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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?
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!)
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.
Which will be hacked to allow unlimited playtime in... 3...2...1...
(Excuse me for a second while I climb on my anti-palladium soapbox... there.)
And when it does get hacked, the studios will be crying for Palladium more than ever. I realize the current protection is being offered by Microsoft, but would it be too much to ask for this to NOT be hacked? Isn't this finally what everyone has been asking for, to be able to pay for entertainment on demand legitimately?
Yes, I realize it's still in a protected format, but this is NOT DIVX (the late Circuit City format, not the codec). Divx represented the potential for DVDs to be replaced with movies that were ALWAYS pay-per-view locked and could never be licenced for unlimited personal use playback. Let's face it, the studios UNDERSTAND that not everyone owns a computer and they would NEVER stop selling DVDs. Supporting this format is NOT a threat to DVD, and respecting their rights by NOT hacking the format is a mature attitude to have, and it gives them less of a reason to force a "secure computing platform" down our throats.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Ta add to you theory read this:
Harry potter dvd does not have macrovision protection
" 1) If you are a content owner and want to protect content, then you need Windows Media Rights Manager SDK. 2) If you are a license clearing house and need to build a license server, then you need Windows Media Rights Manager SDK. 3) If you are an ISV and want to build a player application that can decrypt content protected with Windows Media DRM, you need to license Windows Media Format SDK and a key. "
Does not look very open.
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 $4?
I'd pick the DVD.
They'll have to drop the price a LOT to compete with brick-and-mortar rental store.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
DECSS was not an attempt to get free content, it was an attempt to play content on something other than a M$ 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 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?
Because of the fact that one of the most common criticisms of the media industry is that of insanely overinflated prices.
(Note: The MPAA is honestly nowhere near as guilty as the RIAA in this regard... At least not for video rentals. Don't get me started on the combination of jacking up theater admission prices AND subjecting us to advertising before the movie at the same time. A common bash of the RIAA is that the soundtrack for H.Pot is only $1 less than the full movie itself with all special features.)
In this case, they are charging an insanely overinflated price for these downloads.
They're charging $3.99 for one day, whereas most video rental stores give the full higher-quality DVD for $5 or less.
So for $1 more (Probably the same price or even less if I go to a smaller, non-Blockbuster/Hollywood Vid shop) I get 5x the playing time and DVD quality. If I'm a Netflix subscriber I'm even better off.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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" ?
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.
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?
Nope, it's $3.99 for a video you can view for only 24 hours, after spending the downloading time. Compare this to a $4 5 day rental at Blockbuster, or buying it on DVD for $16.99, it doesn't look so good. Whose kid is only ever going to want to watch it once, and in most cases on a computer screen (TV out isn't *that* common)?
Unrestricted, it would make sense. For a lot of movies, they'd make up in volume what they'd lose in per-copy prices. (The $16.99 includes distributor and vendor markups.) Harry Potter might be one of a few where this isn't the case, simply because so high a percentage of the potential purchasers are buying it already.
I think this is just intended to fail. "Look, we offered stuff over the net, but they've already pirated it and refuse to buy it."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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?
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.
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
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?
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.)