Unusual tech pair teams up in Hollywood

(CNN) -- It's not just politics that makes strange bedfellows. Technology also can create some interesting matchups not found in nature.

Consider the strange pairing of Bill Gates and James Cameron. The Microsoft Corp. chairman and co-founder recently traveled to Hollywood to launch his company's latest multimedia software, Windows Media Player Nine.

Multimedia software lets users access Internet audio and video on their computers, and Gates is promising surround-sound music and DVD-quality video with WMP Nine. That's because he wants people to use his software instead of Real Network's Real Player or Apple's QuickTime. And indeed, comScore Media Metrix says WMP and Real Player are in a dead heat, with about 30 million users each.

But technology firms and the Hollywood content companies are at odds over digital rights protection. The film industry doesn't want to get "Napsterized" -- it doesn't want to find copyrighted movies or TV shows floating around the Internet for free, as is the case with music files, thanks to peer-to-peer networks such as Napster, Morpheus and Kazaa.

So having Gates launch WMP Nine in Hollywood is a little like having new Washington Redskins coach Steve Spurrier shout, "Go 'Skins!" in the middle of downtown Dallas.

"Bill has come down to Hollywood to make this announcement, and that is a first," said Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of "Titanic," "Aliens" and the "Terminator" films who joined Gates for a media tour touting the benefits of WMP Nine.

"[Gates] said, 'You know, let's be partners in this. Let's figure this out so that it is done sanely.' "

Cameron discussed the piracy of "Spiderman" and "Star Wars: Episode II --Attack of the Clones" -- the top-grossing films appeared on the Internet the same weekend they were released in movie theaters.

"Clearly their business was not highly impacted by it," Cameron said. "And in fact, it may have even generated more business. But this has got to work out in a way that with proper DRM [digital rights management] that this can be controlled.

"Otherwise we will have a situation like what happened with the peer-to-peer problems in the music industry, and there will be a loss in revenue in the film industry, and then we won't be able to create the magic that we have in the past."

Gates -- no stranger to run-ins with Congress and the federal government -- said that legislation will play some part in digital rights management.

"There are certainly policy issues that Congress at some point will get involved in, but the details of the technology, and how these things come together, that's got to be done by the engineers in the different industries coming together," he said. "And so we need the right balance, of what the policies are and the innovation [in which] we can play a big role."

Later this year, Gates will roll out a version of his Windows XP operating system that will allow digital recording of TV shows onto personal computers. Does that mean users will be able to e-mail them to friends, thereby incurring the wrath of Hollywood?

"If you are going from one of your own PCs to one of your other PCs, we will in the future make that possible," Gates said. "But we don't allow the distribution that is beyond the rights that you have."