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Universal to Offer its Movies Online
JoseAugusto writes "From IMDB: 'Universal expects to be able to offer movies online by the end of the year or early next year, company chairman and CEO Bob Wright said Tuesday. Speaking at a conference on piracy in London, Wright described the studio's entry into online movie services as 'something we have to do.' However, he cautioned, the studio's entry into the Internet sphere must be accompanied by fail-safe methods to prevent the films from being copied and redistributed. 'These movies are so expensive, we have to be careful,' he said.'"
Here are some better articles.
Reality test... am I dreaming?
Impressive.
I'm saddened that on a site as big as Slashdot, this is the best the trolls can do? The "music store owner" angle is fairly original, but consistency is the key to any proper troll - you have to make your reader believe you're for real. This post has none of that needed consistency. There really should be a website for those just starting out in the trolling art, to provide pointers and techniques so embarassments like this don't make it out it public.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
video.
You download the video with a credit car, it embeds a tag that will ID you. It will be sprinkled about in the movie so that if you put it on bit torrent they can track you down and lock you up. That sounds like it might work, eh? For kicks they can require that you give blood or something in order to positively ID you.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
"A failsafe way to prevent piracy? Try never putting it on any form of media readable on a PC then. Or better yet, never put it on any media. Spoken word, live performances for a naked audience (so they can't smuggle in audio recorders of course). And still...not even close."
It doesn't need to be failsafe, any more than computer security needs to be fool-proof.
"Come on, they just need to embrace the internet and trust that most of us will pay for it when it is easy to get. I know I will."
Considering all the messages (mixed and otherwise) illegal copyright violaters have been sending over the years, both implicit and explicit (here and elsewere). I don't see why they should trust anyone with a DVD burner. Maybe blind faith is OK for those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
[Grey Ninja]
"I actually might consider buying some downloadable movies if the price was right."
Now can we get Grey Ninja and Jmcmunn to both agree on what constitutes an agreeable price, and if one of them disagrees? Will he turn into a pirate? Extrapolate to the public at large and now you see why the "price it right, or I will fight" argument fails. The only acceptable way to fight is to not buy nor possess, and buy from those you deem OK.
$5 is _assuming_ the studios actually want to offer the consumer a fair price. But as you know they want to get the best ROI possible, which means charging the most consumers will pay, and since everyone on /. isn't a normal consumer, it will be too much for us. They will probably charge the same if not more than a DVD price, much like music CDs as you mention. _If_ they were smart they would hire a 100k/year webguy and setup their own online shop in a matter of weeks, but hey this is the studio we are talking about here, they will use a service from some online store for megabucks, then have to pay royalties for MS DRM, and Intel on chip DRM, etc etc, passing the price onto us of course.
How can the first post be redundant?
(Seriously?)
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
Yeah, I hate this world where there are one or two mega players with enough clout to define the market. Apparently Universal was part of the Vivendi idiocy and was recently sold to NBC (a Division of GE now called NBC Uni).
Anyway, I decided to look up Universal Studios to see if they had a beefier press release. Here is a slightly longer article on Reuters. It sounds like NBCUni and Microsoft are siting in a back room brewing up some sort of concoction that the rest of the world will regret. This efforts appears to be part of something called BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy).
I wish these people would just realize that the way to beat piracy is simply to establish channels for distributing the movies that are neither too costly nor too burdensome to the public. Instead, we have monopolies working in backrooms with monopolies making something that is both expensive and restrictive to the point that piracy will continue to prevail.
wired had a great article about this a while back - they call it the long tail essentially it argues that companies can make as much money on obscure titles as they can on hits.
I suspect what we really want are free movies and that the 'downloadable' mantra was just a nice excuse.
I disagree. While I'm sure that for many people, they just like collecting "free" stuff like baseball cards, for the majority of the population, they've always wanted the instant gratification of downloading. Especially since many music albums are impossible to find in the store, but are easy to find on the internet. (I'd never even heard of Etype before I found them on the internet, and I was never able to find an album of theirs IRL.)
I said it back when MP3s first appeared, the music industry needs to sell the music online or the piracy will get worse. What happened? Napster, of course.
Now I sit here as a customer of Movielink (a legal movie downloading service) and I'm frustrated by the lack of selection.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"These movies are so expensive, we have to be careful,' he said.'" He speaks as though movies aren't available online already. I think he needs to come from this perspective to retain the image of being strong and in control. I can understand why, but it'd still be refreshing if he could just say "look, we've lost control of this situation. Here's what we're going to do to get it back."