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(Almost) Free Movies On-Line... Sorta

Snaller writes "See the latest movies on the net? Its possible - apparently the law in Taiwan says that for a movie to be protected by copyright law one has to apply for such protection within a month after the opening in the theaters. This rarely happens and as a consequence movie88 has opened a virtual movieplex: See any of their films for 1 dollar. The movie is streamed in a format that doesn't allow you to save it on the harddrive, but for that 1 dollar you can view it anytime and as much as you like for 3 days. The selection includes movies like "Shrek", "Legally Blonde","American Pie 2","Gone with the wind", James Bond and Batman." Yeah this'll last. Right. But it really demonstrates what TV will be like in the future when you have access to thousands of movies. And the buck a film rate strikes me as awesome. I'd watch a lot more movies if they were only a buck.

9 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Re:right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nevermind. It's been done. (And turns out <weirdformat&gt==real audio. Yawn.)

  2. Re:US Law vs. Taiwanese Law by tlk+nnr · · Score: 5, Informative
    I wonder how much sway MPAA has in Taiwan. Certainly in the US this little "problem" would be fixed quickly...

    Better mark Taiwan up on the Axis of Evil list too..
    That's due to being too friendly with China:
    According to the Bern convention, you don't need to register for copyright protection.
    But Taiwan was thrown out of the UN and most international bodies, in order to please China.
    And thus Taiwan couldn't take part in the negotiations, didn't modify it's national laws.
    Nice sideeffect.
  3. Re:Balls by karmma · · Score: 3, Informative
    These guys definitely have gonads. Not only are they throwing a big "up yours" to the MPAA. but they are also charging for access to hit TV shows like "Friends."

    Umm... there are places in the world that have access to the internet and *don't* have access to NBC broadcasts. Think globally.
  4. Re:O well by Calle+Ballz · · Score: 4, Informative

    They use Real (sucky)...

    You don't really have to crack it. I've noticed they technique they use to make it difficult to change around links. they open up a no permission browser window and then from there redirect to the link of the actual .rm or .ram file that you are streaming off of. If you have any sort of network monitor you'll be able to see the exact URL where you can download the file and save it to your hard disk.

  5. Re:slashdotted? by spudnic · · Score: 2, Informative

    It does appear to be quite slow navigating the site, but the streaming seems very solid.

    .

    --
    load "linux",8,1
  6. Non-copyright infringing uses by Chris+Hiner · · Score: 2, Informative

    They've got some pre-1923 movies, that are out of copyright now. Look in the classics section. Imagine a service like this, if copyright only lasted 20 years...

  7. Re:O well by kryptkpr · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not quite so easy.
    Once you've got the .RAM file, it contains a URL inside it (probably a pnm:// or rtsp://), and you will need a program that's

    a) capable of saving these streams, and
    b) capable of re-building the index block that required to view streaming RM video offline

    and there's only one that I know of that's capable of doing this: Streambox VCR

    --
    DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
  8. Re:Imagine the time that went into this. by -Surak- · · Score: 2, Informative

    Some of them at least are sourced from VHS tapes. The Frankenstein movie they are running for free today had some noticable tracking errors and other glitches from low quality video tape.

    Also, that movie at least was 4:3, so they could avoid reformatting it.

    Granted, the quality of the source material sucks, and even the 300k stream quality isn't as good as it could be, but film purists are not going to be watching movies on a PC screen over the net.

  9. Automatic grabber script by aardvarko · · Score: 2, Informative
    Here's a shell script for automagically retrieving movies from movie88.com:


    tcpdump -s 4096 -w /tmp/tcpdump.out &
    sleep 15s
    killall tcpdump
    grep -a http://210.5 /tmp/tcpdump.out >tcpdump.url
    wget -U "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)" -i tcpdump.url
    rm /tmp/tcpdump.out


    I believe that the tcpdump requires root privileges.

    Here's how to use it:
    1. load up movie88 on your Linux machine (with properly configured RealPlayer) or another machine on the same hub - Windoze works fine for this.
    2. 'order' a movie. It should show you a list of all movies that you've ordered, with a button for 300Kb/s.
    3. run this script on your Linux machine.
    4. Click the 300Kb/s link in your browser.

    tcpdump will intercept the RealPlayer's request and pass it along to wget.

    Voila!