going to talk. They don't need to. If a studio decides that it's more lucrative to give up under-the-table money and sell the competing format, that's what they'll do. None of the players in question is so much bigger than the others that anyone is being strongarmed, so they don't need the help of the authorities to look after their own interests.

By the time any investigation could turn anything up, and then any action taken, it won't matter. What would the authorities do if they find wrongdoing? Fine somebody? Sony is already fining themselves billions to shoehorn BR into your living room. It's their main strategy. They've probably got a line item in their budget for fines. The authorities certainly can't tell studios to stop producing BR, or force them to release on another format, or make consumers throw their players in the trash and buy something else.

If someone was concerned about fair play in the format war, they should have stepped in long ago. Too late to do anything now but let it play out.

If Toshiba hasn't offered them something to compensate them in the case that HD DVD wins (even if not to be exclusive), then it would make me wonder what incentive Universal has to largely empty their vaults early in order to help HD DVD win. Of course there can be personal reasons and past injustices (even if just perceived), but this is business and it would sure seem like it would make some sense for Toshiba to compensate Universal in some way if they can help Toshiba maintain their nice royalty position for next gen discs. And for those who want Universal to make only combos and not just DVDs, seems to me that Toshiba should finance something like that if they want Universal to do it. I just don't see enough incentive for Universal to cost themselves money by doing something like that, so doubt they would do it unless somebody else is financing it.

I also wonder if this group is concerned about companies being paid to release anything exclusively for some period of time, even if the studio itself isn't exclusive.

--Darin

How is FOX, Disney, etc, being exclusive to BD any different than a game developer staying exclusive to xbox or Playstation? It's no secret that most exclusives on any particular game platform are so only because of some sort of financial incentive(s), eg: shared development costs, marketing , reduced royalty rate etc. As far as I know, Sony's Playstation business has never been found guilty for anticompetitve behaviour, so I really don't see this going anywhere.

I would not make this comparison. Which European company is in the console business - in other words which European company would there be to protect?

The proper comparison would be the decisions surrounding Microsoft and its anti-competitive business practices (according to European commissions). There are and were lots of European software companies.

The one thing I guess I should say is that I doubt that any decision will be coming any time soon so BR supporters probably shouldn't be too concerned with this.

Which European company is involved with hd dvd?

Studio Canal?

Why would SC need to be protected? Nothing stops them from releasing on BD? How is SC being hurt by Fox, Disney etc being exclusive to BD?

this post makes no sense. in one breath u say no european companies are harmed by exclusivity in the console world. then in the next that they were harmed in the pc world. european companies have an interest in both situations, as there are software developers in both fields. the difference in the two cases is that microsoft had a monopoly while sony does not - the ps2 does not have enough market share to be classed as inhabiting a monopolistic possition. this is also true of the console war situation.

You asked what European company is involved in HD DVD.. I stated one. How do we know they are not being withheld from BD pressing facilities, BD authoring tools etc unless they go "Blu only". I am not trying to be a conspiracy theorist (I dont think the above is actually true for example) but they ARE a studio and in the EU I would think that they are covered by your question of "Which European company is involved with hd dvd?"

Perhaps not readily evident to you but the more important point I was attempting to make was this:

"The one thing I guess I should say is that I doubt that any decision will be coming any time soon so BR supporters probably shouldn't be too concerned with this."

How about we agree not to go off on the deep end and speculate too much as to what has transpired already behind closed doors and what might transpire in the future behind closed doors?

Perhaps I should have been more precise: Which European company involved with hd dvd is being harmed by Fox and Disney being exclusive? That's what this whole investigation is about, right? As far as I know, providing incentives to be exclusive is not illegal. That's how it works with video game companies. Intel did it for many years with its "intel inside" program. What is illegal is what you just described: "you are release exclusively on our platform or not at all."

I really don't see that happening unless the BDA has really stupid lawyers. I guess since Toshiba made such a huge stink about this then the EU has to investigate just to make sure.

Here is how it will go:

Euro Commission: Sony, why are you not releasing on hd-dvd?

We helped design blu-ray, and hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: Disney, why dont you release on hd-dvd?

Disney: hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: Fox, why dont you release on hd-dvd?

Fox: hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: Lionsgate, why dont you release on hd-dvd?

Lionsgate: hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: MGM, why dont you release on hd-dvd?

MGM: hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: Anchor Bay, why dont you release on hd-dvd?

Anchor Bay: hd-dvd is hacked for life, we dont trust our software on hd-dvd.


Euro Commission: Universal, why dont you release on blu-ray?

Universal: well uhh, uhm, theres the attach rate thing.. And uhm, mandatory internet? U-Control! Yes, thats it.