2. Consumers and Hollywood
Frenemies since: 1877, when Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph and played a recording of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on one, thereby creating the both the consumer electronics and recorded-media industries in one fell swoop.
Acts of friendship: Hollywood makes movies, TV shows, and music that people (sometimes) like; people (sometimes) give Hollywood money and/or sit through commercials for the privilege of consuming those movies, TV shows, and music.
Acts of enmity: Disney and Universal’s unsuccessful 1976 lawsuit against Sony aimed at yanking the new gadget known as the Betamax VCR from America’s living rooms; the RIAA’s unsuccessful lawsuit against Diamond aimed at yanking the new gizmo known as the Rio MP3 player out of America’s pockets; other more successful Hollywood suits against file-sharing services such as Napster, Grokster, and Morpheus; the RIAA’s “College Deterrence” program and related suits against college kids; etc., etc. Also, any piece of DRM that ensnares people who have paid for the content in question, such as Sony BMG’s infamous CD copy protection. But I wouldn’t say that consumers are exactly innocents under unprovoked assault in all cases–massive acts of piracy are, ultimately, more than a tad self-destructive.
Current state of the frenemyship: Slightly more friendly than it once was, as music, movie, and TV companies gradually get used to the idea that the future of content is 100% digital. Still far from fabulous, though.
December 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Great list, I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)
December 11th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Great job on this, Harry. Many of us have lived through the stuff you’ve written about here, but were we really paying attention? On some levels, yes, but we all tend to be revisionist historians to a certain degree. With this article you’ve put a stake in the ground. Would love to see you do a periodic update on the same 12 — maybe adding or deleting as new frenemies develop or others lose pertinence.
December 15th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What about nVidia and AMD? It seems like that’s a big one.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Great article!
December 18th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Frenemies—- are they not just competitors? OR two persons/entities that have a mutual love hate relationship that shift from one end of teh spectrum to another….
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:03 am
Wow. Microsoft has many enemies.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Not to be a grammar policeman, but it seems you spelled “enmity” wrong.
Oh, well. Pretty awesome article. That there are six pages containing Microsoft relationships says something….
May 4th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Wow, I immensely enjoyed this list. Microsoft leads the ranks with enemies on almost both ends of the list.
I’m missing the iFruad producers vs Apple on the list though. :P
http://kixtrix.com
May 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Microsoft and Nintendo! While it may not be cpu-based, nintendo helped microsoft get going with the xbox, which then completely left nintendo to branch out their own and is now nintendo’s biggest opponent (sorry sony). Not to mention how nintendo is so bitchy about making sure that nobody but themselves and add programs and games to their consoles, so there isn’t a nintendo game on the xbox and vise versa. And, Gates has famously said quote, “”There’s room for innovation (on the wii), but moving that controller around — it’s something that’s not mainstream for most games.” Who knows? Maybe Gates will give in to 114,000,000 dollars a year of motion-sensitivity and make a motion-sensitive Halo. YES.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
You forgot Google and Mozilla, google has always been a big but quiet supporter of firefox, and then they release Chrome…
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November 4th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Great article!I enjoyed that, thanks. ;-)