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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.
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.