Disney to Make Movies Available Online

musiholic writes "Disney has cut a deal with Movielink to make various Disney (and Disney subsidary) films available for 30-day paid downloads. Users can watch the film an unlimited amount of times before the movie expires. The movies requre Real Player or WMP."

Comments

Wow!

[WuWarrior]

I can't believe Disney actually came up with this. But what prevents the people who pay for the movie to share it?

They Don't Get It!

[blackmonday]

I don't watch movies on my computer screen. I watch them on my TV.

Re:They Don't Get It!

[interiot]

Yup. Laptop + svideo out + wifi + bittorrent = instant set-top box with free movies.

Re:They Don't Get It!

[moncyb]

Are you saying you don't want to watch movies on your computer screen? Don't you realize just about any computer's display is far better than analog TV? According to my communications book, NTSC analog TV is 428x339 60 Hz interlaced. Unless you're using an Atari 130XE, that's quite bad.

As to "they don't get it", they don't. I'm not paying money to a company who wants to take control of my computer. I don't want to pay money to a company who is trying to extend their copyrights forever, yet they will wait until the copyrights of others expire so they don't have to pay royalties. There are plenty of other nasty things they do.

So . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . How much less is this going to cost than a brick and mortar rental, because of the reduced expenses involved and the use of the customer's bandwidth for transfer?

Or is this going to be just as expensive, but require the introduction of DRM crap into the holy of holies that is my machine. (Which implies that it's DOA, as far as I'm concerned.)

That, and I wouldn't give the jackbooted DMCA-wielding, CTEA bribing thugs at Disney a cent, anyway. Mickey Mouse can suck my cock.

~~~

should be fun...

[BFedRec]

Should be fun, but I don't think the disney rental world is the best for downloaded time stamped movies. I know as a parent, the KID movies are the ones you end up BUYING, as they are most likely to be watched over and over and over again for the next several years... and disney is the most common of that genre. Though if it's not TOO expensive I would probably try it... and if they tied it into a discount if you purchase the DVD... hmmmmmm

Re:Screen captures?

[rgoer]

What's to stop me from using a screen capture program...

Nothing, probably.

But, assuming they are going to treat this like a thirty day "rental," my guess would be that copyright law would be applicable and such a screen-capture duplication would be illegal--since you don't own the thing you rent, it is not yours to duplicate.

Then again, I could be wrong about this (among other things).

Miramax included?

[Jon Abbott]

The last I heard, Disney owned Miramax -- does that mean that titles like Clerks and Pulp Fiction will be released? Don't get me wrong -- I like both movies, but I'm not sure that Disney would want people to associate them with movies that use the word "fuck" more than the word "the"... :^)

Oh?

[DesScorp]

" Now if only the RIAA could follow this lead. I don't seen anyone hating disney - oh wait, they're not suing the youth of America."

Rest assured that if movie downloading ever matches the level of music downloading, they will. Disney aggressively protects their copyrights and properties, and was one of the prime movers in getting copyright terms extended.

Re:Screen captures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats to stop me from stealing candy from the grocery store?
Whats to stop me from speeding in my car on the way home?
Whats to stop me from trading stocks based on inside information?
Whats to stop me from beating up homeless people?
Whats to stop me from hotwiring my neighbors car and taking it on a joyride?
Whats to stop me from spitting lugies on people at Disneyland?
Whats to stop me from being a complete moron?

Cops suck too

[KalvinB]

...because they arrest the youth of America. And judges because they put the youth of America in jail. And our peers too because they form the jury that convicts the youth of America.

How dare we punish kids who do illegal things.

Ben

Not going to work!

[The Master Control P]

* I will not use Windows to do anything, and you're not going to make me.
* I don't want to wait an hour to download it and then get to view for 24 hours, when I could get it for the same price in 10 minutes from Blockbuster.
* The rental will have far superior video and audio quality.
* My computer is upstairs, and the TV with a real sound system is downstairs.
* DRM. Although at any rate, I could simply connect my video cards' S-Video out to my capture cards' S-Video in :)

So, in short, the quality necessary to shove it down even a broadband connection sucks, it's DRMed, and I don't like watching movies on my computer.

Re:Here we go again:

[Durandal64]

That's why you code to standards, genius. You would spend the same amount of time developing a site and product that was standards-compliant as you would locking non-Winblows users out, and it'd be open to everyone. If a browser doesn't do it correctly, then it's not standards-compliant, and the developers need to fucking fix the thing. Imagine a TV that didn't follow NTSC in North America. Web browsers are one of the only products whose main features include performing their basic tasks correctly. Do TV's advertise "Can display any NTSC video stream correctly!"? No, they talk about features.

WMP DRM Smoke

[MrEnigma]

I thought the DRM in WMP was all smoke, and that using some Dev tools provided by Microsoft, you can easily grab a lossy stream (and possibly a lossless one using more advanced techniques) of any DRM file.

If I was a business, I would definitely make sure that my files were protected going out there...then again they don't care, they just want the money at first, then they get real greedy.