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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.'"
Ain't that sweet of 'em?
Game... blouses.
Wow, the post is the entire article! So, this isn't much to go on. Sounds mostly like PR with a shot across the bow they intend to make it as consumer unfriendly as possible. (Consider "These movies are so expensive, we have to be careful" -- doesn't sound like ability to take advantage of inexpensive delivery cuts the consumer any slack.)
I still wonder:
This is spin. Whatever it is, I'm not looking forward to it.
As a record store owner, my business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, m
It a cat. I also have this bag. Notice that the cat is not inside the bag.
Well then, maybe they should make more films that rely on plot and qualities other than expensive special effects.
--
IMDB articles.
What's the quality of the picture and sound going to be with these movies? I certainly wouldn't want a 30x15 sized film with MIDI sound.
I got FP !!
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.
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. Same with tv, when I miss my favorite show, rather than download it, I would pay a few bucks to get the commercial free version online...
"the studio's entry into the Internet sphere must be accompanied by fail-safe methods to prevent the films from being copied and redistributed."
.mp4s?
Apple DRM'd
A B A C A B B
...as further pieces of the viPod puzzle fall into place, perhaps?
Interesting.
--Petey
Speaking at a conference on piracy in London, Wright described the studio's entry into online movie services as "something we have to do."
Wow, way to be enthusiastic about it. What were we talking about, getting a root canal?
...rare and priceless collection of ...
How will they handle overseas distribution? How will they handle inter-state taxes?
They say they will be online by the end of the year, but that is less than 3 months away. There are so many problems with actually distributing original content online that I highly doubt any movie company will be able to successfully make the jump.
I'd love to be proved wrong, but then again, I'd love to have a 60 inch monitor. I don't see either one happening in the next 3 months.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
And when?
And for how much?
On the other hand, this might be a boost for media centre pc's, portable video players (like the archos gmini400)... All the better for me to watch my XviD DVDrips on!
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
You could start hiring people with talent.
Like this movie. I've watched it 5 times. One of the most enjoyable independant films I've ever seen. It cost $7000 to make. And, of course, it's geeky to the max.
How we know is more important than what we know.
it's kinda weird how people in these positions still don't realize that's not going to happen.
It'll be a hell of a lot easier to make a CAM version of the movies :)
Here are some better articles.
Reality test... am I dreaming?
I actually might consider buying some downloadable movies if the price was right. If they are thinking about charging $10 or more for them, I will just download them for free if they aren't anything special (and if they are, I would buy the pressed DVD). If the price point was around $5, it would make a whole lot more sense than renting the DVD, and would likely be quicker to acquire. Throw in the cost of a DVD-R, and you have the movie for a fairly good price. The movie studios do not have to go through a middleman (video store), and neither do we, and we get the movie for about the same price. Everyone wins.
I've never been that interested in paying for songs, as downloading the music is about the same price, or more than actually buying the CD. And you have to be out of your mind if you think I am paying $20 for a music CD. So I just download all the music I want for free (I'm Canadian). I would rather spend the money on going to see a live concert.
..anyways, so what is the point of having strong drm that the user will just dislike on the product? it's not like you could protect it.
to compete they would need to provide a better "product" than the torrent sites... if they just offer something that is worse, in quality or conviency, and charge for it, would they get any of those users "back"?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If they are just going to put their new releases online, then there is no point really. I am not going to watch the next big blockbuster online, I am going to see it in the movie (or perhaps rent the DVD).
What will make online movie rental or purchase worth something is if they can put a huge catalog of every movie ever made available for download. There are a lot of pretty obscure films out there, that I wouldn't buy the DVD, and the video store will never have, that could be made available.
It is like iTunes... half the music I want just isn't available on iTunes. If iTunes had more than your standard HMV fare, then maybe it would be worth it.
Why do they care sooooooooo much about anti-piracy when you can already download any movie from most of the popular p2p networks?
Its too late! All your movies have already been pirated!
Just forget about anti-piracy and start selling those movies. You'll make much more money this way. (And its not like your gonna lose anymore than you already have from p2p networks.)
" Well then, maybe they should make more films that rely on plot and qualities other than expensive special effects."
I take it then that you aren't a Universal customer, nor plan to be one in the future? And I would go even farther and guess you don't have any Universal movies in your possession?
The "news/stories" get printed on /. first, and then the said company of the story either tries to figure out what where the story came from or they then get the idea from /. and start working on it immeediately.
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.
Make it consumer-unfriendly, then, when it flops, they can wave some cash under the nose of selected members of the Politburo, er, Congress, and whine more about "piracy." If they wave enough cash, they can buy all sorts of nice laws that basically insure that you don't really own the things that you buy.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Obviously online distribution and/or On Demand is going to be the rule in 5 years, not the exception. But I keep buying DVDs for the commentaries and extra material.
Is there going to be the economic incentive to provide all this extra material with online distribution?
What's going to happen to Criterion?
If one of those movies were to make its way onto a P2P network, God forbid, the results would be disasterous...
:q!
The movie industry still doesn't get "it". People won't buy something that is crippled. They will probably invest millions of dollars into this project, money that could be better spent on cutting the price of their products by $1-2, which would probably get them more sales and thus more profit. Really, anything over the production cost of the medium is pure profit on the better movies (that is, anything that wasn't a flop, because the theatrical release would normally already cover the cost of production of the movie itself). So, knowing that, a medium like the internet where the costs of the content itself is litterally the cost of the bandwidth used to download/stream, just about any price is greedy. Now having said that I know that is not how things work... The reason this is doomed is because people are not going to be able to use it how they want to. First off, there are too few households that do not have the capability to download a movie or even watch a video stream over the internet because no broadband access is availble. Add to that fact that people don't want to watch movies on their 17-19" 4:3 computer display if they have a 27" or larger TV, let alone a front projector or HDTV. Any DRM that is placed on the content will ensure that watching it on those displays will be very difficult unless they own a "Home Theater Personal Computer" (HTPC). Even assuming that there is a HTPC, with broadband access and everything else required, why would someone want to use your product over the more conventional methods like purchasing the DVD, or renting the DVD? With the restrictions that will be put in place to give a "secure" method, what usage will be lost to the consumer? At this point we are already well beyond the technical compitency of the average movie consumer, which means that the customer base is extremely limted, both do to technical requirements and technical know-how. You are now looking at a customer market that DO know what they are doing, and know how things work. So if your product is not as good in quality at the rental DVD that is avalible, they will simply use the higher quality product, because they actually know better then to take the PR department's word on it.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Probably all ready been asked by now, but how will they distribute them? Just put the file on their servers and see bandwidth fly away? Or will they actually embrace a P2P technology like BT to release the files? Another question, how big would the files be? I know that a 2 hour movie is easily about 700MB - 1.2 GB from what I have downloaded in the past.
However, I doubt I would subscribe to such a service because I assume it would be lacking many of the special features that DVDs have, like directors cuts and deleted scenes.
Guys, everyone calm the hell down. This clearly is NOT from the RIAA as numerous posts have claimed. Just listen to the lines he has used. Look at the evidence.
But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Isn't this missing a "Dun dun duuhn!" sound effect?
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
Clearly, the kids are getting a l33t Christian rock CD, like all video gamers. Totally Xtreme (too extreme for an E) dood!.
They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
+1 irony
This evening, my daughters asked me. "Why do the other kids laugh at us?"
I wanted to tell them the truth - it's because they wear old clothes and have cheap haircuts. I can't afford anything better for them right now.
Corny lines... come on people, you must be feeling who is behind this silly post by now. It is at the tip of your tongue...
When my girls ask me questions like that, I feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest.
Dramatic pause... come on people, you KNOW who wrote this.
I just shook my head, and tried to hold back the tears. "I don't know, Jenny. I don't know."
If this doesn't give away who wrote this, NOTHING will. Even the RIAA could not come up with such a cliche and corney line. There is only ONE culprete he could dredge up such a crappy plot with terrible dialoge. Hollywood! That is right, even the RIAA couldn't write such a horrible piece of fiction. Either that, or the RIAA hired out the guy who wrote Alien Vs Preditor to write this touching piece.
(psst, this is +1 funny mods)
Yeah, what use is a music player that only runs vi? Bah! ;-) :%s/music/video/g :wq!
And now the speculators will tie this annoucement into the "one More Thing" annoucement that apple will host on oct 12th aren't they, just because of the red curtains on the invite. iTMS will no longer mean just iTunes Music store, but also movie (or more encompassing,) Media store
This will be known as Mutual Assured DRM.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
"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.
Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again. - Bruce Schneier
Exactly. I would easily pay for a DVD quality copy of Eraserhead, or Shaolin Soccer, etc. that I can't (and will never) find in the local video store.
I certainly won't dish out even a measly $.02 for a remake of the Amityville Horror if that's all they're offering.
Hell is starting to freeze over, pigs are flying, and a monkey just crawled outta my butt!!
Movie files are so big, they will have to make sure that they can positively downloaded completely and reliably by techmorons before their buyers can be charged for them, because as soon as someone gets billed for a file he can't download, you can guess the uproar that will cause...
Looking at the article, I'm thinking Windows-only, WMP or propriatary program-only, low quality, only offering renting options, at a higher price than Blockbuster.
It will be used to show that online distribution of movies does not work, in preparation for pushing another anti-P2P law through congress.
If this deal ends up to be anything like Steve Jobs' bout with the music industry, the movie industry will price their movie downloads as much as it costs to rent one at the video store ($3 to $4) for a single download. May as well spend the money to go rent the DVD for the extra features...AND THEN RIP IT TO MY COMPUTER ANYWAYS! ...
Oops...I said the loud part soft and the soft part loud...ugh.
Seems to me this sets up a perfect working relationship with Apple, if Jobs does in fact come out with a video iPod as his "one last thing" at the press release.
Er, No, not necessary.
Here's how it works, Bob: you make it possible for me to very easily pay you a price I like and I won't pirate it. Because, you see, it's to my advantage to pay for it.
Basically, Bob, you're a hooker: you got something I want, I got something you want, and we gotta agree on a price.
Indeed, you're one of three hookers on this block. You lucked out: the only parking spot was around the corner, so you're the first hooker that's got something to offer. There's another hooker half-way down the block: she's the "reparatory" hooker. The one at the end of the block is the "blockbusters" hooker. And past the end and across the tracks is the "torrent" hooker. All the hookers on this block are looking pretty much the same, but within that range, you're definately the tops, Bob.
Now, Bob, you seem to think you're worth about twenty-five bucks. Because by the time I pay for my ticket and my wife's, we're getting into that range.
I want you to know the reparatory hooker only wants twelve bucks. I just have to walk down to her; not long, 'cause I'm not so overwhelming horny that I just gotta get blown right this second, Bob. And the blockbusters whore, why she's just four bucks -- but she'll blow me twice and I don't have to leave my house!
The torrent whore gives free blowjobs, but she's got ragged teeth and is pretty de-rezzed. I'm not such a cheap sumbitch that I'll go to her, Bob. I do pay for my movie entertainment.
Anyway, Bob, my point is this: you're an overpriced whore. I almost always rent the DVD; when I don't, I almost always end up at the reparatory. The last mainstream cinema showing I attended was Lord of the Rings. Exceptionally few films justify the first-print, top-rate quality, IMO.
So anyway, my point is this: so long as the free whore is skanky-looking, I'm not going to pirate: I'll take whatever reasonable cheap alternative provides me a home-system-quality experience. That experience is not going to be worth more than a DVD rental.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Wright described the studio's entry into online movie services as 'something we have to do.'
Meaning, they would rather not, but they are finally getting the picture that they have to. I must say though, I don't have quite as much contempt for the movie industry as I do for the recording industry. They aren't quite as slimey and they do offer a product worth the money they are asking. Plus, they are making this effort on their own. As opposed to being dragged into it kicking and screming, then throwing temper tantrums when they didn't get their way.
'These movies are so expensive, we have to be careful,' he said.'"
Why are they so expensive? Is it the ridiculous salaries demanded by the "stars", insane amount of money spent on promotion, CG run amok because it's "cool", exorbitant salaries paid to executives, legal fees?
What it's all about is an industry that is feeling the squeeze lately. It's an industry that has been fat & happy for about 50 years and now has to come to terms with reality.
I foresee "star" salaries coming down quite a bit and a lot of backstabbing in the executive suites as everyone jockeys for position.
Having trouble getting excellent films that report real issues in a truthful manner? Can't get through to www.infowars.com or www.prisonplanet.com? Well, guess what, it is Time-Warner and AOL ISPs filtering the DNS. Fancy that. (Traceroute is great.)
Just go to infowars.net. They overlooked that one.
Go there and get your free movies and info-links about real issues as reported in major news media.
Those hypocritical Christians again! Making trouble for the rest of us.
Don't they know the 11 Commandments? Thou shalt not infringe!!!!
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
I personally think that the parent makes a good point. I liked both Enterprise and Firefly. My problem what that I just can't live by the damn TVs schedule. I am far too busy to be tied to a certain hour each week. Further, I really only want to see the show in order. This is exactly who I was more then happy to shell over money to Netflixs to see Enterprise and Firefly. Yes, I could have easily pirated both of those shows, but if you give me an easy way to pay for them, I am will happily take it.
Now, take Battle Star Galactica (BSG). I love the show. It is the first show in a very long time that I have tried to sit down and watch every single show. The biggest problem is that some times I miss a show. Once I miss a show I can either
A) Wait for rerun and watch the shows out of order
B) Wait for the DvD to come out.
C) Just go download it so that I can watch the next show in order.
Guess which one I pick?
I would be MORE then happy to shell out $5 to simply not go through the bother of getting it via bit-torrent and all the irritation that finding a decent connection can bring. Hell, I would pay them $5 to get tracker from their website and get the double satisfaction of gettin the show easily AND contributing more money then they make on commercials per person. They could even kill me access to the video after a week or two and I wouldn't be upset.
They don't though. If I miss an episode, the only option I have is to go pirate it. If some stupid bastard would simply let me give them my money, I would.
These businesses vastly underestimate how much people will pay for convince. iTunes is a perfect example. You can get anything you can get on iTunes via pirating. Yet iTunes some how manages to do AMAZING business. Why? If given the choice between shelling out a few dollars or pirating, most people will shell out a few bucks. Will there be people who pirate anyways? Sure. Who cares about them? Think of all the other dumb bastards that are aching to give you money if you would just FSUCKING take it.
I don't know where Mr. Bob Wright goes to see movies, but around here they're $8.50 a ticket, not too bad. And if you get on the internets, you can download a lot of movies for FREE!
Why doesn't he just do that?
People are already buying copies of movies copied off the screen in the movie theater complete with the comments of the filmer. Do you really think people wont just point there camcorders at there computer and/or tv screen and make a copy. Lets face it thats basicly how they make pan and scan conversions anyway. The only to reduce piracy is to make it easier to buy a movie then to pirate it.
"Just forget about anti-piracy and start selling those movies. You'll make much more money this way. (And its not like your gonna lose anymore than you already have from p2p networks.)"
Hmmm. Lets see which is the greater loss.
[1]
They keep the movies in the vault.{1} No one (Customer or otherwise) gets to see the movie. They go out of business but the movies still stay in the vault because someone owns the IP.
[2]
They release the movies out to the Internet. Someone cracks it and distributes it everywere. Of course "it's not like they would have bought it" then means they don't get any money for those copies. They go out of business. Everyone else wanting to go into the movie business looks at the wreckage and says. "That's not going to be me" and promptly goes into the gardening business.
In two society gets a temporary gain (a bunch of free movies not in a vault), while suffering a permanent loss (no one wants to go into the movie business).
Now let's look at the way it should be. Those who want to produce movies can do so even though it's a risky endeavour because they know all the factors and can account for them.{2} They produce something good, and are rewarded and motivated to produce even more and better by the free exchange of money. They produce something bad, a clear message is sent via both non-purchases and verbal feedback. There's not the ambigious message of non-purchasing but lots of P2P downloads.
{2}The randomness of illegal downloads, both in "what", and "quantity", as well as "when".
{1}Meanwhile listening to all those "Set our culture free" whiners.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Forget preventing piracy, that horse left the barn with the home movie camera.
Instead tag each legitimate copy and hold buyers financially liable for downstream copies if they allow copies to be made. This will serve as a strong deterrent to "honest" customers sharing their paid-for copy with friends while keeping their own "backup copy." As for dishonest people, well, those who are determined will copy any road blocks be damned.
Non-brittle watermarks unique to each copy, while possibly visible in the finished film as artifacts, will be only mildly distracting if done well.
Furthermore, anyone possessing a copy with an altered or missing watermark will be by definition possessing a bootleg copy, subject to confiscation and in some jurisdictions much worse.
By the way, this same customized-copy technology has other uses too:
Imagine children's movies with your child replacing the main character.
Imagine movies with product-placement ads tailored to your tastes, delivered to you free courtesy of sponsors who target ads specifically at you.
Imagine localized versions of movies where maps can say "Taiwan" or "Province of China" or have different borders for Kashmir depending on who is buying the film and what country they live in.
I for one cannot wait to serve our new MPAA overlords. Oh wait, I already do.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is it just me, or is Slashdot extremely slow since the upgrade? I was holding my tongue, figuring it was passing, but after this page took literally five minutes to load on my T1 university connection, I figured I ought to speak out. I'm using Safari 2.0.1 (412.5) on Mac OS X 10.4.2 on a 1.33 GHz iBook.
Shiira and Firefox are slightly faster, and Opera and Camino are both asininely slow. I'm not even bothering to try IE.
NBC/Universal programming. now all we have to do is wait a week to find out whether this will be two-tier off iTunes (rent cheap, buy pricey) or what.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
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.
This is bits and bytes we're talking about, right? The same laws apply here as everywhere:
- if it can be applied, it can be removed, regardless of whatever security measures implemented
- if security measures are implemented, all it takes is time for it to be decoded, as there are many ravenous pirates just waiting for another lock to crack
Another thing, what prevents these ID/tags/whatever from being changed to someone I personally chose to dislike? I could change it to their ID if I knew theirs, and they would be blamed. What if it were changed to some sort of ID tag for every pirated movie, thus giving a sort of noteriety or imfamy.
Comment: this rip is dedicated to 5a46hg47a289c, who released the first movie offered by Universal [assholes], power to the pirates!
And the ID tag would be that string of random characters, supposedly some person. It could be anything, the 1337h4x0rz, who the hell knows what these IDs could be changed to, and for what purpose.
my 2c
i suggest you do the world a favour, take a gun and kill yourself now
Universal, among other major motion picture companies, have had their movies online for years! I'm suprised people are just finding out about this now, I've been watching movies online since the dawn of the internet...
Why hello Mr. Nice MPAA Representitive... what are you doing to my compu...
+++NO_CARRIER
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Or you can make them so affordable that it's not worth the time to pirate.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I got news for them. Their movies are already online. Probably better versions than the ones they will "offer" as well. Best of luck to them though, way to enter the market three years too late.
Universal's movie's are already available online.
try www.movielink.com or www.cinemanow.com
price,speed,quality.
it's well within studio's power, they WILL make money off it, the only thing stopping them is their own stupidity.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back."
Someone who is 2/3rds your physical size comes into your store, makes a selection, and has a brief private conversation with a friend. You eavesdrop on the conversation, get upset, and physically threaten the customer after he gives you money for the purchase. Then tell him never to come back.
And you wonder why people have stopped coming into your store?
Why should you care what your customers i.e. the people who come into your store and give you money do with the stuff that they buy from you?
I too wonder if this post is actually a cut-and-paste job written by the RIAA for use as a block upload to any discussion on the web about file sharing. A pseudo-testimonial. The beginning seems real, but the ending text reads like a Karl-Rove-style political dirty trick.
"I for one cannot wait to serve our new MPAA overlords. Oh wait, I already do."
Your idea hurts the resale market. Who exactly would want your customized childrens movies?
Dear God, why wait so long? I want Serenity now.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
the theatrical release of movies is (and has been, for fifty years) a money-losing proposition.
Two points, Home entertainment hasn't been around for fifty years. Except if you consider broadcast television in the definition. The ability to select and watch a movie in the home has only been around for twenty years. Since the introduction of inexpensive VHS players and rentals.
Two, most movies then and now do make their costs of production back through theatrical ticket sales. Check the numbers on BoxOfficeMojo.com.
I don't believe that much revenue actually comes from licensing of products associated with movies. The Star Wars films are the major exception. But most Hollywood films have very little licensed product offered.
Bollywood has developed a failsafe method to keep people from pirating their creative works...
They make almost nothing but Hindi musicals.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
edPod is the one true Pod!!!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
heh heh :-)
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
Universal is very bad about locking viewers out of the ability to press menu, fast forward, or skip to get past the initial previews on their dvds. On several Universal DVD's I own, I cannot even press stop after inserting the disc to stop the previews. It has angered me so much that they are forcing me to watch previews on their dvd's that I try to stay away from buying universal DVD's alltogether. I can almost understand DRM for online movies provided it's flexible, but if they get so controlling over the distribution that whatever media player used is locked out of skipping past the previews, then they won't see one fucking dime of my money.
I want to own music.
I want to rent movies.
I can download movies... I have the technology. I don't because its not worth it. For £7.99 a month I get 4 DVDs posted through my door and I can choose the movies online. Its takes a couple of days for the movie to arrive, but thats comparable to bittorrent on a 1MB downpipe. Once the DVD arrives I know the quality will be good and there are usually a few extras.
Looking at my DVD collection only about 20% have been watched more than once, the rest I would have been better off renting.
I would gladly hand over $10-15 for 8 downloads a month and then pony up an extra $2 for the right to burn a downloaded copy to DVD.
We've been bouncing this around for years now and no single proprietary-software company has put together an iTunes equivalent for movies and yet it shows all the signs of being a cash cow. Its time for FOSS to stand up and create that software and use it to generate an income for FOSS projects.
FOSS DRM might be bit of misnoma, and charging for a product isn't something FOSS is very good at, but think of all the good it could do! It could revive BSD, it could bring HURD to life, it could mean that Wine actually catches up with MS - it could charge the war chest in the fight against DRM, patents and copyright.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Must it also be accompanied by dry water, a working perpetuum mobile and world peace?
Free as in mason.
Why would you go to the video store to rent a DVD if you had a set-top box that allowed you to download the movie from a central location and have it immediately?
IE, something akin to pay-per-view, with a better interface whereby you could just download any movie you wanted that ever existed. $5-10 a pop and it's downloaded to a hard drive on your box. It sounds like a winner to me, even if it is locked down with heinous DRM.
For some reason, once a media company is big enough, they can ram pricing down our throats ($10 for a movie, commercials included, no matter how good or bad the movie) and they control so much distribution that even Water World made money. So, I have no sympathy for them. God, I hate MBA weenies. They have such a perverted and mercenary view of the world.
Ah, I feel better now. Thanks.
The link on the story is not future-proof once a new Studio Briefing is published by IMDB.
The archive URL is http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-10-05
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
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 am really beginning to feel the love for Universal. First they give me Serenity, now downloadable content :)
Think about it, the more and more music they make, the more and more present releases have to compete with past releases
especially if old releases are still damn good. Fast forward 200 years, you'll have new release competeing with 250yrs
worth of old stuff. But they dont care, thats why they want to increase (C) to 10000000 years. So they make money for infinitey.
Jee, I wish I had such a cushy easy job , a bit like a mafia boss really.
Maybe when ww3 starts, the masses will run for the hills to the execs giant mansions and live on their front yard.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Dude, AVP was good i thought.
The guy who directed it or write it, he was a fan of the originals, they did well in it. I thought
the story was good and hard to do because of prejuduce of the old one, try to see it with a new light
without bias of the old one.
1. Antarctica is a good choice
2. both together is good since predatorIII without Arny would be as good as Jurassicpark3.
Now if they did stargate-avp then it would blow.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
...because every copy that is sold costs several hundred million dollars to produce and manufacture. Errrr.....
Note to self, watch it again when you have the time.
Moreover, for most people, in the time it will take to download the movie, you can drive to your local Blockbuster, rent the movie, come home, and start watching it in your living room.
But what do I know? Sony and Hollywood seem to think there's a market for watching movies on your PSP. I won't watch them, but that doesn't mean someone else won't.
Make love, not reality television.
That's pretty much it. I hope they put their material online and then sue everyone who downloads it because of the possibility that they may illegally share it. Also I want them to sue because the company may decide to raise the price later on, and the consumer not having paid that price increase is clearly in violation.
wookie from the planet Kashyyyk...
HAND.
The movies are _already_ out there, DVD quality and all. Stop worry, ok? Every bleeding single copy you can sell online is one more "kaching", ok? If they copy that file, or some other file with the _same_ movie, what is the big difference? Put the money into 1. Making it easy to use 2. Giving as many as possible a chance to buy 3. Marketing. Do no care if people can pirate, because... they already can and 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."
I bet this failsafe method will only run on windows. must be the same drm that windows is using on iptv.
I am not quite sure that they need to establish "fail safe" DRM and that a crack on the online service DRM would be catastrophic... We are talking about the same movies that will be on DVD, which has very poor DRM. This bein said, even if they put super hyper restricting DRM, people will still be able to extract the movie from the DVDs. People who want to burn or copy the movie will use BitTorrent. I really hope that they will provide an honest DRM that will allow people to play to different output (I.E Not MS' secure computing) and will not require weird players. If you think about it, if someone wants to copy a DVD, he will go to blockbusters, rent the movie for the same price, save on bandwidth, circumvent DRM easily and archive the DVD. It is not like having weak DRM or fair use on their online DVDs that it will create an unprecedent hole for movie copy...
We know that you can lick your nose. Now keep quiet about it!
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
While speaking at a conference on piracy, they used the term "fail safe." Doesn't that strike you as odd? I have yet to see anything fail safe. Everything so far has ultimately been hacked. You look at any copy-protection schemes out there and they all ultimately get broken. I'm in no way discounting their efforts and I really wish them the best, but it seems almost aloof to use "fail safe" before the product is even launched. Are they really naive enough to think that their technology will never be broken?
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
I feel the exact same way, although my situation is a bit different; I have a HDTV set from my days of living in a house (I live in a small 1br in Manhattan now) and there's no reasonable way for me to get OTA HDTV broadcasts without upsetting the board or the wife. Every show I like is OTA. So, my options are:
1) Bend over a chair for HDTV cable (very pricey in Manhattan), just so I can see the shows I like (which are all OTA)
2) Watch OTA analog broadcasts (I can get a signal by plugging in the cable, doesn't work for HDTV as a lot of you probably already know), reception's not too good but at least I'm _seeing_ it.
3) Download HDTV rips the next day.
Guess which one I go with?
I would be OK with paying a couple of bucks per show, or (even better), "subscribing" to the show for like $25 / season, with HDTV versions available online at the time of broadcast. But, here's another idea, and I think it's a good one: highly targeted ads. Have subscriptions to the show be free, but before you can sign up, you need to fill out a 15-minute survey with all the standard marketing data (age, gender, income, hobbies, neighborhood, do you have kids / do they watch the show with you, etc). After you fill out the survey, you get a login which can then be used to download any show that the network offers subscriptions to. Using your login, you can download a version of the show(s) you want with specifically targeted ads (ads for the Mexican restaurant two blocks from your place, ads for the local plumber, ads for stores / boutiques / games / etc all based on your survey). You're still watching ads, but they're ads that are really specifically targeted for you! A lot of people might not mind seeing that kind of ad, and even if you do, you can still FF or skip over it (it's a high-quality avi). Can you still share that? Sure, but if you can get it from the source just by filling out the survey (and hey, you might actually see an ad for something you _want_), why bother going the BitTorrent route?
Yes, I know there are all kinds of technical hurdles here; bandwidth for the servers with tons of people dl'ing high-bitrate video files, how to inject the ads properly in the first place, how to store all that stuff (since theoretically you've got a seperate file for each dl'er), and of course the algorithm to choose which ads go to which customers. Tech hurdles, to be sure, but how much harder is it than the rat race of copy protection?
Which brings me to the second point (probably echoing a lot of other people here) - why go through all this trouble to install copy protection on your downloadable / Internet-deliverable content? I mean, if I want a pirated copy of something, I can get it _now_ from someone who ripped a DVD. What exactly would Universal be trying to prevent? The worst-case scenario (people are taking the content and sharing it illegally) is already happening! Why not focus on giving people a good experience for a reasonable price? I think a good percentage of people who download something illegally would happily pay a reasonable fee for it, and the lower the price, the higher the percentage of people who would do it. Make a less-than-DVD-quality version available (particularly of movies that don't rely on special effects or other visuals) that's quick to download, charge $1 and see how many people purchase it. What's the risk? That people will illegally share and download the medium-quality version (as opposed to the high-quality versions that are already floating around the BT universe)?
Seriously, I often wonder if I'm missing something here. All this fuss about making content available online to prevent piracy. News flash: piracy is already here - you should know, you're the one putting those god-awful commercials at the beginning of movies. So what exactly are you trying to prevent?
--Nate
The choice is almost never between paying for something or "stealing" it. There is almost invariably a third option, which is doing without. However, the marketing people are so convinced that their product is indispensable, that they consider it inconceivable that anyone would choose to forgo their product altogether. {Of course, doing without a DVD hurts the movie studios every bit as much as watching it without paying. But it doesn't get their backs up so much, because their heads are so far up their own arses that they don't notice this kind of lost sale}.
Let's consider a group of mates. {Mostly} honest, working-class people. They are closely-knit, often doing things together -- dinner parties, barbeques, minding one another's kids, that sort of thing. Not necessarily always the whole group together. Their means are modest, such that the purchase of a DVD is something that requires a good deal of evaluation and may well ultimately be eschewed in favour of something else.
If any one of them buys a DVD of a film that they all like, they will all end up watching it {either by borrowing it in turn, or by having a viewing party}. Each method has its own problems: in the first case there is a risk that the DVD might be returned late, in unsatisfactory condition or not at all; and in the second case, there is an obligation to supply food, drink and drugs and a risk of damage to the home. And both methods carry a slight risk that the purchaser might not like the film after all. Although these people are generally good friends and trust one another, these are real practical considerations given the costs involved and will undoubtedly figure in the pre-purchase evaluation.
So a group of people who can ill afford a DVD {costing somewhere between 80 and 100 fags} that they may or may not like, have to engage in much soul-searching -- and in the end might well decide to wait for it to come around on TV. If one of them has Sky {or a relative with Sky and a VCR/DVD+RW} then this is a more promising path. Waiting costs nothing but time, which is plentiful when you don't have much money, and they have already paid for the subscription anyway.
This presents a window of opportunity for an entrepreneur, distributing independently-sourced copies of feature films and passing on the cost savings {from things like, not having paid any royalties to the studio} to customers. These "Pirates" can offer their product more cheaply than the legitimate outlets despite costing significantly more to manufacture. Contrast this situation with the printed word. Many newsagents' shops have photocopiers; but the total cost {including non-monetary factors} of copying even one article from a newspaper or magazine usually exceeds the purchase price of the paper. Likewise, scanning and OCRing a Harry Potter book and making it available for download would be a significant effort. Whoever downloads it has either to print it out, or make do with reading it on-screen; and it's a PITA when it costs so little to buy the "real thing". {Of course, if someone has a point to prove, they'll be prepared to go through with it. But they wouldn't have bought the original anyway.}
The price of DVDs is a psychological barrier to purchase. If a DVD cost £4.99, people would be less likely to think too hard about the implications and more likely just to buy it, on the grounds that if it goes wrong it's "only a fiver". {A team of experts probably have already worked out the exact threshhold for impulsive purchases.} Out of our hypothetical group {but be honest, you do know people who are just like that}, it's far more likely that at least one person will buy the movie rather than everyone waiting for it to show up cheaper elsewhere.
So my plan to stop piracy is this: Make DVDs cheaper and not only will you sell more of them, you will end up making more money than before because people will be buying them who ordinarily would not have.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Oh yeah sure i want to wait 6 hours to download a 4 /8 gig movie over the net and bust my ISP's maximum download limit each month.
Geez how cool can you be when you say; hey in 6 hours i'll have this movie downloaded. Oh gee i got to the video store and bought 3 movies in less than a hour with the case and all the goodies.
Loser features,, like downloading crapy music from the net,anyway.People dont see the difference specially kids because they listen music on MP3 players and look at a movie on their computers so standard are lowering for the media.
Nobody can tell that a MP# player the size of a credit card has the same output quality of a cd player , more convenient and a lot more songs i agree, but it's not to be compare.
Same thing with dvd downloads, If you dont burn your dvd on some media you risk loosing what you bought over the net and one double layer cd cost like 9$ canadian, add the price they would charge for one dvd (at least 10$). It's not worth it one bit
there is no advantages to download over the net except to get fat and lazy people grow in numbers.
take a bike,a walk,get out of the house.
Universal's movies WERE expensive. But the costs have long since been recouped through the theatrical release, through the DVD release, and through the televised released. Stop trying to pretend that every movie loses money as it's complete bullshit!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Jesus saves...
He passes to Moses.... who shoots.... AND SCOOOOOOORES!
I always hear about copy prevention. The media companies want to force technology on everyone to prevent copying. How about looking at this from another angle? Improve tracking technology. If Alice gives her digital copy of a movie to Bob who gives it to Charles, which eventually ends up with Zack, we should be able to see from Zack's copy that it started with Alice. They can add something to a P2P download client to watermark each movie download so when they do bust someone for illegal copying, they can track down where it started. Fair use copying wouldn't be interferred with and they can track down the real problem, the pirates.
Otherwise, it is no more convenient than the video store, or even Usenet/BitTorrent and I probably won't be bothered. They can argue that #4 is too conducive to piracy, but a DVD from the video store is easily copied - so it really wouldn't be any worse.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
See you must have thought that VOIP was some sort of telephony thing... really it was always Video Over IPOD... they just wanted to get the word out there ala viral marketing.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
CEO Bob Wright said Tuesday.
'We're raking in billions of dollars and we have to be careful that we remain in a position of power, shouldn't be too hard since we also control the White House too,' he said.'"
I just watched "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" (downloaded via the torrent) and throughly enjoyed it and ordered a shirt online. I find almost all of the Hollywood movies are trash and insulting. I don't blame Bob for trying to hang on to one of the easiest and best paying jobs in the world being a CEO of a GE company. He has to learn like the "music industry" is learning, the "music" is fine it's just the "industry" that has to go. Nobody became a musician (or film maker) to make a bunch of guys (and they are mostly men) in suits rich. In most cases it no longer takes millions to make and distribute good entertainment, most of the suits should get a real job in some other industry and not hang around runing this one.
especially if it's available online before the DVDs
who wants to take a bet they they will be releasing all the flops on their online service first at about $20.00US a pop...
:)
and you can only watch the downloaded file twice before it deletes itself and you have to fork out more money to download another copy.
I think that I would prefer to go to the movies with a camcorder and see a movie I really like
*** I had a
Yeah, you're one hell of a Christian, ain't ya? You're a damned liar, buddy. You worship money, not God.
Meanwhile, my heathen musician friends GIVE THEIR MUSIC AWAY!
One last note, fellow: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" (look it up).
Alternatively, they could have a premium pay-access version tracker, sans commercials, and a free tracker with the commercials intact. A careful choice of codec and a file truncation to trim off two seconds of the last five second cable logo from the video before making the torrent would also prevent fast forward from working, if they want to be a bit more self centered and less user freindly.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
This efforts appears to be part of something called BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy).
Will ASCAP, a performance rights organization for songwriters and their publishers, sue for use of a confusingly similar mark? Or is ASCAP in on this BASCAP thing?
Why would you go to the video store to rent a DVD if you had a set-top box
Because a set-top box is expensive to purchase, and especially in college, not everybody has a "set" to put a box on "top" of.
I already have this. I can select a movie to rent from a menu, it downloads to my cable box hard drive, and I can watch it for 24 hours, after which it erases itself. No need to return it. Most big cities in North America offer this as an option with their digital cable service nowadays, and if they don't they will be offering it very soon!
While this is very convient, and has replaced going down to the local video rental place for me, it isn't revolutionary. The service only has several thousand movies, about the selection of a local video store. And they circulate the movies, so it appears that they only have the technology to offer several thousand movies at one time.
What WOULD be truly revolutionary, is if it had every movie ever made available. For example, the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society made a Call of Cthulu movie (the story was on Slashdot a couple days ago). It is available on DVD, but for $20 plus shipping and handling it isn't something a lot of people will buy. But $4 to rent it, I am game.
I am also a big fan of low-budget sci-fi movies. I can purchase them on Amazon for $20, plus SH, but that is an expensive proposition, and I only have so much physical room to store the movies even if I had the money to purchase them. Also, I have to wait half a week to recieve them, so that eliminates impulse purchase.
Having access to ALL movies (or at least a selection that is as good as Amazon.com's DVD selection) would change the way a lot of people watch movies. It isn't the technology of renting videos online or through my cable service that is the key technology (That has already been fully developed, and actually deployed in a lot of places). It is all about the catalog! Choice and diversity is what will make the technology attractive.
The solution is to do exactly that - tie DVDs to the purchaser.
Put a unique bar-code on each DVD case which is scanned at checkout. Require that no store sell any DVD without obtaining some proof of who the customer is - this can be a security-camera videotape, a copy of a credit card, a copy of a drivers license, or anything else that does the trick.
Of course, with all this big-brother-ism, freedom-minded people will stop buying DVDs at stores, resorting to the resale market or *gasp* piracy. But the sheep will go for it especially when industry promises fewer price increases because of lower piracy.
Ironically, downloadable DVDs, mail-order purchases, and just about anything done on a credit card is traceable and most sheeple don't seem to mind.
In 10 years we won't have many new CDs or DVDs anyways, everything will be on-demand or buy-over-the-network.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You'd be right except for the price is still way off. A quarter a song and millions of people would be forking over, but $.99 is still way too high. Especially for something that's SO low-cost. No CD to make, package, distribute etc. Hell a quarter is probably too much really.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Who are they?
This is an interesting moral question. Check out this article, you may find it interesting.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I was sort of assuming that one had these already. DVD players were expensive once too you know.
Unlike DVD players, set-top cable boxes cannot be purchased by an end user; they can only be rented, and only as part of a basic cable television subscription which often costs more than $720 per year. Netflix costs much less than that.
You are right. Both the left and the right of the great IP debate was not about piracy but about destroying the vibrant market that started to emerge.