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.'"

Comments

Incentive for the user?

[Fusen]

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.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[AKAImBatman]

Why would I want to help WB in the distribution if I'm PAYING them for the movie too?

Presumably for lower prices. Bandwidth is cheaper than ever, but is still expensive. Especially when you figure in the number of machines necessary to power a large multimedia network. By marginalizing the cost of the download across many machines, WB is (theoretically) obtaining savings that they can pass on to you, the consumer.

Whether consumers see it that way (or WB passes on the savings!) remains to be seen.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[ehrichweiss]

From TFA: "for a fee that Warner says will be similar to the cost of a DVD"

It doesn't look like they're planning on passing any of the savings on to the real distributors/consumers, that was my point. And as has been stated repeatedly, if the prices are not going to be reduced I'd rather just buy the DVD and save my bandwidth(upload and download) for things that profit me as an individual. They need to pass on some form of secondary gain here and SIGNIFICANLTY cheaper pricing or free movies in exchange for sharing your bandwidth are the first two that come to mind.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[neoform]

And what makes them think this will even work?
If I was to pay for a download, I'd cap my upload at 1k/sec (on my router even, if i had to) and I'd also kill the sharing as soon as it's done downloading.. why waste my upload speeds if it's going to be costing me something?

The only reason Torrents work right now is because people upload as much as they download, if everyone were to do like me in this case (which i think they would), this wont work at all.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[Lumpy]

did you even read the summary? they will be charging "similar to DVD prices" for something that is of lower quality, lacking the DVD extras and you pay for the bandwidth.

Yeah, people will jump all over that.

it simply reinforces the fact that the movie industry is ran by a large number of retarted people that have zero clue about business let alone how to sell a product.

Re:Incentive for the user?

[tambo]

t doesn't look like they're planning on passing any of the savings on to the real distributors/consumers, that was my point.

Exactly.

I presume that Warner believes they've conditioned consumers into believing that $15-$20 is a fair price for a movie; that would be a good reason to charge the same for an electronic version. However, they're dead wrong in this presumption. Rather, they have conditioned consumers into paying that price for a DVD that contains the movie.

The physicality of the DVD is important to the consumer: the disc has nice silkscreen imaging; the packaging looks good and protects the disc; it looks great on a shelf; etc. There are practical implications, too: except for a few specific illegalities (bootleg copying, exctracting the content without the copy protection, etc.), the consumer can do what he wants with the disc - view it at a friend's house, sell it, etc.

In other words, the physicality is a very serious "value-add" for the DVD consumer. Warner can't strip all of that away, sell just the contents of the disc, and expect the same profit. A file on a hard drive is not as appealing as a DVD slipcover in a media stack. And consumers are savvy enough to fear the restrictions that will inevitably accompany this file: it will be locked to a specific computer, no resale value, etc.

In short: Warner is crazy if it believes that consumers equate a DVD with the bare file contained on the DVD. It's fundamentally mistaking the elements of a DVD that represent worth to the consumer.

- David Stein

Re:Incentive for the user?

[syousef]

You're completely missing the point entirely.

The movie industry doesn't want this sort of venture to succeed. They're not all stupid and retarded as one poster said. They want this to fail so that they can point and say "see there's no legitimate use for P2P. When we offered a legitimate P2P service people didn't use it. So your honour we should just shut down all the P2P since it's only used by theives!". Of course they won't mention the fact that they'd kept prices high, while forcing the customer to pay twice (once for the movie, once for the bandwidth).

I mean for pity sake if they wanted to distribute the content to the users in a better way, they could just drop the price on the DVDs and make it possible to back them up instead of wasting money on this little venture. Success is not their goal here!

They're still not quite getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:They're still not quite getting it

[a_karbon_devel_005]

Correct.

The execs think "peer to peer" is a buzzword they need on their products but people, NORMAL people, aren't interested in the "peer to peer" part of P2P they're interested in the "free stuff I don't have to pay for" part of P2P.

I applaud efforts to make media online easily for all who want it, that's how people want to get content. But P2P in this case isn't doing anything but showing up in headlines and making executives think they're creating "hip" products.

Sounds like a good idea

[TheRappingShoe]

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.

Wow, same price as a DVD?

[GrumblyStuff]

...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.

This makes no sense

[Saint37]

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/

Pay as much as a DVD! ugh? no thanks.

[xirtam_work]

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.

Good idea

[Tim C]

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.

Maybe common sense...

[TCQuad]

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?

They still don't get it, do they?

[Spy der Mann]

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.

So can I burn it?

[Kjella]

...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.