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Warner Bros. to Try File Sharing in Germany
Carl Bialik writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Warner Bros. plans to sell TV shows and movies online in Germany via P2P. In2Movies, to launch in March, 'will feature movies dubbed into German, including "Batman Begins" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD. It will also offer television shows like "The O.C." and locally made programs and movies. Users, who will have to register for the service, will be able to keep the movie indefinitely. But instead of getting a movie from a central server, pieces of it could come from other people on the network who also bought that movie.' The president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group says, 'Studios can't just turn their backs and hope "P2P" is going to go away tomorrow.'"
So why would someone use this service against say The Google Video Store, or iTunes. TFA doesn't mention if the files would be cheaper, but they will still be DRM'ed so by using this service you get the movie like you normally would be you also have to sacrifice your upload.
I don't understand why anyone would want to sue this over the services that are already out.
Someone is finally waking up. I wonder how long it will take the music industry to wake up... P2P...the scent opens your eyes...
So, for about the same price as a DVD, you get a DRM locked copy of the file and you get to pay a good chunk of their distribution costs. What a great deal!
It will be interesting to see what kind of formats will be used, exactly how much they charge, and how much DRM they cram into the thing. If they do charge the same cost for downloading a film as the DVD version then where is the incentive to download? Surely the price should be lower to reflect the savings in materials and distribution costs.
...big corps start to realize that the old bussiness model is dead, and begin to use the new model at their advantage, instead of fighting the tide.
- no sig.
...but you get nothing? If there's any sort of limit on how many copies you can make, you'd best hope your computer never dies.
So let's see.... None of the usual DVD extras? One language? No hard copy? SAME PRICE?
Wow that's a bunch of ass.
If you're going to charge me the same price for a download as you are for a DVD and you're gonna strap DRM on it to boot, I might as well buy the DVD and rip it. I now have a hard and DRM freee soft copy all for the same price.
http://www.commodore69.com/
Are these companies stupid? Do they think we're stupid? Why ask us to pay the same price, or similar to a store purchased DVD when there's no manufacturing, packaging or physical distribution to pay for? If anything an electronic copy of a movie or song should cost less to the consumer - much less.
I can understand people paying a similar amount for a 'premium item' like a just aired TV show or something that is similar to pay-per-view like a sports game. But, expecting people to pay full price for something that comes without the same quality of packaging as a movie that can be bought in a store is rediculous.
And to top it off they're using a Bittorrent style system where their customers are the ones paying for the bandwidth! If I upload your show to another customer for you it comes out of my quota of data from my ISP for the month and costs you nothing! What's in it for me huh?
These outfits really need to figure out that an electronic product should be *LESS* not that same price or more!
Don't forget these movies are likely to be compressed to a lower quality than a regular DVD as well.
Shame about the price?
For the cost of a DVD, I'm going to want a DVD. For a file that I could lose in a hard drive crash or through an accidental erasure etc, and that's potentially going to take me a couple of days to download (even if it maxes out my 2Mbps connection) and tie up my connection (if it maxes it out), I'm going to want to spend quite a bit less. That's ignoring the fact that my house can (currently) comfortably store many more DVDs than my hard drive, and somehow I don't see it being quite as simple as just burning it to disc.
Still, that said, this is definitely a step in the right direction.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Why would anyone want to buy from this store for the same price as the actual DVD? You have to wait a few hours (depending on your internet connection), the user is likely to only be able to play it back on their PC (so unless they have a media center PC they cant even watch it on their TV), and to add insult to injury you have to waste your upload to help cut the distibution costs of WB. All this is doing is creating a bigger profit for WB with every movie sold. I could understand it if the movie were significantly cheaper but that would require a movie studio to pass their savings onto their viewers and lets face it it'll be a cold day in hell when that happens!
Finally, some sense in the P2P/RIAA/MPAA wars!
They get your money to buy the content and then they don't have to pay for the bandwidth to get it to you? How could they not try it?
In Germany, most people have a highly asymmetric connection. DSL (which is by far the most popular version of broadband) usually comes with bandwiths like
-1000kBit/s down and 128 kBit/s up
-2000kBit/s down and 192 kBit/s up
[...]
-6000kBit/s down and 576 kBit/s up
There are offers with higher upstream bandwidth, but those tend to be more expensive.
So distribution per P2P will usually be hampered by the lack of upstream bandwith. Why should a paying customer accept that (and have his own upstream blocked for hours), unless he gets the content cheaper as compensation for his cooperation?
C - the footgun of programming languages
Don't forget the whole not having media thing. If I'm paying as much as for a DVD, why would I not want to have the actual disc that I could carry to a friend's house, or wherever?
So basically I have to pay the same price as a DVD for less features AND I have to do the work...
interesting...
now will it be true P2P (ie will I be helping to spread the file, which probably wouldnt work because of DRM)
basically, they are going to overcharge people for a DRM packed file that isnt as useful as a standard DVD then be shocked when it doesnt work...
thats my prediction.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
But over all I am happy to see them stepping forward. Most of the above problems, (pricing, amount to upload, burning), would take a little redirection at the corporate level and could be implimented quickly.
We really need a universal streaming format acceptable by DRM standards but open to client implimentations. Something like NTSC over IP. The server can be closed but the client should be universal so that I can get it built into my xbox media center or my windows media extender, etc. I would think that recording this would be no more of a threat than recording to a vhs tape or rca in connection.
I do security
Same price as a DVD? Wake up. Why should I pay the same for something more restricted?
Do content producers think they can do the same thing they did with CD and DVD, and just keep/raise prices with formats? You've got to add something to earn a premium.
Somehow what seems missed here is the cost of keeping my PC alive 24/7 just to give free bandwidth with no payback. If I have to buy the movie, put up with it's DRM, and give the person who charged me (at no discount) free server space, no deal! If I buy the DVD, I have the physical copy, can play it on anything I own, thanks to many who are equally sick of the abuse of the fair use act. I dont wear out harddrives, cook the CPU, and run up my electric bill with the 600W power supply. Plus the only way I would run a P2P server is if I can run it under Linux where I have *real* control of what is exposed to the wire.
Besides, unless you have a OC-3 fiber cabinet installed in your hall closet, it will take an eternity to download top-quality video via typical ADSL. Forget it if you only have a modem.
Oops, I forgot. We, in the US, have an inferior system of obsolete TELCO's who grudgingly gave us DSL just to protect their obsolete switches from meltdown due to all the modems.
-dh
The reason people prefer P2P than buying DVD's (or CD's for music) is the friggin' overinflated prices imposed on them!
The **AA isn't willing to let go of their precious dollars. And so, they pretend to modernize themselves by offering downloads, but they don't modernize what REALLY keeps them in the jurassic age. The prices.
It's nice to see them trying to meet their customers halfway but really I think a few things have to happen:
1) Eliminate DRM.
2) Price the movies so cheaply that there isn't much point in stealing it. If a song is worth $1, and a TV show is worth $2, a movie shouldn't be worth more than $4 or $5 (US dollars). Make the "special features" a free optional download for people who have purchased the movie (a lot of people, myself included, will usually opt to just download the movie). Note that this could almost completely assume all of the $$$ that rental outfits are making from movies, allowing the studios to pocket profits from the vast majority of people who will just view the movie once and then discard it.
3) Work with the major PVR platforms to make it easier to buy an unencumbered $4 or $5 movie right from the menu than it is to download a pirate torrent and import it into the PVR. Don't just partner with one major commercial interest, get in bed with the OSS platforms also. Billions of dollars are at stake so spending a couple of million to have your product supported on the majority of popular PVR platforms is buying free money.
...like you can burn CDs with iTMS.
Pros:
Available online, no need to get to a store. But if getting to a store is that hard, do they have proper broadband out there in the wilds?
Possibility for instant start (downloading as you go). Much more difficult with torrent-like systems because you need them in order. Can they provide that kind of sustained speeds to most consumers anyway?
Cons:
For a DVD, you can often get it as quickly by retail stores, online sites if you don't have good broadband
You know where you can get it cheaper...
You don't get any of the packaging. Do we even get the DVD extras?
Can you take a back-up?
Can you play it on a regular DVD player?
Can you move it to other machines like you can with a DVD disc?
They want to use your upload bandwidth
Basicly, no burning is a total and complete dealbreaker for me. And I know we can't burn CSS DVDs (consumer burners can't), and we won't be allowed to burn non-CSS DVDs. And if your HDD dies? Either you must a) download countless gigabytes AGAIN, or you must burn back-ups (maybe with some activation scheme). But then there's really no advantage over regular DVDs anyway, except now you need to make your own hardcopy. There's a big difference between having a HTPC and being forced to absolutely, for all future have to use one. Bought a DVD player to have in your cabin/car (great way to make kids STFU)/son's/daughter's room? Sorry.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It is a good start but it won't really take off until they revise their idea of how it is supposed to work and how much it should cost to the end user. Downloading a DVD for a price of a real DVD doesn't make sense, because if you want to play it in a DVD player now you have to buy an expensive blank and spend time burning the thing.
It would make some sense if they at least mailed you the real DVD after you buy the right to download a copy. But that is what I would do and I think I can come up with some innovative ideas time to time.
You can't handle the truth.
If these aren't drastically compressed in some fashion you are looking at a couple gigs of data per movie. Downloading a file that is 5+ gigs over a P2P application... If you are really hell bent on staying home you could probably order the actual DVD from a website and it show up before your download finished AND still be able to surf the web while you wait instead of having your link crushed under all the other people trying to download 5G worth of data from your computer.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The goal of gambling is generally to maximize your positive expectation (this means positive outcome. Cf. writers like David Sklansky). While I encountered this statement in a book about poker, I believe it applies pretty well to business and other aspects of life. And the cartels probably understand this more than the genie metaphor.
So if they understand their precipice of a business model, and they are trying to maximize profits (positive outcome), then why are they not trying to really "embrace" alternate distribution? My take on this is that they've done the research and concluded that they can make more money through DRM, scare tactics (lawsuits), and FUD.
DRM is really a temporary solution. It makes copying harder, so it works on the non-technical. Coupled with the DMCA, it creates an end-run around fair use rights as they can sue anyone who releases information about how to bypass the restrictions. It can't last forever, as there are those who want to copy media, and stopping human communication is not possible.
The scare tactics (lawsuits) and FUD could be considered a temporary solution, or you could compare it to any authority asserting power over the peasants. These work (at least in the US, I don't know about other places) because the average person here doesn't research or apply any logic to the corporate nightly news they watch, often owned or affiliated with the same corporations who hold massive copyright interests (ABC, NBC, CBS, WB, FOX, etc). When the lawsuits started, the average person had probably seen or read two things about file-sharing: "peer-to-peer makes copying easy" and then, a bit later "file-sharers go to court". The FUD works in basically the same way.
I believe that public opinion is really key here. Sure, there are those who buy the FUD and learn a distorted view of copyright. And there are those who favor abolishing copyright altogether. But I think that the majority of people are somewhere in the middle. These are the techies who see the ridiculousness of the propositions made by the cartels (in terms of technology), or the soccer moms who want to copy that DVD so Timmy doesn't ruin the original.
This is where we have to step in. The great thing about this point in time is that most people don't understand much about the situation. I found this out when I was home during Christmas/New Years. I consider my dad to be smarter than average, yet he thought DVD burners might be illegal (he has one in his 2-year-old iMac), and I don't think he really understood me when I didn't want to go to the movies unless there was something I really wanted to see (he asked why, I said "unethical business practices").
So what should we do? Well, we have a situation where public opinion is important and the same public does not understand the issues very well. This means those who want to tame the feudal-style trade groups (cf. Guilds) should find some way to raise awareness about these issues.
There are organizations like Free Culture and Downhill Battle who are trying to do this. They are a great resource for the many slashdot (and similar) types who complain about the copyright situation, yet maybe don't