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'Harry Potter' Offered (Legitimately) on the Net
Skyshadow writes "Warner Brothers is distributing several movies, including Harry Potter and Mars Attacks via the internet. The price is the same as I pay for Pay-Per-View from my satellite provider ($3.99 for a 24 license), and the movies are in the area of 700 megs. I'm sure that movies on demand will eventually take off as a legitimate and feasible distribution method, but given that a vast majority of US households are without broadband, is this an idea before its time?"
I figure it would take me about, oh, 24 hours to download a movie...
I see this ending as badly as the Circuit City DIVX attempt did. the "CinemaNow" software will be cracked, and we'll see these movies all over the newsgroups in a matter of days. Microsoft, who came up with the anti-piracy CinemaNow scheme, has admitted that they don't necessarily engineer for security, so I wonder what makes WB think they can start now?
What the what!?! Amidst all this lagal brick-a-brack and industry association B.S. a company is actually doing something that reflects a real consumer market?
Somebody please ask the flying pig if hell has frozen over.
crazy dynamite monkey
Which will be hacked to allow unlimited playtime in... 3...2...1...
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
It would be really cool if someone who previously DL'ed the movie could cache the movie for others in the local network. This is where STB technology will really make things like this affordable/profitable. Imagine a box that anticipates your viewing and downloads stuff overnight...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Here in Canada, I don't know ONE PERSON who doesn't have broadband -- even among people who don't know how to use a mouse-wheel. Beyond ranting, it is my feeling that US broadband is far behind the times, and must catch up. Hopefully the new demand created by services such as this one will help to move the market forward.
I quess that points to Windows Media DRM which uses this kind of architecture.
Once there is a digital copy on a PC, whatever timebomb exists to limit viewing to 24 hours can be stripped. It might take some time for hackers to develop something, but it will happen. The risk here is that $3.99 is a reasonable price compared to DVD/VHS rentals, but is it really enough to cover the bandwidth/hosting costs for a popular title from a service provider perspective? 700 mb in the 1mbit bit cap world (e.g. any high speed in canada now it seems) will take some time to download, also, from a consumer perpsective. This sounds like a really good option, but I'm still skeptical if it's got the right price point/features to be successful... also, all it needs to be is hacked once and then kazaa/bearshare/limewire/etc will get you all the free copies you need.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
...renewals of the license are cheap. (Provided that the big honking file can actually be reused.)
:^)
I don't think I'm ready to pay $2.99 or even $1.99 every time I want to watch the movie. Maybe $0.99, but even that would get old after a while.
After 5-10 viewings, I'm better off having bought the DVD, since that's got infinite viewings (theoretically speaking) and resale value.
As much as we live in a virtual world nowadays, humans still like shiny material things they can hold in their hands. Hard to see how a timelocked file can overcome that urge to "own".
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I know it can be a foolish position to maintain on this site, but I strongly support the emergence of (open, cross-platform, fair) DRM technology.
As someone who makes his living from what I write, I know that I wouldn't release my work to widespread, instantaneous copying unless I knew I could secure some of my own rights as to how that copying takes place. Many other individuals (as well as big, greedy corporations) feel the same. The fundamental idea is that before I hand you the keys to my car, I want to know whether you can run out back and give my car away to a dozen of your buddies - or strangers.
So as long as DRM is reasonable about fair use, stops the majority of people from doing the wrong thing (and can more-or-less keep up with the bleeding-edge crackers), I look forward to it. This way I can get the downloadable movies, music, and text that I want, while actually supporting the person who made it all for my pleasure.
But man, I wish that software was available for Mac or Linux.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
I figure this is a test. They want to see if people will copy it.
I would be willing to bet they've got something in there which they can look for to prove that any given copy of the film came from the download site. So then they can point to it and say "see - people do copy things and pass them round once they've downloaded them from the net". And it will make a great lobbying tool for them to use to get all the anti-piracy legislation through that they want.
Hmmm... sorry... maybe I'm just feeling a bit pessemistic today.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
New studies indicate that Linux users never buy movies online, showing once and for all that linux users are evil h4x0rz who steal for fun and torture puppies. More at 11.
(I'd go check the site myself, but I don't have a flash plugin for my browser so I was stuck on the front page)
I think it's hilarious that a company is, for once, not stepping blindly on the rights of consumers and experimenting with a delivery method that utilizes broadband in a way that slashdot readers and geeks all over have been asking for for some time, and all I see in the comments are people saying it won't work. What the hell is wrong with you guys? do you like ANYTHING?
In this case, I believe stuff like this will drive the demand for higher bandwidth. Up until now, if you didn't game, porn or warez, then getting off of dialup had no practicle applications. As these sort of services start to take off, assuming high quality, having a better connection to view it might become more important to your average user.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Ta add to you theory read this:
Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision protection
I don't think so. Two reasons: this is what plenty of posters here are waiting for, and the other thing is: it's easy, and it's there for you.
What do I mean with the second thing? It's the convenience, stupid. If I can download it always whenever I want it, for not so much money (okay, 3.99 is a bit steep, but that's new films - for older ones, consider 0.99 realistic), in guaranteed quality, then I might just as well not bother with cracking the stream (we're talking mass audience here, not hackers) and loading up my hard disk with something I might only watch another couple of times, if that. Downloading from P2P (in my experience) typically is hard work, trying to get the right stream, figuring out that the file is rotten, having no guaranteed feed and so on.
Apart, this might just be the killer application that triggers the breakthrough of broadband. Who knows.
Hurricane Application Group, Dept of Meteorology Control, Ministry of Proactive Defense
Because of the following:
Which would you rather have:
Full-blown DVD, 5 days for $3-5, or:
Download - 1 day for $4?
I'd pick the DVD.
They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...and now the big W has finally done it! Go Warner! Ok, so the price point is still slightly high (don't these guys do price-elasticity studies?), but the fact remains: this is how everybody here has been wanting the studios to update their businessmodel. And what do I see? Whining about how the security will be cracked. This proves that most people on /. are warez-ers and leechers. Because you should be giving them kudos for this step, not ragging them off.
Hurray Warner bros for (finally, maybe even too late and too expensively, but finally nontheless) seeing the light!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
everything. Bitch bitch bitch. I think that this is very encouraging. Leaving aside the pain of actually having to watch it on a small screen or having a tv-out card, I think this is a step in the right direction. Of course, a 700 meg download isn't exactly video on demand either....;)
DECSS was not an attempt to get free content, it was an attempt to play content on something other than a M$ box that had bought and paid for.
Will this play on my OS X box or has M$ closed this off?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I hate the phrase "chilling effect." Nevertheless, it's a good point. I also wonder about the bandwidth cost on Warner's end.
I tried a service like that called Intertainer from my broadband company, Zoomtown. The streaming video broke down, and became like a series of slides. There was just not enough bandwidth to make it work.
Movies streaming over the net could be a great alternative to cable and satellite TV if they could get it to work, but what I have seen so far was too poor in quality.
I got a free wireless audio/video transmitter to watch streaming video in the living on my TV for trying Intertainer. That at least was cool.
How ya like dat?
That's backwards. There need to be more things that increase the consumer demand for broadband. What broadband needs (and the Internet as a whole) is the next "killer app" to rekindle its growth and further legitimize. I spent much of the dotcom boom watching the pundits desperately search for this next killer app. One day it was "push" technology, the next it was Java. The next it was this and that and the other. Mosaic and the propogation of the WWW into the public consciousness was a killer app. MP3 was a killer app. Broadband is out there but there are a lot of "average users" who don't see much they can do with it.
I agree about the impulse purchase part but imagine if you could setup some sort of client to schedule downloads for viewing in the future. Kinda setup your own tv schedule? That would be cool. oh, btw, how was King's effort "dishonest" ?
Welcome to the future boys and girls. Divx (think circuit city) may have failed, but it's what media companies want, so it's what they'll make consumers "want".
Pretty soon, EVERYTHING will be "licensed" instead of bought. I can't wait to get my Microsoft House(TM) with Human Rights Management(TM), this condo of mine is getting cramped!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Strangely enough, I actually don't mind the use of DRM in this situation. It is basically an online video rental shop (remember when most video stores were only one day rentals?). Just as it was supposed to be difficult (too difficult to be worthwhile) to copy video tapes, it is supposed to be too difficult to be worthwhile to copy these files.
Sure the determined user will probably find away around this, just as people defeated macrovision, and sure it will become easy, just as dual-deck VCRs made copying videos easy. But, even though it is possible to copy the videos that you rent from the shop, most people don't. Perhaps it will be the same with this system.
Perhaps this is actually a viable business model for DRM.
Note: I only say this is viable from the "video rental" standpoint. I do not and will not agree with the DRM-ing of anything I buy. Cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Sure, that is more than enough to cover hosting/bandwidth costs. For a high bandwidth site, there are download services that will serve your downloads for less than $1/GB (I know of one that offers $.75/GB, and I have heard of one in the $.50/GB range). And remember that these ISPs even make a profit at these rates. If such a movie distribution service were to take off, they could justify cutting out the middle man and serving the files directly, reducing their costs further.
They came damn close this time to actually using the internet well and giving their customers what they want. But the 24-hour license kills it, and proves once again that the movie studios just don't want us to own anything any more.
Downloadable movies for $3.99 that the user then OWNS would be a great way to allow people to "try things out" or beef up my movie library for cheap...it would give people more value for their money. And I have NO doubt that it would have no affect on DVD sales - if someone is willing to pay for the movie but not the extras, they aren't going to buy a DVD version anyway!
I have downloaded movies off P2P services before, but ONLY movies that I saw in the theater and I only keep them until the DVD comes out and then I throw them away. I'd LOVE to be able to do this without breaking the law, and I'd be willing to pay $4 a movie to do it - as LONG as I can keep the movie if I choose. Is giving the users that choice so anathema to the movie studios?
Well, there are those who have laptops with decent video and sound out. I could download the film, then just connect it to the TV and watch like that.
Cheers,
Ian
Sure, it's great to be able to download a movie anytime you want but, I frear that the net can't handle it.
Lets fast-forward a few years. Everyone has xDSL or cable and everyone downloads or streams their movies. At 700+ MB per movie and possibly per person what is the internet going to be like? I know that there is presently excess bandwidth available and that there is supposed to be a fair bit of dark fibre but, is there really enough. How much bandwidth will be left for email and surfing, not to mention IP phones, when everybody is downloading their movies?
Today, it is possible for several people in a household to be watching several different movies at the same time but, on different channels. What will it be like when those same people are all downloading a 700+ MB film? Remember that their neighbors will be doing the same thing with possibly different films at slightly different times. What will it be like when, rather than broadcasting 100 streams to millions of viewers, there are millions of streams. Many of these streams will be the same, as is the case with broadcast, but they will be separate because they will be out of phase time wise.
It all seems grossly inefficient to me and I don't believe that the internet or even Internet2 can handle the kind of traffic that this will produce and still remain usable.
A lot of people are saying that the file format is bound to be cracked, but I think that Microsoft did a pretty good job on this one. Media files with a time bomb has been here for a few years in Windows Media Player. I remember downloading the Mission Impossible 2 theme from the official site which was in windows media and it had a 30-day life, after that, it wouldn't play. I've never found (thought I've never really searched also) or never heard since then of a software that rips the content and converts it to an insecure format. Same thing with videos. Microsoft has done a good job of making this thing secure it seems. Sure, it still doesn't defeat an analog solution, but then, what does?
I have Time Warner cable:
We know have video on demand here which means I can order Harry Potter and watch it anytime I want for an eight hour period. This sounds much better than waiting to for a huge download and watching the movie on my pc!
Its also a little cheaper... $3.95 for new movies and $1.95 for older ones.
That's exactly what they want. Then there's a better case for the CBDTPA, making TCPA/digital restrictions management (DRM) required. And who holds a patent on DRM?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Considering that if things are crowded that day 8 of your 24 hour license is spent actually downloading the file. Echoing the bandwidth cost concern the only clever way I could see this working is if you ordered in advance and it downloaded the day before you wanted it... Pay Per View has so many more legitimate advantages and Idon't even use that. Does this maybe play into that crippled multimedia PC story I saw a few days ago?
Heh. I'm sure that an internet connection is required to play the movie, and that it will be checking some (somewhat) secure time reference that the user doesn't control.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
The cost isn't that big, and this is EXACTLY what we've been asking for all this time. Don't think of it like renting a movie, think of it more like voting with your dollars, showing that this is the kind of system you'd like to have in the future.
Why would I choose to do this? Let's assume that their copy protection scheme works as planned and it is only good for 24 hours. What exactly is the value added against going to a video store
Even on a broadband connection we're talking hours before it's downloaded and viewable. I can practically run to the video store and back before the popcorn is done popping.
Quality wise it is inferior in both video and audio. Compare the video display on an hdtv (or standard for that matter) and a 5:1 surround sound system.
Price wise, well, it gets me nothing. At least with videos my money is going towards supporting a local economy.
Everytime I buy a DVD I would like for them to also offer me a downloadable version of the movie. Sometimes I just need to have the movie on my computer to and sure I can copy it myself but why can't they do it for me?
This way makes it a lot easier for me. I wanna be able to save the scenes I want, show a funny scene to my friends, etc. It comes in handy for Simpsons episodes.
click all features, then in the top 'sort by' column, click 'free'. click a film and log in as slashdot:slashdot. (I didn't make the account, someone beat me to it.) if you want to use your own acct (or if Mr. Slashdot changes his PW) the registration is just name, email, age, gender, password, and they don't require a real address--a@a.com works just fine. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Everyone and their dog already has a pirated copy of Harry Potter. I just got a copy of pirated Harry Potter in the mail yesterday as a free sample. If I went into CompUSA I could probably buy a 10-pack of pirated Harry Potter for $6.99.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Then there's the competition angle. A lot of broadband is provided over cable TV lines. Cable companies do their own Pay-Per-View.
If this takes off, watch broadband providers start placing monthly caps on consumed bandwidth and start charging per gig over it, adding to the cost of the movie download. Hell, they are already wanting to do this...
As usual, the hearing impaired users get the shaft.
There is no support for subtitling or closed captioning. This is a very scary trend as more movies are available using the internet. Even though MS's Media player and Real's RealPlayer support captioning, I have seen very little use of this feature. Now that these movies are available for download, how are the hearing impaired users going to be able to enjoy the movies? What about foreign language support? With DVD's, you were able to turn on/off subtitling at will.
Sidebar: It took an act of government (as I understand it) and the FCC mandated closed captioning on 13" and larger TV's. Eventually, the FCC mandated that new programming (with exceptions) be closed captioned on the airwaves, phasing in to 100% by 2007 (barring extensions). More info is here.
Will the same happen for the internet content? I believe that subtitling/captioning support should have been done from the beginning because it's cheaper to add in features from the beginning than it is to go back later and add the features that should have been included in the first place.
Alright, enough ranting. Blockbuster still gets my money because I can still can access captioning and subtitles from their DVD's and VHS's. God forbid should they try to copy Cinemanow's approach and do the same thing, discard subtitling/captioning support....
I'm not sure what to say. On one hand, I see your point about the cost being equal to a hardcover book. On the other hand, I see the old "charge whatever the market will bear" coming to the fore. I suppose that in my mind, it was his version of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. The shadowmarch site looks interesting, btw.
A DOMESTIC INCIDENT
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24 HOURS TO KILL
Mickey Rooney plays an American smuggler stuck in Beruit in this exciting action thriller with several twists and turns.
MR. BILL'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL
Tune in for some of Mr. Bill greatest hits...plus several of Sluggo's, too. No fan should go without this compilation of greatest moments!
A GLEAM OF HOPE
A Hong Kong detective on assignment in China awakens to find his dead lover's body beside him. Knowing that he will be sentenced to death, he must escape arrest.
ADDICTED TO MURDER (I II and III)
Two vampires in one lifetime is not a coincidence. The more Joel's drawn into the vampiric vortex the more he becomes aware of his own horror.
AMERICAN TRAGEDY
The OJ Simpson trial. It was an epic trial. The outcome was controversial and the events that led to the judgement hold a sordid tale of their own. Starring VING RHAMES.
AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR PARENTS WERE WEIRD!
A couple of wiz kids build a robot, but when their dad's ghost winds up inside, this family gets really weird.
ASIAN DOLLS UNCUT VOLUME 13
China Doll (a 21 year old blonde), Tammy Lee (a 22 year old), Kimmi Kann (a Filipino cutie in her first video), Tina Toy & Mayumi will all show you what it really means to be an Asian Doll.....
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In order to capture a serial rapist, two beautiful policewomen go undercover as club hostesses.
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I can't imagine paying for this crap (except ASIAN DOLLS UNCUT VOLUME 13). I'd venture this stuff didn't even maket it direct-to-video. Frankly, I couldn't go through 80 pages of CASTLE ORGIES (3,000 girls are hand-picked for the Shogun to satisfy his insatiable lust). On second-thought...
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
If you record using a card based on the brooktree bt848/bt878 chipset, your recording software (which might have to be modified to grab the 25 line vbi information, since it's given in a different buffer, iirc) can also record the caption information from the VBI, and overlay it using some kind of OSD. I don't know if there's a consumer digital recording system, however, that preserves the VBI data within the file. I've always wanted to make one (don't have time to do much independent coding these days), or know if one existed, though.
A solution to the problem with music today
Like the 2 hours that you need to basically dedicate your broadband connection to download the movie, the 700MB of local disk space to store the movie, and the obligatory reboot that will be required somewhere along the way because it _must_ be a Windows machine.
#include
By midyear, the Harry Potter DVD had shipped 6,550,000 units (#1 for the year).
The studios should see this as proof that if they sell a reasonable package at a reasonable price, people WILL buy it. Yup, piracy sure is killing this business, isn't it?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
"Not only is our prehistoric hero flying a hanglider... But he's doing it over a MODERN CITY!!" - Crow T. Robot
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
First, as others have stated, this may be just what broadband needs. Also, the high prices may be in the beginning- I know for the video rental business, prices have gone down a bit(at least relative to inflation) and rental periods have gone up as the business gets bigger. More volume, you get more revenues and can afford to cut prices to spur more volume. That may be part of the high prices here. If this turns out to be profitable, I'd expect to see prices drop a little or at least a longer rental period. In addition to more movies being available, and perhaps even a few really old movies available for outright purchase. If they add a link to purchase the DVD, this could take off even more.
i tried a classic login/passwd: cypherpunks/cypherpunks
and lo and behold, it works! enjoy.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
They are basically treating existing broadband users as a test market. What they learn now will inform how the procced along these lines in the future.
Thank the accountants who finally realised that:
6.5 million units * the per-unit cost of licensing macrovision > the margin on the remarkably low priced harry potter dvd * the number of people who would have bought it but copied it instead
As many other posters have pointed out, $3.99 for one day is pretty steep compared to a four or five day rental at a video store for a similar price.
But the real problem is convenience. A higher price might be worth it if it was more convenient. At 1Mb/s, however (which is a very common "broadband" speed), this movie will take between 1.5 and 2 hours to download, and that's if your getting the full bandwidth of your connection. Problem is, I can drive down to the local video store and back five times in that amount of time, and then have a movie I can keep for four days, not 24 hours. The convenience is just not there at today's broadband speeds. Change the speed to 10Mb/s and things might be different.
Sure, sometimes the corner video store is out of the movie I want to rent, but that doesn't happen all that often, and I can always drive to the next video store (remember, I can drive to four or five in the two hours it will take to download the movie).
The second problem is the cost of the broadband connection, as slow as it is, which must be factored into the cost of the downloaded movies. In my area, a DSL connection costs around $35 more than a dial-up. If, for many users, the only reason they need a broadband connection is to download movies, then this overhead must be added into the cost of downloading movies, which will make them look even more expensive compared to video store rental unless you watch literally dozens of movies per month.
The overall problem is that with the current speeds and cost of broadband connections, the corner video store distribution model is still tough to compete with, both on convenience and cost. Again, when the bandwidth of broadband goes up by a factor of 10 and the price comes down as well (not likely to happen in the next few years at least), then things will change.
No need to go to the video store.
If you're only keeping the movies for a day or two it comes out to $3/movie - Probably closer to $2 or less.
I have Netflix and I love it.
The cost of this isn't worth the convenience, especially with Netflix out there.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm also a lazy bum.
But with Netflix, who cares? Yes, there's a bit of a delay if I REALLY REALLY want to see a particular movie. But in general, I'm fed with a constant stream of movies, usually faster than I get around to watching them, at what probably averages to $3 a movie or less. (Depending on how quickly I get around to watching em')
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Cnet puts the
My other first post is car post.
I could download the film, then just connect it to the TV and watch like that.
Or attach it to your VCR and tape it!
Analog will always defeat any digital copy protection, you just won't get a digital quality copy. But 700Mb/movie you're not getting DVD quality to begin with.
Near me is a $.99 DVD rental machine. I could rent the Harry Potter DVD (which has been pointed out isn't macrovision protected), buy a blank VHS tape, bring both home, copy the DVD to VHS (while watching it if I so desire), and return the DVD to the rental machine in about the same amount of time it would take me to download this over my 640kbs DSL line.
And I would end up with a pretty good quality VHS copy of the movie for only $2 instead of $3.99.
While I admire Warner for giving this a try, I can't but feel a little bit skeptical of the fact that the announcement came just a week after AOL Time Warner announced that they had teamed up with broadband provider Covad for their AOL service - might this be more of a way to build a user base for that service instead of get more people to pay to see the movie?
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I'd pick the DVD. They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
Why? You're also paying for the convenience of downloading the movie over broadband without ever leaving your home, remember. I frequently pay NetFlix more money than I would at Blockbuster, just so I can get anime DVDs the stores don't carry and have them delivered right to my home.
Eventually the record companies are going to have to recognize a few things:
Anyway, personal rant. I would LOVE to able to BUY digital music and movies and make my own mixes. This is a step in the right direction! JR
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Since they are providing the movie as an individual download from their server, each download should be unique. I would be very surprised if they did not watermark each download in such a way that it could be traced back to whoever originally paid for the movie (credit card, or whatever). This should make it harder to pirate the movie, because of the danger of being caught if the pirate failed to strip the watermark completely (not easy, if hidden well and the original is unavailable).
Also, I would be very surprised if they did not require an Internet connection to activate the movie once it has finished downloading. The 24-hour timer could then start at that point. It would be extremely unfair to start the 24-hour timer before the movie has completely finished downloading, as many of those hours could be used up by a slow download! Each viewing of the movie probably also requires an Internet connection, as pointed out earlier, if only to connect to an external trusted clock (it would be otherwise trivial to change the computer's clock to defeat the 24-hour timer).
Think it will succeed? $3.99 is a competitive price with Blockbuster and other conventional video stores. However, the selection is very poor. HP is clearly an experiment by the studio, as they released it on DVD without Macrovision. They took a leap of faith there, and they are doing it again with this Internet download offer. They are waiting for results before offering any other major film (hence their padding of the service with only obscure B-movies).
I'd be interested in knowing the piracy rates for HP versus a similiar major film; my bet is that the lack of certain copy protection measures doesn't make a difference, as the DVD format has already been cracked six ways from Sunday. Affordable downloads are the way to go to defeat P2P, making it easier and less frustrating to get the content legitimately!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
If you don't want a topic to come up, don't mention it. Certainly, don't base your entire premise around that point and then ask that it not be questioned.
"Piracy", as in, unauthorized duplication, is *not* stealing. Stealing refers, specifically, to taking something tangible away from the owner.
It is many things, immoral often being one of them, but it isn't stealing.
Words have precise meanings; don't muddle them up to support your opinions, you rapist. (By which, of course, I mean someone who uses the words incorrectly.)
Second, by using a computer they are encouraging hacking. It is true that a proprietary set-top-box could be hacked. But, if they make their own set-top-box, they can add all sorts of encryption in hardware and software.
/. community has been asking for. I don't want Circut City's Divx V2.0. I didn't buy it then, I don't want to buy it now. I want to be able to pay a resonable price ($4 is ok) and download a copy of a movie I can put on VCD. $4 for a VCD quality movie seems like a resonable deal to me, but I have to be able to view it as many times and whenever I feel like it. If it really is that good, I'd buy the DVD anyway.
They tried this, at least once, already. It was called Divx, available at Circut City. It failed miserably, and not really suprisingly. When they did Divx, the theroy was that I would buy a crippled DVD player, and spend just a little less to watch a moive a couple of times.
This new system smacks of the same mistake, its requiring me to pay too much for too small of a viewing window. Moreover, like many people, I like to keep the stuff I pay for. As such I will still buy the DVD rather than fiddle with this time limited junk. The only real use I can see for this is as a try-before-you-buy system. Much like video rentals at the local Hollywood store, I rent it, if I like it, I go buy the DVD, if not, I write it off. Moreover, having to wait 2 hours or so to download it, then futz with getting my PC hooked to my TV, which is not a natural state in my house, just to watch it like a rental is too much. Its far to easy to walk or drive the mile and a half to the store and rent it. I would be more receptive to it if they would allow me to download a non-crippled version, and burn it to VCD, then watch it on my TV. If I like it, I'm gonna buy it for the better quality and extras, if I don't, I'm going to format the CD-RW that I use for this sort of thing.
Is this a step in the right direction? I think that saying so is being a bit optimistic about it. While they are trying to move towards a digital delivery system via the internet, I think that this system is just as broken as anything else the MPAA/RIAA trusts have been trying.
This is not what the
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
They contain digital locks that prevent the files from being copied. The license expires after 24 hours, rendering the file useless unless the license is renewed.
So, I'd have to download 700mb (Au$105 assuming it's outside my monthly bandwidth allowance), and then I have to pay Au$8 every time I want to watch it afterwards? When I can rent it on DVD for Au$3?
Good idea, wot?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Take a look at this site. There are over 300 movies up (including the ones mentioned in the story). Most interesting, they offer a $9.95 / month "all you can eat" option, which is a much more interesting proposition than $4 / movie / day.
Of course, 90% of they movies they are offering are total crap, "Backyard Fight Clubs 2", you have to have Windows Media Player, and picture quality is pretty poor. The free movie I checked out had a piss-poor transfer as well as bandwidth issues.
But $9.95 for all the movies I could watch on-demand would be an interesting proposition if the catalog were any good... even with DRM.
Likewise, can I watch these under Linux? Xiner and MPlayer can use the codecs, I think, but I'm sure CinemaNow adds all sorts of other stuff into the mix.
I have broadband, I'd like to buy movies, but I'm not going to pay for or put up with another format I can't play ruling the day.