Internet Movies Before DVD

alfrin writes "Actor Morgan Freeman and Intel are starting a company that will sell movies over the Internet before they are released to DVD. "We're going to bypass what the music industry had to come up with, and that's to get ahead of the whole piracy thing," Freeman told reporters at Sun Valley after making his presentation, which was closed to the press. Wouldn't this just make it easier to pirate movies?"

Comments

Finally

[AKAImBatman]

Three words: It's about time.

Actually, the movie industry has done a reasonably good job of keeping ahead of the market forces that drive piracy. Depsite all the complaints about movies getting on the Internet early (as if the problem didn't exist with bootlegs prior to the Internet), I haven't seen any evidence that it has been a widespread issue. Your average person seems happy enough to go to the theater, buy a DVD, or sign up with Netflix.

The ones who should really be worried is television. The DVD rehashes of shows have helped, as have PVRs like TIVO. But the general populace is starting to get pretty annoyed about being told when they can and can't watch television. If TV doesn't reinvent itself as an internet business soon, the reprocussions could be of Napster proportions!

Re:Finally

[Universal Indicator]

I am happy enough to use Netflix to pirate movies. At $50 for a month, you can get nearly 50 DVDs sent to you, if you simply copy them immediately when the mail comes and then get them back out to the post office the same day. If retail DVDs are an average of $15 x 50 discs for a month, that is $750 worth of movies in a month. 50 DVDs for the price of three :-) Is there a system like this for music?

Re:Finally

[Digital Vomit]

I totally agree. Case in point: Cheers. The show ranked dead last in the first year, but because NBC had nothing else to put on TV at the time, the show continued. It became one of the greatest sitcoms ever.

I think this shortsightedness is just a sign of the times, though. Everyone seems to be looking to mazimize short term gain at the lowest risk. Sadly, greatness is rarely born out of such a world-view.

Right.

[danheskett]

Interesting definition of "get ahead" of. My impression is that movie downloading illictly on the Internet has been "no big deal" for the masses for quite some time. When my clueless barely point-and-grunt literate co-worker offered me a DVD copy of the latest Star Wars 4 days after it opened I realized it had already hit the mainstream. Sorry guys, to little, to late.

Re:Right.

[l2718]

It is exactly this kind of illegal downloading that would go away if they offered reasonably priced legitimate copies. It's true that they will have to offer some recording capability (probably with reduced resolution) -- people feel pretty strongly about their ability to record what they see on their TV.

However, for all the grandstanding of the media companies in the US, the real "piracy" (actually, a very bad term) problem they face is in the far east. The problem is not people downloading low-resolution copies of movies (which doesn't cost them much business), but entire factories which churn out illegally copied DVDs, and people who buy the cheap fakes rather than the expensive originals.

Re:Right.

[rhesuspieces00]

but if you read it that way, there really isnt as much opportunity for derisive sarcasm.

It might decrease piracy...

[Tanmi-Daiow]

If they find the right price and the right movies to sell. They might create an 'itunes' effect, except in the movie genre. Most people would buy it if it was readily available and cheap.

Freeman +1, MPAA -1

[Anonymous Coward]

kudos to freeman, the respect i already had for him just doubled....this just shows how out of touch the MPAA really is...

if an actor almost 70(!!) can understand the importance of new technology, why can't a "consortium" of movie companies who "supposedly" have our best interests in mind embrace digital distribution?

Piracy for the Sake of Piracy. A.K.A. hoarding

[fodi]

I don't really understand why us geeks like to hoard intellectual property so much. Of those 50 movies:

1. How many do you actually watch?
2. How many do you use to buy friends with?
3. How many get thrown on a spindle and forgotten?

I know people that download almost 50 movies/TV shows/games a month. When I ask them how many they actually watch/play, it's rarely 20% at most.

I think this stems from the fact that having so much media readily available to us is still a relatively new concept. It was only 10 years ago that it took us 2 hours to download a 5 minute, low-quality movie (usually porn). I believe people are thinking "Wow !! i CAN have all these movies", not "Wow !! I want to WATCH all these movies".

I believe that when our kids grow up, they won't have this desire to accumulate all this media, because they'll be able to watch/play all this stuff when they want it.

Instead of paying $50/month of DVD, just to have the pleasure of burning and stock-piling them, why not hire 10 DVDs for $30 from your local video shop and buy some beers to drink while you watch.....

Re:Piracy for the Sake of Piracy. A.K.A. hoarding

[Carbonite]

I know several people that spend so much time finding movies and burning DVDs that they never have time to actually watch them. Pick a random DVD out of their collection and it's almost a sure bet that they've never seen it. It's really rather sad.

People Don't Like to Steal

[tavilach]

Perhaps piracy would technically be easier with this system, but you have to remember that most people really don't like stealing. The iTunes Music Store is blossoming for this very reason. Freeman's point is a good one: If a system like the iTunes Music Store (but for movies) precedes possible rampant piracy (which is certainly growing in the movie industry), the problem will be corrected before it grows. As is the case with music at the moment, you will then start seeing a lot of people legally downloading movies, and there will be no piracy mess to clean up (as has been the case with music). I certainly believe that this system would thwart far more piracy than it would encourage.

Re:Piracy for the Sake of Piracy. A.K.A. hoarding

[silentbozo]

It's all about the perception of scarcity. If you dangle the threat that someday, access to commodity X will be restricted (ie, made more expensive) or taken away, it creates an incentive to hoard. Whether it be guns, alcohol, rare paintings, media, etc., if you have the reasonable belief that what you can get today for $5, you cannot get tommorrow for $5, you will get as much as you can, while you can.

For example, there are people who archive useful websites, because sometimes, these websites change (become less useful) or disappear completely. You and I would probably not devote much time to this, because we know that we can usually rely on the Internet Archive or Google's cache to make snapshots (not always, but that's the risk we're taking). However, if it was information that had a reasonable chance of not being preserved due to external influence (ie, internal Diebold memo on how to fix elections for the highest bidder), then people would hoard it just for the sake for hoarding it, due to its potential value in scarcity. Ironically, because of that potential value, it would probably be less scarce than if it was a run of the mill technical document.

Given the movie/music industry's more or less stated goal of converting all of their "property" into licensable forms, preferably forms that expire on you (remember Divx - not DivX;), but the DVD you could rent to view for 24, then throw away?), hoarding what you can get, while you can still get it, isn't as crazy an idea as you might think. Of course, there's always the other explanation of hoarding specific items - some people are just natural-born packrats.

Re:Shawshank

[Pollardito]

"It was the dumbest business model of Andy Dufresne's career..."

Re:Piracy for the Sake of Piracy. A.K.A. hoarding

[Caraig]

Almost by definition, Internet pr0n never gets out of hand....