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NBC To Offer On-Demand Movies Via P2P
RX8 writes "NBC Universal has signed a deal with Wurld Media to make some of their movies available for download via a secure P2P network in 2006. There hasn't been a price released yet, but the movies include what you would get on their existing video-on-demand and pay services plus around 100 older movie titles. Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires."
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
:( HELP!!!!
Oh no, my Slashdot P2P trial has expired!
NBC...I have a phone call for you.
The year 2000 is calling, and wants its idea back.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
I'll take "The Odyssey" and "CHiPs Reunion"
GOBACK.
Must see internet!! Dong...Ding...Dong
If it expires, I won't be buying it.
Entertainment is to be done at my leisure. I choose the terms, not you.
Simple as that.
Starts of nice, then I read a horrible, horrible sentence...
"Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires."
What were they thinking?
Once again, a big media company comes out with an idea so they can claim to have a legitimate path for viewers to take advantage of -- but yet still totally miss what they are actually looking for.
Until these companies actually meet the demands of the people who are looking to download TV/Movies, unauthorized p2p networks will continue to own the market.
The 24 hours part is bad news, not because I'd like to keep the movies but because it means that it will only available to Windows.
Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires.
And they can only spend my money for 24h before the payment expires, ok?
You can't take the sky from me...
If not, I won't use the service.
(white) Trash In, (tv) Trash Out
Jerry Springer and the dating shows 5th Wheel and Blind Date
That'll be worthwhile... They could probably offer only one episode of those shows and no one could tell.
Anyone think they want it to fail so they could lobby Congress to DRM all TCP/IP transmissions?
Get back to us when you are willing to deal with 21st-century reality.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
My 20 year old Toshiba VCR is looking better and better every day. I have yet to find anything it could not record when using the analog video/audio jack feeds....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
"...users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires."
I was expecting to read "explodes" rather than "expires". I'm glad I was wrong.
But now I worry that by posting this I might give them ideas.
All rites reversed 2010
It will self destruct in 24 hours!
Didn't they realize that such rental schemes would fail when consumers roundly rejected DIVX? Why do they keep trying to force a product we clearly don't like down our throats?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Why not their television programming?
If they posted the programming with advertisements intact, eventually they may be able to ask more for advertising, or treat it as a separate advertising space altogether. Plus, the torrents for their shows are going to be out there anyway. This way there is an official torrent that most people are going to want because: they can expect a certain level of quality and there is no risk to them. AND it also increases awareness and availability of their show.
Heck, if they did this I might even watch some of their shows.
NBC can barely get folks to watch its shows for free, so now they are going to charge for a version that expires? I assume this would be more aimed at the Universal Studios titles...
Everyone seems to be griping about the time limit. I know it goes squarely against the DRM-hating /. masses, but not only is it valid but people will buy into it.
They've already been doing it for years with movies On Demand, now you can do the same thing on your computer. There are time limits for On Demand and Blockbuster, now it's the limit for your authorized download.
Big whoop. Just because it gets downloaded to your computer doesn't mean you have the right to watch it as many times as you want, as often as you want, for the rest of your life.
Get over it already.
Does this spelling of 'world' bother you as much as it does the spelling nazis?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
24 hours? Is that from the point of purchase, or the point of completed download? Because if the movie is of a quality worth paying for, that's a significant difference for a lot of users.
Besides, that's an awfully short period of usage. Why would anyone do that versus renting the movie? It would have to be very cheap. What about the ability to pause the movie, or watch it more than once? Is this going to be like those failed one-viewing DVDs that came out a while ago?
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Should also mention that you can replace "They're" with "They are" and it still makes sense.
That's how I can figure out which one to use.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I know I don't speak for the majority of slashdotters but I could care less whether it expires (although 24 hours is a short period of time) as long as there is a significant discount compared to renting; electronic distribution does not provide the same experiance as renting a movie and (being that it is a P2P network) they're using my internet connection to distribute the material to other users. If it was $1.00 I wouldn't mind if it expires in 24 hours (after I watch it, not after it downloads), what annoys me about services like this is that they will charge you rental (or often purchace price; there are lots of $5-$10 DVDs out there) and then tell me that it expires.
So it looks like we are headed for a repeat of history, where Apple has a store with 80+% of the market and actually makes money, while everyone else wonders why the hell consumers are unhappy with a video solution that is worse than VHS.
Since the movie/TV industry had years and years to learn the lesson, it's especially odd that they seek marginalization with such ferver.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...except for the fact that downloading takes an unknown amount of time. It's like a pay-per-view, except you don't know when you'll receive the movie.
please fix.
Do you demand your rental fee back when you return movies to Blockbuster? When you quit Netflix, do you expect your dues refunded? Does your cable company not bill you every month?
Don't think of this as buying a movie, thing of it as renting. Don't rent if you don't plan on watching it within the day. Price to high? Rent somewhere else. Simple.
Evidently this 24-hour deal will employ some form of DRM. And when I think DRM, a few things come to mind:
1) Non-free format
2) Won't work with Linux
So, I'll just continue to use zip.ca, or, *gasp* physically *go* to the *video store*!
Once the material is downloaded, users can only view it for up to 24 hours before it expires.
I know companies need a time limit, but why 24 hours? If it's any decent quality it will take me most of an evening to just download the movie. AND then hopefully I'll have time to watch it the next evening before it just stops playing as it will have been 24 hours since I downloaded it....
I didn't read the article, but I'm giving them then benefit of the doubt that the 24 hours starts only after you have downloaded the entire movie.
We don't want to rent. We want to own.
Which is, of course, why Blockbuster, Netflix, pay-per-view, and other business/services/technologies don't exist anymore. Er...waitaminute...
Seriously, most people only want to watch most shows/movies once; since rental is usually much cheaper than purchase, they rent (whatever the media). Sure we'd rather own, but seeing something a second time is far less important than seeing it once at low cost.
Of course, if they made ownership only slightly more expensive than rental (1.25x rather than >4x), they'd make more money, buyers would be happy, and most people would still rather see/buy something new than re-watch what they've seen.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
...for the AOL reruns on demand service :)
http://www.inomaly.com/14/
http://www.inomaly.com
Limited selection.
Pay for it.
Need to contribute my own P2P bandwidth to get it.
Must watch it in 24 hours (obviously badly DRM encumbered.
That's not an appealing package yet to tempt me to your service.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If I pay for a movie/show, I don't want to give my bandwidth for free. They should pay me for giving my bandwidth to them!
Nice try, NBC!
On the other hand, if you are willing to offer movies and programs in an unencumbered format (DiVX, MPEG, QuickTime, Ogg Theora, whatever) with no usage restrictions, and no special download clients required, then I'd be very willing to consider as much as $3.00 per show/program downloaded. I'd especially be interested in the old NBC Mystery Movies from the 1970's, including McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan and Wife.
Please correct your offerings accordingly.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Of course you can disable the 24hr time limit easily, or just download these off alt.binaries.hdtv for free. However this is at least finally a good idea from a major TV network to provide free stuff (albeit, temporary)
Rodney Quills Dinkins | Communications Specialist | GNAA Corporate HQ
To all those who said that P2P "pirate" networks would never bring about significant changes in the business models of big *AA... want some salt with that crow?
Sure, it's restricted, and it expires, but as long as the black market is out there, the white market will slowly bring itself up to speed until the need for a black market lessens more and more. Eventually the result will be something that works for picky consumers like us and for content providers. All file-sharers everywhere should not underestimate the significance of this move.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Aren't they a scumware company?
In this context, P2P is really meaningless, since it offers no advantage to me, the consumer. The only advantage it offers is for content providers, because they can serve more costumers because customers bear part of the bandwidth cost.
So since I'm providing bandwidth, do I get a download credit? If I keep files in my share long enough, I should be able to download more files without cost to me, since I'm providing a service to the content providers and they should be compensating me for it.
--
Innovation at play: http://www.gloryhoundz.com/
I'm not entirely sure why I would want to use such a crippled service Honestly if Basically it sounds like they are offering to 'let' consumers: pay to download a movie, pay for the bandwidth to do so (not to mention wait a few hours for it to come in) then pay for the upload bandwidth to share for 30 days and then get a movie that will self-destruct 24 hours after I first press play. And since most users don't have Freevo/MythTV type setups to watch downloaded videos on their TV's they will go through all this effort to watch their movie in a tiny windows media player screen.
Seriously if I'm going to have to go through all that effort to get my hands on a video file I'd at least expect to be able to keep a copy for personal use, however crudded up with DRM the file might be. Who in their right mind would use such a 'service' much less pay for the privledge of using it. As it stands now Netflix is a far easier way to get rentals and much more flexible than the way this service sounds. Of course plain old outlaw P2P or alt.binaries is still the most, ahh, cost effective way to get current releases in flexible, open formats with no commercials or other restrictions.
*sigh* I'd love for just one network or studio to start releasing paid, downloadable programming in an open, non-DRM'd format, and then make a killing on it. I for one would pay a few bucks an episode, or pay a subscription, for The Daily Show for example or for some of the amazing multi-part documenteries Discovery/TLC/THC put out. But only if I can get them in a format that I'll be able to watch on any platform I choose, whenever I choose and for as long as I choose. I'd accept crippled content for a free ad-sponsored service, but never for anything that I have to pay for.
Cheers,
Josh
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
Depending on the kind of DRM enforcement they choose, the movie itself won't explode but it may well render your computer open to all sorts of nasty things. Including, but not limited to, forms of hijacking that allow the attacker to burn your monitor.
...... as you can watch that Lost episode that you downloaded via iTunes over and over again. I suspect they'll try this for six months, not make any money and beg Apple to carry their content on iTunes.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
The end of this "Big Brother" attitude from controlled media is written upon the wall (but not in the papers). The digitally connected masses will soon remove the mass from media. Here's why:
1. The balance of power has already shifted to the masses in a sort of first mover advantage. The backlash coming from the entertainment industry is reflexive. It happens *after* networked mobs creatively, unexpectedly, disruptively take technology into their own hands. The tension between the entertainment industry and the online world simply represents that shift of power and control away from mass media.
2. What will the entertainment industry be when consumers en masse, produce their own "as good or better than" diversions? Blogs spontaneously exploded news into millions of niches, leaching the mass from news media. Cheap high tech multimedia production tools wielded by thousands of grass roots reporters are absolutely capable of producing high quality fare.
The mass entertainment and news industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?
3. Litigation takes a lot of time. Since technological advances also accelerate events, inflexible, knee jerk systems will eventually be overwhelmed with the speed of disruption. There will soon not be enough time to react before the next volley. Future shock paralyses the most inflexible systems first. So, ultimately, in a digitally networked world, control is distributed to the masses. But the question keeps returning:
Is Big Brother a Possible Future?Will some central organization, representing narrow interests be able to control what citizens share electronically? I don't think so. The imminent emergence of open source personal self-replicating fabricators will spit out an ever growing complexity of items, all of which will be embedded with personalized computational intelligence. So, no consistent control over hardware standards will be possible. Chips will not answer to a centralized institution.
As self-replicating fabricators rapidly spread to thousands and then millions of people, they will mutate and evolve; enlisted to upgrade and propagate their own next generation. Mobjects from the collective creative energy of Smart Mobs. This spells the end of the consumer/ producer divide. What will mass marketing be without a mass market?
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
P2P is a collective effort. You do your share, and you get alot in return. THEY want to use YOUR resources for THEM.
If I buy a movie online I want to be able to watch it whenever I want, and for any ammount of time.
It's good to know that I get their product for 24 hours but they get my bandwidth for 30 days. I don't mind using my bandwidth to share with my peers using P2P when it's an open torrent but if they want me to pay for the show and continue distributing it for them for 30 days, they are crazy. If we're stuck with the expiration rule, the clock should at least start when the user stops sharing it. Either that or subsidize my broadband.
Let me guess....
It will either be at a horribly low resolution like 320x200
OR
at a crappy bitrate like 700kb/s
I'll start buying movies online when the quality is DVD or BETTER, and NOT before that.
Oddly this post fits perfectly in this discussion, but it was intended for the next topic.
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
Online video rentals are nothing new. You can already download rentals from http://movielink.com/ It's direct from their servers rather than a bandwidth killing p2p, and the restrictions seem to be less. I've had fairly decent experiences with them so far.
Let's see... If I buy a movie on PPV, I can record a copy for personal use (for example, showing the girlfriend the next time she's over), using either my trusty old VCR, or my (formerly new & sparkling) PVR system, and if I go the PVR route, that means a quick and easy burn to DVD for archiving, vs. the lower quality, but still watchable VCR.
If I go to rent a movie, it's much more a gray area as to whether I can temporarily archive a copy for personal use, but the potential stil exists. Obviously it's not ok to copy what you rent to keep a personal copy, but the gray area comes into play (IMHO) if I haven't had a chance to watch the movie yet, and my rental duration's over. I still have the option of ripping down a copy of that tape/DVD to watch when I can watch it (after all, I've paid my fee's to rent the movie - It's up to me when I actually watch it), and then erasing that copy once I have watched it.
Or, I can go the route that the big media vultures want me to go... Meaning that I pay the same fee as for the two previous methods, but I have to watch that movie within 24 hours, or it'll "disappear", effectively locking me out from watching it, whether I got to see it during that initial 24 hour period, or not.
What makes more sense here? Keep the existing freedoms and flexability that we have regarding such items, or pay the same amount of money for far fewer features and options... I don't know about you, but I personally see this as yet another way that the media companies are trying to bait us consumers into giving up our rights.
I realize that pricing's not been set yet either, but come on... Unless the movies are less than $1.00, I'm not even going to consider this. A better offer, albeit one which I would also avoid, would be to let the movie be viewable until it has been viewed once. This way, if something comes up, and I don't get to watch the movie during that 24 hour period, I still can go back to it at a later dat and get my moneys worth. Of course then you get into the nitty gritty details of what constitutes a watched movie (Did you "watch it all the way through", "What happens if I stop the movie 5 seconds before the end, or during the closing credits", etc).
Sorry... I've said it here before: I'm all for paying for the ability to download and watch shows. You can even stick a commercial or two in the mix to cover your costs! But once you start removing my freedoms, as far as what I can do with the product I've purchased, I'm going to go elsewhere.
Most of us associate P2P with a lack of DRM. But they use our bandwidth to distribute movies thereby saving them money while using the same old crappy DRM and we're supposed to be happy?
Getting Sony's rootkit via a P2P network doesn't make you any less infected.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Copy protection is a form of product defect, and I do not purchase products I know to be defective.
Do you consider your car to be defunct? Because it employes a form of protection - a key and lock. Very similarly, the video files employ a key and a lock... the files have a DRM lock and the video player can act as a key to a legitimate user for legitimate purposes. Its not broken, it does exactly what it claims to do - it plays in the media players described for the time period advertized.
-everphilski-
So it expires 24 hours after playback begins, not after download, which isn't as bad as it could be. Still: Would it kill them to make it expire after a month? Are they really afraid that I'll watch the movie more than once during that time, cheating them out of revenue for something that probably wasn't making any money at all for them before they offered it via p2p?
Moreover... Jerry Springer?! Why would I even bother to download that? You could pay me to download it via a superfast iTunes-like service with no DRM and I still wouldn't be interested.
This seems deliberately designed to fail. What their motivation could be, I have no idea.
The good news is that they can use this technology to bypass the FCC and rich, campaign contributing religious folk who don't know how to use their V-Chips. Thousands are already downloading TV shows with Bittorrent and RSS listings services/apps but the shows are still limited because they're tainted by the fear of big brother. This could change that.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
This is AWESOME! Maybe next they can release some sort of cheaper-priced DVD that expires after 24 hours. That would be super-keen.
Rather than spending $5 to download a movie that is going to 'expire' in 24 hours, what about a constant per-minute rate for an on-demand, live, un-recordable broadcast? Suppose that the average film is 100 minutes long, then a $.05 per minute rate would achieve the same effect as a $5 rental, but if I decide to stop watching halfway through, i've only spent $2.50, and I can shell out the $2.50 a week later when I want to pick the film back up.
A local version of what I've watched of the film could be stored and encrypted on my computer, to accomplish the p2p scalability. Best of all, if I decide the film sucks, I can stop watching it and save myself some cash.
With free material everyone understands that by contributing disk space, bandwidth, and electrical power (to run their computer when they're not using it) they are helping share the burden of distributing the material. Why would I want to do this if I have to pay for the material anyway? Some might argue that I'm helping to keep the price down, but in reality I'd just be padding NBC's profit margin.
Additionally, I normally turn my computer off when I'm not using it (save's power, less vulnerable etc). Now if I was participating in a free P2P community I might leave it on as my contribution to the community but I'm not going to burn extra power to support someone else's paid download. I'm sure others would act in a similar fashion, so the number of available nodes to help with your download are likely to be very limited. Seems like this would result in very slow downloads.
Also, I can only watch the movie for 24 hours, but will it stay on my harddrive taking up disk space? Seems like it has to in order for this to be a P2P service. If everyone just deletes their expired movies, than anyone purchasing the movie would have to download it from central NBC servers. It doesn't sound like a very workable P2P setup.
Finally there's the issue of the 24 viewing window. As others have stated, that's just not enough. I don't want to own the movie forever, but I'm not going to spend hours downloading a movie I paid for and then feel pressured to watch it before it expires. With current on demand services I get the movie immeadiately so it's easier to plan for my time. If I download a movie tonight to watch tomorrow, who knows what might come up. I'd be pretty pissed if I paid for and spent hours downloading a movie and then couldn't watch because it expired. They would need to make the limit at least a couple days, if not a week.
But it should only cost me $1 to download. And, it should download SCREAMINGLY fast. P2P doesn't cut it. They need to quit being pussies and pony up for some seriously fast servers and gobs of bandwidth.
Dear customer. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to supply the National Broadcasting Company (further refered to as "NBC") with money. As always, should you or any of your fellow watchers be made to vomit or turned blind, the NBC will disavow any knowledge of our actions or taste. This file will self-destruct in 86400 seconds. 86399, 86398, 86397...
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
If I'm paying $5.00 for a movie I'll be damned if I'm going to bother letting others download from me.
Hey studio dickheads, YOUR the content provider, NOT me. Boot the fucking bandwidth bill yourself.
I hope their network gets filled with porn and fakes.
Sadly kids growing up today will soon have zero idea what the hell it used to be like before DRM. When you could buy music and actually do what you want with it and weren't treated like a criminal.
Unless it's dirt cheap (as in '10 cents' or something similarily irrelevant), nobody will pay for something that goes poof after 24 hours.
Most of the stuff up on current P2P networks are not worth the effort to download, and they cost 0c and never expire. What makes NBC Universal think their *P2P* (as in 'you'll be sharing your bandwidth') offering has any chance whatsoever if their offering has 'costs money' and 'yours for only 24 hours' added to the deal, if even the current stuff on P2P is rarely worth the effort to download?
Most likely this craptastic 'offering' will have;
Less than DVD res
No DVD extras
Old titles - at best, at the same time as blockbuster gets it
Eons to download as nobody is on their P2P crapnetwork
Requires Internet Explorer, WMP10 and activeX to use
And will cost same or more than your average Blockbuster rental (the one you can off the DVD if you want to watch it again).
This won't fly. Only way people will be interested in download options is if they are substantially easier and better than the current standard (in this case, netflix and blockbuster).
Just because it gets downloaded to your computer doesn't mean you have the right to watch it as many times as you want, as often as you want, for the rest of your life.
FTFA: Users will be able to view the material for 24 hours once they begin playback on their computers; once downloaded, the material will be stored on the user's computer for 30 days to act as a resource in the Peer Impact network
It's there for 30 days? Ok, fine.
It's there for 30 days, but I can use it for just one day?
No. Fucking. Way.
You can't take the sky from me...
Users will be able to view the material for 24 hours once they begin playback on their computers
It's right there in TFA for all to read. Oh wait, this is slashdot.
Seems to me, though, that this is the only part they got right about this inherently flawed business model.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
they rented it for a ridiculously low amount like 99 cents?
I would be more than happy to view more than a few movies every month. Especially Red Mars and many other Sci fi flicks that I want to see again.
there is an obvious incentive to keep the incomplete file, which will be seeded already. Since we are talking about proprietary software, nothing stops the developers to tell the program to stall the download for a day or two longer than necessary. As long as they don't limit the d/l speed too much or if they randomize the limit, they might just get away with it. [/tinfoil hat]
Also, if the target user base for this business model is the same as the target audience of Blind Date and the Jerry Springer Show, then their user base might generally just not care what happens with the file afterwards, including for how long it remains on the HD.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Can these folks really be serious? They want consumers to pay them to view these movies (I personally don't have a problem w/ that part of the idea) and then seed NBC's files on their computers wasting bandwidth and HD space all for NBC benefit for a "premium" service....yikes! At least AOL (who admittedly I'm no fan of) has the right idea that they will be giving away the basic connent on their P2P network (at least initially) and attempting to profit soely through the adverts. I mean if I'm going to get something for free I don't necessarily mind the idea of sharing my bandwidth and storage... kind of the idea that made P2P work in the first place...
It seems the only reason to get such stuff is to 'vote' for more with your money - but since Firefly is gone - what could that be.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but it seems like if you're paying NBC for content, then you have to download it via P2P, you're basically footing their bandwidth bill for them. If I'm having to pay for content, I want to download it directly and reliably from the source, just like the iTunes store.
Why should the customers be spending their bandwidth seeding the files for NBC?
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
What this sounds like to me is that we have a double standard here. As an individual, I can't use programs like kaaza, limewire or some other P2P software to join a P2P on my own without someone declaring "illegal downloading" of MP3's, movies or software. This has been the cry of the RIAA and the enterainment industery for years which drove them sue happy.
What gives companies the right to imitate the same P2P technology, which they have declared a horrible thing in the name of "lost profits", to create their own more restrictive, cheap knock off, reproduced, and rehashed P2P network as just another way to screw over the consumer in order to take control of a "new market" by (once again) offering products/services at inferior quality and inflated cost?
After all, the original P2P networks have been looked down upon by corperations (RIAA) and by the government. For years, corperation have been blamming such P2P software for lower profits and in turn rised prices. Now These corperations (AOL and NBC) are using the technology against us.
If corperations are able to sue the individual consumers for downloading music off of P2P networks, then shouldn't the individual (or another company) have the right to sue the corperation for stealing our money by offering downloads that expire thus becomming useless? At least off of Kaaza I get to keep what I download for years to come.
Isn't this the same Wurld that does adware? I remove a lot of spyware from people's machines, I know I've seen Wurldmedia being removed before.
I'd gladly cough up a couple bucks an episode to download it commercial free, watch it on an OS of my choosing, at a time of my choosing and have it not expire. This way I'm putting my money towards shows that I want to see continue. If I don't think the show is good, I won't buy it and if enough others feel this way then the show will either get better or stop being produced.
The **AA execs will say that this isn't a workable solution because I could then distribute it and folks could download it for free or it would eat into their overpriced DVD sales (well, some are overpriced...can you really put a price on the complete series of The Muppet Show?). if they're worried about me distributing it, then encode a UID to the file and attach it to the credit card that I'd need to pay for it. It's not like Big Brother can't find out what I've bought anyway. If the file with that UID is found in the wild, then they can try and talk to me about it. Maybe it'll lead to a more acceptable DRM scheme (if such a thing exists).
Why do I download shows that I want to see? Because they haven't offered me a pricing scheme that I can even find remotely acceptable that doesn't tie me to their viewing/usage rights. 24 hours to watch a show? Sorry, I'll download an hour show for free and watch it with no ads in 40 minutes, on my linux box, a week from now, and then again before the start of the next season.
To Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
If I could pay a flat monthly rate and have free reign to download as many shows as I want, I'd be tempted to shell out for it. They could keep the content DRM'd or stuff it in some massive buffer ala Rhapsody.
A subscription would let me explore the content without feeling cheated out of a download fee if I stop playing a show after watching 5 minutes of it and determining that it's pure crap.
Yes DRM and proprietary media players would prevent me from viewing the content on a linux box or archiving a show on DVD so that I can dig it out and watch it after the system eventually shuts down (or I decide to stop paying). But I can live with that, I know I'm paying for a service and not buying a product.
There is a market for subscription entertainment services. Think of how many people pay $50-$100 in monthly fees for TV from Comcast or DirectTV? Ignoring TiVo, do you own the shows or are you just paying for the right to view them and the infrastructure to get them to your house?
Tomorrow's cable box may become a media-center PC.
My God! It's full of eval()'s.
Okay this might be offtopic and modded to oblivion, but, while we are requesting things, please tell someone at Alan Landsburg/Viacom/whatever to release the complete box set of 1970s TV series 'In Search Of...' narrated by Leonard Nimoy. I have been looking for this for a while and it doesn't seem to exist on DVD. It used to be on A&E but it was cut, now it doesn't seem to exist except for the new SciFi one.
The the skeptical and intelligent approach to many conspiracies/mysteries/supernatural/urban myths/and the obscure, the hypnotizing moog music, all combined with the narration of noneother than Spock himself makes this a true 70s classic.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
/dev/random
Seriously, how long before it gets hacked?
The article didn't seem to get into the technical details on how the p2p actually worked. Knowing how DRM works, each person's version of the file is going to be different, or else it wouldn't be drm right?
I was curious on how this would actually work on 2 aspects, and both revolve around the p2p functionality.
1. How exactly is the p2p sharing going to work? Are they going to be removing the drm from each file and then sending the bits across and then on the other end, re-drming the file with the a different expiration date and user credentials? I guess that's what iTunes does when you share music across the network, but what they don't bother doing is re-drming the file, but they just won't let you save it.
2. Assuming the above works, since videos expire after 24hrs, does that mean the file will no longer be shared after 24hrs? If it can be still shared after 24hrs, that means they can still extract the video from the DRM after it's expired. Is that possible? If you can't share after 24hrs, that really impedes the functionality of p2p sharing. If you can, does that mean users can somehow still view the video?
HD Trailers
And unless I am getting something for uploading, I will not be doing so. not for stuff I paid to watch.
Maybe if I got it 30% cheaper if I had a good upload rate I would, otherwise I'd just use my slow upstream speed for something else
Though 3 is a bit high...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
In order to survive, movie studios will have to compete with free. Almost nobody disagrees with that statement. Commercial movie download services must be better than free. DRM, however, makes commercial services worse than free. Much worse. If they continue to use futile DRM, which does nothing to stop piracy, then consumers will resort to piracy. There is one service, called EZTakes, that offers movie downloads that consumers can burn directly to DVD. And you can burn as many DVDs (for personal use only) as you want because EZTakes has rejected the notion of DRM. They provide a service that is better than free because you get the content in a form that you can use (i.e. play on your big screen TV). EZTakes' catalog is small now, but growing. Consumers and the movie industry should support services like that!
Super secret cheat code #1: Change your system's date and time
Exactly the Ssme restrrictions as Movielink seeing Movielink is owned by the MPAA members of which NBC\Universal is a member and you dont get a credit for uploading when you rent off Movielink with peer Impact you do.