Ed Oscuro
11-01-2005, 02:19 AM
In the early 80s Gates and company worked with Sony on that company's MSX computer system. As late as 1998 then-president of Sony, Nobuyuki Idei (whose team, incidentally, had created that MSX), invited Gates to play a round of golf in June. While Gates did not have a unique relationship with the director (it has been customary since the days of Akio Morita for Sony's leaders to seek out the world's business leaders and cultivate friendships), Idei obviously judged the link valuable. It is hard to say how far their friendship extended, or if Gates still keeps in touch.
In April [of that year], Microsoft and Sony announced plans to cross-license Microsoft's Windows CE...and Sony's Home Networking Module, a "middleware," which allows digital "appliances" to be interconnected an operated. "The time has come," Idei declared at a press conference with Bill Gates, "for the PC industry and the AV industry to shake hands."[1]
Idei's comments reflect a thoroughly Sony attitude towards products: create products that build Japan's prestige and raise the standard of living throughout the world. Sony is not the sole company to hold this view - long-time Sony rival Matsushita's (Panasonic's) famed company song has promoted the same ideal for years in one form or other since the mid-1920s[2]
Idei is no longer President of Sony - he later became CEO, was nominated as one of BusinessWeek's "Worst Managers of 2003," and was eventually replaced by Sir Howard Stringer in June of this year.[3]
Backstory: the corporation as social engine
In a passage typical of the The Founding Prospectus in which he laid out his plan for Sony's activities in the years to come, Sony founder Masaru Ibuka wrote:
We must place profit here as a secondary motive.[4] Our service commitment should be pure and total, including even the preparation of a pamphlet that will explain to ordinary customers why their radios are in need of repair[5]
A simple summary of the history of Sony's history of product development might be to say that it was run by very powerful leaders who championed projects to their liking and serving as the ultimate source of power, often allowing high level employees to create strife and later firing them when some unspoken protocol was eventually breached. The heads of the company made many momentous decisions on their own intiative in the face of opossition: rejecting alternate names (such as "Stowaway") for the Sony Walkman, aggressively pushing for Betamax advertising in the face of its inevitable collapse and in spite of its great publicity granted by the Sony Betamax copyright case. Patronage allowed Ken Kutaragi to develop the prototype for the PlayStation with funds generated by the chip he developed for the SNES. Patronage allowed the rise and fall of Mickey Shulhof, who was given the most power a Westerner has ever enjoyed working for a Japanese company - only to have it stripped from him later on. Dogged determination - bordering on obsession at times - seem to better explain the mental state of the heads of Sony for many years after Ibuka. Great things came out of this culture, and some greatly wasteful projects were pursued as well.
a business of numbers
Today Sony is no longer known in the United States as makers of "the portable TV that works." Sony's competition - especially Matsushita, stodgy "maneshita" - "copysonic" - have proven able competitors eager to snap up market share [6]; the percieved premium paid for Sony brand products is considered not worthwhile by many conniseurs of AV products. Sony must fight as never before to remain an industry leader.
This change may well be paralleled by an increasing focus at Sony on black ink, and perhaps Idei himself gives us a hint of this:
In Idei's view, the common ground that will enable what he calls a "unified dispersed" business model will be provided by numbers, the unemotional arithmetic of sales, profit and loss, and measurement..."Business is logical: if we can reduce our business to numbers as bankers do, we won't have to concern ourselves with the psychologies and emotions which lie behind the numbers...In a strategic holding company, you don't need culture."
My purpose in writing this article has not been to lament any percieved lapse on Sony's part in holding true to the standards laid out by their founder so many years ago. Obsession with numbers - the almighty stock price - has taken hold of Corporate America, and competitor Nintendo has been known to make decisions based on 'what's right by the stockholders.'
Rather it has been to reflect on what was said when Bill Gates commented that he viewed Sony's Blu-Ray technology to be "anti-consumer." I was among those who viewed it as Microsoft spreading misinformation, "FUD;" certainly there were many half-remembered stories of Microsoft screwing the consumer and actual incidents. Gates has gone on record as saying that copyright protection schemes might be taken too far, proving detrimental to one's core business as it proved unpopular with consumers [7]. Right now the DRM scene with respect to Microsoft and Sony is not too promising, indeed it is downright troubling: Gates and Co. want content providers to allow consumers to make at least one copy, while the other side would leave that determination up to the provider.
It would be unwise to view Sony as truly committed to user rights - and potentially even unsafe. User-unfriendly copyright protection schemes - even music CDs with integrated device drivers that downgrade CD-ROM drive audio ripping quality - are not unheard of, but Sony has been revealed using a very bold and even dangerous variation of this technology that buries itself in your PC and temporarily patches running processes to work:
Sysinternals.com has the scoop. (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html)
I've yet to decide what the relevance of all this is to Sony's Blu-Ray system. I personally don't mind the thought of buying a PS3 and supporting this foolishness, knowing that neither its games or media will be playable on non-approved systems and knowing that I won't be able to make copies. That goes with the territory. However, I will draw a line at buying movies for Blu-Ray or buying Sony music CDs for the time being.
My take on all this: picking favorites in this fight is futile and masks the true depth of duplicity capable even by a respected industry insider - yes, for his part, Gates himself is just as interested in putting Microsoft boxes in your rooms as Sony ever has been. Buy the systems for the games, and let the third party make your video disc player.
[1] Information taken from SONY: The Private Life, by John Nathan. I use this source many times throughout this post; it's the definitive Sony history covering events up to 1998, and much better than the English-language Sony-released book from the late 70s - which does have many merits, however, and I plan to use that in the future in revealing early Sony plans for a game system...
[2] "...Doing our best to promote production, Sending our goods to the people of the world, Endlessly and continuously, Like water gushing from a fountain. Grow, industry, Grow, Grow, Grow! Harmony and sincerity! Matsushita Electric!" Hard to attribute this one; Matsuhita's official site has info on early company societies, and various documents on the 'net reference different books for this snippet of the translated song.
[3] Wikipedia.
[4] Again using John Nathan as a source - it is likely he translated the Prospectus on the spot, as he has been an able translator for many important Japanese works, and the translated bits he uses vary slightly from the official Sony one - for example, there is no mention of the lecture series Nathan's translation specifically mentions, but rather "promotion of the education of science among the general public," which may be found here (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/prospectus.html).
[5] The radios in need of repair are likely those units whose shortwave receivers had been disconnected or destroyed by Japanese Military Police during World War II, in order to prevent the public from recieving American broadcast propaganda. One of Ibuka's early employees recollected the humorous state of affairs for Nathan: "Sometimes all the coils had been removed, but often we'd open them and find that a military policeman with a good head had simply clipped the shortwave coil in one spot. All we had to do was solder it together again and the radio was fixed and we could charge for it!" So much for "emphasizing activities of real substance!"
[6] Forbes reported Matsushita's overtaking Sony: http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0112/030_print.html
[7] Wikipedia again, on the page about Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright - Sorry about the excessive/elitist use of footnotes, I got started and couldn't stop ;)
In April [of that year], Microsoft and Sony announced plans to cross-license Microsoft's Windows CE...and Sony's Home Networking Module, a "middleware," which allows digital "appliances" to be interconnected an operated. "The time has come," Idei declared at a press conference with Bill Gates, "for the PC industry and the AV industry to shake hands."[1]
Idei's comments reflect a thoroughly Sony attitude towards products: create products that build Japan's prestige and raise the standard of living throughout the world. Sony is not the sole company to hold this view - long-time Sony rival Matsushita's (Panasonic's) famed company song has promoted the same ideal for years in one form or other since the mid-1920s[2]
Idei is no longer President of Sony - he later became CEO, was nominated as one of BusinessWeek's "Worst Managers of 2003," and was eventually replaced by Sir Howard Stringer in June of this year.[3]
Backstory: the corporation as social engine
In a passage typical of the The Founding Prospectus in which he laid out his plan for Sony's activities in the years to come, Sony founder Masaru Ibuka wrote:
We must place profit here as a secondary motive.[4] Our service commitment should be pure and total, including even the preparation of a pamphlet that will explain to ordinary customers why their radios are in need of repair[5]
A simple summary of the history of Sony's history of product development might be to say that it was run by very powerful leaders who championed projects to their liking and serving as the ultimate source of power, often allowing high level employees to create strife and later firing them when some unspoken protocol was eventually breached. The heads of the company made many momentous decisions on their own intiative in the face of opossition: rejecting alternate names (such as "Stowaway") for the Sony Walkman, aggressively pushing for Betamax advertising in the face of its inevitable collapse and in spite of its great publicity granted by the Sony Betamax copyright case. Patronage allowed Ken Kutaragi to develop the prototype for the PlayStation with funds generated by the chip he developed for the SNES. Patronage allowed the rise and fall of Mickey Shulhof, who was given the most power a Westerner has ever enjoyed working for a Japanese company - only to have it stripped from him later on. Dogged determination - bordering on obsession at times - seem to better explain the mental state of the heads of Sony for many years after Ibuka. Great things came out of this culture, and some greatly wasteful projects were pursued as well.
a business of numbers
Today Sony is no longer known in the United States as makers of "the portable TV that works." Sony's competition - especially Matsushita, stodgy "maneshita" - "copysonic" - have proven able competitors eager to snap up market share [6]; the percieved premium paid for Sony brand products is considered not worthwhile by many conniseurs of AV products. Sony must fight as never before to remain an industry leader.
This change may well be paralleled by an increasing focus at Sony on black ink, and perhaps Idei himself gives us a hint of this:
In Idei's view, the common ground that will enable what he calls a "unified dispersed" business model will be provided by numbers, the unemotional arithmetic of sales, profit and loss, and measurement..."Business is logical: if we can reduce our business to numbers as bankers do, we won't have to concern ourselves with the psychologies and emotions which lie behind the numbers...In a strategic holding company, you don't need culture."
My purpose in writing this article has not been to lament any percieved lapse on Sony's part in holding true to the standards laid out by their founder so many years ago. Obsession with numbers - the almighty stock price - has taken hold of Corporate America, and competitor Nintendo has been known to make decisions based on 'what's right by the stockholders.'
Rather it has been to reflect on what was said when Bill Gates commented that he viewed Sony's Blu-Ray technology to be "anti-consumer." I was among those who viewed it as Microsoft spreading misinformation, "FUD;" certainly there were many half-remembered stories of Microsoft screwing the consumer and actual incidents. Gates has gone on record as saying that copyright protection schemes might be taken too far, proving detrimental to one's core business as it proved unpopular with consumers [7]. Right now the DRM scene with respect to Microsoft and Sony is not too promising, indeed it is downright troubling: Gates and Co. want content providers to allow consumers to make at least one copy, while the other side would leave that determination up to the provider.
It would be unwise to view Sony as truly committed to user rights - and potentially even unsafe. User-unfriendly copyright protection schemes - even music CDs with integrated device drivers that downgrade CD-ROM drive audio ripping quality - are not unheard of, but Sony has been revealed using a very bold and even dangerous variation of this technology that buries itself in your PC and temporarily patches running processes to work:
Sysinternals.com has the scoop. (http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html)
I've yet to decide what the relevance of all this is to Sony's Blu-Ray system. I personally don't mind the thought of buying a PS3 and supporting this foolishness, knowing that neither its games or media will be playable on non-approved systems and knowing that I won't be able to make copies. That goes with the territory. However, I will draw a line at buying movies for Blu-Ray or buying Sony music CDs for the time being.
My take on all this: picking favorites in this fight is futile and masks the true depth of duplicity capable even by a respected industry insider - yes, for his part, Gates himself is just as interested in putting Microsoft boxes in your rooms as Sony ever has been. Buy the systems for the games, and let the third party make your video disc player.
[1] Information taken from SONY: The Private Life, by John Nathan. I use this source many times throughout this post; it's the definitive Sony history covering events up to 1998, and much better than the English-language Sony-released book from the late 70s - which does have many merits, however, and I plan to use that in the future in revealing early Sony plans for a game system...
[2] "...Doing our best to promote production, Sending our goods to the people of the world, Endlessly and continuously, Like water gushing from a fountain. Grow, industry, Grow, Grow, Grow! Harmony and sincerity! Matsushita Electric!" Hard to attribute this one; Matsuhita's official site has info on early company societies, and various documents on the 'net reference different books for this snippet of the translated song.
[3] Wikipedia.
[4] Again using John Nathan as a source - it is likely he translated the Prospectus on the spot, as he has been an able translator for many important Japanese works, and the translated bits he uses vary slightly from the official Sony one - for example, there is no mention of the lecture series Nathan's translation specifically mentions, but rather "promotion of the education of science among the general public," which may be found here (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/prospectus.html).
[5] The radios in need of repair are likely those units whose shortwave receivers had been disconnected or destroyed by Japanese Military Police during World War II, in order to prevent the public from recieving American broadcast propaganda. One of Ibuka's early employees recollected the humorous state of affairs for Nathan: "Sometimes all the coils had been removed, but often we'd open them and find that a military policeman with a good head had simply clipped the shortwave coil in one spot. All we had to do was solder it together again and the radio was fixed and we could charge for it!" So much for "emphasizing activities of real substance!"
[6] Forbes reported Matsushita's overtaking Sony: http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0112/030_print.html
[7] Wikipedia again, on the page about Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright - Sorry about the excessive/elitist use of footnotes, I got started and couldn't stop ;)