Napster And Legal Movie Distribution

FreakzZ sent us linkage to an MSNBC story which talks about Napster and Hollywood getting in bed together by forming a new start up known as AppleSoup. It doesn't really say what sort of stuff will be on the site, but one can only hope that this isn't just vapor.

Comments

Bad naming

[Corydon76]

Between Apple Computer for all things digital and Apple Corps. for all things musical, I think they will have a hard time retaining that name.

Napster model nonsensical for legal content

[Vassily Overveight]

Why in hell would a major company (i.e. we're not talking garage bands here) that wants to distribute content legally want to use the Napster model, particularly for HUGE content? More than half of my Napster downloads fail, and they're only 3-4 megabytes. What's going to happen when they're 100 or 1000 times that big? And why would you want to make your customers have to go hunting for your products and hope that someone just happens to have them available at the time? If you're distributing content legally and therefore have no reason to fear being sued, wouldn't it make far more sense to put the content on some nice, fast, highly-connected servers at a well-known place and just let people ftp them in peace?

Re:Napster is a demographic

[thesparkle]

The demographic is useful. Youth buys, but only certain things. With the economy such as it is, and many parents both working and spending less time with Jr, many parents are placating children with "stuff". A few years ago, mind you this is quite out of date, the 12-18 year old market, spent on average, about 20Billion a year. This does not include what their parents spend on them for clothes, food, etc. but rather what they personally spend in discretionary income.

The most desirable of demographics remains women, 26-54, however. They are responsible for the sale of big ticket purchases, cars, appliances, etc.

As I learned in marketing class, "A man may decide to buy a car, but a woman decides the features, color, type and price". It may sound outdated, but I know that is what happens in my home.

Re:This is a speculative move

[Fishstick]

He didn't say it _was_ Napster )at lease reading it over a couple times, I don't see it) He did say "the Napster model" which isn't the same thing at all as saying this is Napster.

In bed together?

[(void*)]

But who is f*cking who? :-)

Less facetiously, I am wondering what Napster gets out of this. They'll have to pass on some royalty to Hollywood, and probably will be resticted in the kinds of things they can do to the data.

And what would Hollywood get out of this? If they think this is some cheap way of not hosting the Gigabytes of download, they are just going to be in for a shock. Chances are, Joe Random's harddisk is not going to have as much throughput as they expensive servers, unless Napster is going to do a different model. Then the question comes down to why Napster. I would imagine that some other company would have the relevant experience in setting up high bandwidth streaming servers.

Re:In bed together?

[(void*)]

So why Napster and not say, Cisco, who know much more about setting up high bandwidth servers, giving out proprietry content?

Think.

They haven't heard of FTP, have they

[Dungeon Dweller]

Something tells me, that these people are looking at their options... Hrmm, lets see, real, windows media player, doh, why can't people just get the whole file at once, oh, look, I bet the kind people at Napster could come up with something, and we could save them a lot of legal trouble.

Yes, and now we can set up a buggy distribution network.

Of course, we could have just set up an FTP site. Duh.


We're all different.

CSPAN

[Hard_Code]

Did anyone catch the Future of Digital Music hearing on CSPAN on Saturday? It was excellent. I was just flipping through, and there on CSPAN was some kid, last name Kan, who was listed under Gnutella! I *had* to see what this was about. Actually it was a great hearing. I will be writing Senators Schumer, Leahy and Hatch thanking them for keeping an open mind. They were surprisingly clueful!! The funniest part was when Hatch demanded the RIAA shill to answer the question whether it was legal or not to copy a cd to tape for his wife. She fumbled and backtracked. There was also a joke about the Senate server going down because of people downloading Schumer's voting record. I think their cluefulness should be rewarded with at least a thank you letter of recognition. I will probably post that letter somewhere on Slashdot when I finish it.

IT isn't Napster -- check the story

[davidu]

If someone would read the story they would notice, AppleSoup, the new company, was founded by an early Napster investor and founder (Who left). This not Napster. It is a totally new, different company.

This isn't Napster. Gosh!

-Davidu

Re:Will It Succeed?

[drix]

The problem with Gnutella, and any peer-to-peer ("P2P!", ugh) paradigm for distribution, is that it's just not going to work for movies - not for the feature-length ones that would be the main draw, anyways. Many people speak in ominous tones on Slashdot and in the newsmedia about the copyright cataclysm that will occur with digital video & ripped DVDs as it has so emphatically for music recently. Frankly I just don't see it. There just isn't the bandwidth to pull this off, and there won't be for a long, long time. Just do some simple math - the average MP3 is probably 5mb in size; the average DVD is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-17gb big depending on length. Even at the most conservative estimate, people would need to increase their bandwidth by three orders of magnitude to emulate that speed and convenience of Napster. Companies like Qwest proclaim with alacrity that bandwidth is doubling every few years a la Moore's law. Even in their wildest, most orgasmic bandwidth-filled dreams (you have to see their commercials to know what I'm talking about), I don't think they can concieve of a thousandfold increase anytime soon. Neither can I.

And that's just downloading. The idea that people could actually start serving these behemoth files to other people is just ludicrous - there is even less upstream bandwidth in a consumer connection that downstream, usually.

So you are sort of half right and half wrong. Their advertiser-supported service isn't going to work, but neither will Gnutella. Nothing will. Movies are just such a bigger beast than music. They will take horrendous amounts of time and effort to distribute, and time is the enemy if you've ever used Napster. Most people don't have the patience or goodwill to let some stranger tie up their computer for the next four days finishing their "Driving Miss Daisy" download. The one thing the P2P paradigm was not made for was longevity.

In short, I just don't see digital movie distribution taking off in the near future. Even if people could download at 30mbps off their cable modems, which is a long time coming, it would still take more than a day to polish off a single DVD movie. All but the most dedicated of geeks will just pay the $19.95 at Best Buy and get it over with.

--

Movie Distribution via Napster

[Space]

I'm actually suprised it took this long for this story to get on /. because I heard about it on ZDTV over a month ago. They didnt think it would fly and neither do I. If you use napster for downloading 1-10MB MP3s then you know why it'll never work for multiGB movies. There's nothing wrong with hosting movies on a passworded FTP serv unless the movie companies just want free hosting instead of paying for the bandwidth for downloads.

Re:Movie Distribution via Napster

[beardog]

Actually Napster has nothing to do with AppleSoup. A former executive at Napster has started this company and is no longer associated with the company other then still owning stock. There is a big article in Monday's USAToday about the new company

Doomed to fail.....

[TheReverand]

Ok this is a good idea, take video and share it like Napster. However,

1. They want to charge people.

Noone is going to want to pay for this, especially since it's

2. Proprietary Content

This won't be a place to shoot around your vcd dump of The Matrix, they are going to distribute their own content. Until they are putting up some kind of programming that people know and like there is no hook for people to sign up in the first place. People loved Napster because it's easy to get something that (and this is important) they want for nothing. This program doesn't seem to offer that, and if Valenti jr. is involved, you can believe that they will be keeping close tabs on what goes through the service.

Rev.

Napster is a demographic

[xcedrinod]

Hollywood wants to sell movie tix, etc. etc. to napster users. Took them long enuff. Assuming most people on napster are say, 13-25, what better way to send your message to this most desirable of demographics than get in bed napster?

Read this instead

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a much more interesting article on napster/mp3 in todays LA times--it's an interview with producer Jimmy Iovine:

www.latimes.com/business/20000717/t000066998.html

This is a speculative move

[Jon Erikson]

I've already read comments about how this is premature, downloads are still too slow etc. etc. but I don' think that's the point of this at all. My thought is that rather than attempting to be a "finished" product this is more an attempt at a proof of concept - that the Napster model can be used in a way that the industry (movies in this case) can accept.

Using this they can test out different approaches to things like security, validation, pricing and so on without the dangers of designing a system from scratch to be their Big Thing. The things they learn from this will be used to then develop future systems when using the Internet to stream TV-on-demand and feature-length films is viable.

---
Jon E. Erikson

Re:This is a speculative move

[happystink]

This is not Napster even, it's just investors, and I can't really see them sinking a toni of cash into a proof of concept they'll get nothing out.

So, Napster is NOT "their" Big Thing. It's a different company. It's nice that you read the /. comments, but maybe read the article too.

Too Good to be True?

[Captain Derivative]

Before we start celebrating about how AppleSoup is going to give some legitimacy to Napster-type file sharing systems, read the article, especially this sentence:

"As for what will be carried over the networks, Biondi said he expects short videos to be distributed first, but eventually he envisions the Internet having either network television on demand or its own programming, or a combination."

It sounds like Hollywood is planning on using AppleSoup as a platform to have other computers host videos it wants to distribute. In this sense, it wouldn't really be a file-sharing system, but a way to take the load off of their own servers when Hollywood starts moving toward computer-based distribution. In other words, you can share only what they want you to share. Also, from the article:

"AppleSoup promises to actively police its network to try to find and weed out any file that is violating copyright law."

I'm wondering how they plan to do this. My best guess is that AppleSoup will have a list of the "only" legitimate files allowed to be distributed. Again, this will allow AppleSoup to distribute only what Hollywood wants. There's a good chance, in my opinion, that the average Joe won't be able to post his own homemade shorts or anything. "Actively polic[ing]" the system sounds like they're going to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist.

And of course, the article doesn't say what format these videos will be in. Possibly something specific to AppleSoup, and I'd bet they aren't going to release software for the average user to create these files either.

At least, that's the feeling I get from reading this article.

--
"Better dead than smeg."

Why Applesoup?

[job2.12]

Why would Hollywood invest in a "napster" company?

This is probably more of a pre-emptive maneuver by the movie industry, the music industry has been reduced to playing a defensive game, reacting to developments on the Internet i.e. suing. Offering pay-per-view downloads won't work if there's anything like the piracy in the music industry.
Because of bandwith issues, the threat to video hasn't really materialized yet, but eventually the bandwidth will arrive, and by that time they'll have learned a lot about this type of filesharing.

Why would Napster do this (or ex-employees of Napster)?

Napster is not really a winning business model is it?

They're dealing with lawsuits, competition (freenet, gnutella), and a bad image towards investors, legitimacy and an exit strategy are probably the main factors.

Read the press Release

[miss_america]

Read the Offical Press Release here.

Napster gets to survive

[FreeUser]

Less facetiously, I am wondering what Napster gets out of this.

One thing they get out of this is some serious ammunition in their ongoing court case against the RIAA Cartel.

The courts might be persuaded to ignore the rights of a legitimate company, if it is percieved to have a product which is primarily used for "illigetimate" purposes (this has happened before - Bong makers in some states, whos tobacco product is banned because most users use it for marijuana instead). However, if the company has a product with a clearly legitimate use, and an alliance with Hollywood is a pretty high profile "legitimate" use, the RIAA will likely be slam dunked for trying to strong arm them out of existence.

And if the deals with Hollywood prove to onerous, napster can withdraw after the trial is over.

Re: Will It Succeed?

[Bernal KC]

First, we know next to nothing about AppleSoup, what it will distribute, what IP protections they will ofer, or what their revenue model will be. I bet they haven't nailed much of this down yet either.

But one thing is pretty clear. If they are distributing media files that are larger than MP3 they will not rely on Joe Consumer to serve up the files.

If Napster did offer IP protection, industry distributors would log into the Napster network with big honkin servers that could serve up quality MP3s at optimal bandwidth. These servers would be advertised; they would be on-line at all times. We would all learn to keep them on our hotlist and use them in preference to Joe Bloe's random PC. (And Napster would undoubtedly enhance their support for hotlist to make it all work well.)

I don't have any answer to the physical problems of sharing multi-gig files. But do not assume that Napster is the end all, be all of peer to peer networks. Once the legal issues are settled, service will improve and the distribution model will be more valuable.

What about advertisements?

[Unhappy Windows User]

As with normal TV, why don't they just use advertising to generate revenue, and keep the downloads free? Makes life easier for all of us. And they can then encourage individuals to distribute their content, rather than labelling such people as "pirates". Most people wouldn't bother editing an MPEG to get rid of all the adverts (someone recently had this idea with MP3s).

But then again, the motion picture industry could just be too greedy and try to make money both ways...

Oxymoron of the week: "Secure Digital"

Re: Will It Succeed?

[drix]

Right - I actually included that idea in my post but took it out later because I thought I was rambling. Obviously, the only way that this has a prayer of working is with some beefy servers and big, fat internet connections. Even then it's too much of a stretch given today's technology, but I guess that could at least be concievable in a few years.

However, the company's press release contradicts pretty much everything you say:

AppleSoup's peer-to-peer solution connects members' hard drives to create a global, virtual library of non-infringing content. When a member requests a specific piece of digital content, AppleSoup sends him or her directly to another member's hard drive within a matter of seconds to retrieve the file. The platform makes a plethora of specific, valued information available to the masses, without the cumbersome scalability issues of the central server model.

There you have it. These aren't stupid people, judging from their backers, so I'd say they know a bit more than they're letting on in their release. Nevertheless, the idea seems just totally brain-dead as it stands now.

--

AppleSoup?

[angelo]

Aren't they going to have problems when AAPL sues them for taking their name? The even InterCapped the name.

Then again, I could go on about the silliness behind a name like AppleSoup. How strange

Also, How long till whatever encryption they use gets cracked? Problems ahead indeed.

Perhaps I'm dis-illusioned from being subjected to Ads on TV, at movie theaters, and so forth. Hollywood.com and a few others in the theatres, and every DotCom under the sun on every channel imaginable. They now have a talk-over-the-web product that will do nothing but increase the required bandwidth of the net AND increase the minimum speed of InHell processors. Frankly, we don't need any more startups. Go away!

Your resident Dot Grump..

Will It Succeed?

[LaNMaN2000]

With unregulated content-neutral file sharing programs like Gnutella around, I fail to see the advantage of using an advertiser-supported service that bans copyrighted content. If one feels morally obliged not to download pirated material, he can still use Gnutella to find the legal files that he is looking for. Even for the service's target audience, there is no benefit to using this service and no cost-advantage that would justify paying a subscription fee.

I fully support the industry's attempt to use a distributed distribution mechanism for legal media, but I think that they need to add value to such a service if they want it to succeed. Value-added services like real-time voice chats with celebrities, access to movies and music before they officially debut, etc. that cannot be replicated by Napster/Gnutella are what is needed to drive such a service.

Good idea

[PenguinX]

I could get cynical about MPAA delving into the motion picture industry, but I won't. Fact of the matter is that the movie industry needs to change even more radically then the music industry. Theatres (at least to my understanding) do not generally turn a profit - especially on movies that don't attract large crowds. And for movies that do attract large crowds (E.g. X-Men) the theatre is unable to turn a profit due to licensing and fees imposed. Movies are a growing industry in the making part, but the actual showing of them has become so terribly expensive and overrated that most people do not want to go to see one - they will just kozmo it =).

Being that as it is I imagine that we will see AppleSoup be a completely different method of being able to buy a movie. Something like pay 20 dollars for a theatre ticket, and get the ability to download the movie - or get the DVD for an extra 3 bucks. This would piss off video rental stores, but remember they haven't been turning a profit lately either.

The eventual dream (as I see it for AppleSoup) is for movies to become more pervasive such as what Napster did for the music industry. Regardless of if the music industry will accept it. Napster has created millions of loyal music fans most of whom I guarentee buy more CD's now then they did prior.

What it comes down to is this, old media is no longer profitable, and entire industries would rather not kill the cultural significance that a movie theatre generates. And I doubt that MPAA wants to go out completely - so who knows it could work.(technical impossibilities aside)

Re:Sounds like a good use for DivX ;-) t me...

[Flounder]

And this isn't the sames as MP3 i.e. downloading whole tracks - the trailers may make people go out and buy DVDs.

Unless they download whole movies that have been DivX ;-) -ed. Between downloading ripped DVD movies and new movies, I'll never rent a movie or go to a theatre again.

Yes, the quality of DivX ;-) movies aren't close to DVD. But, like MP3, they're close enough for most of us. And some of us don't have a DVD player yet.

Yes, new release movies are pretty crappy quality when downloaded (especially cam and telesync). But it sure saved me a bunch of money I would have spent to see such lamers as Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scary Movie, and Gone in 60 Seconds. And, after seeing The Patriot via the net, I've seen it in the theatre twice.

I can d/l mp3 and movies over the net. Now, if only I can download groceries!