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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.
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.
Although it's good that the movie industry isn't completely blind, I think they're going about this the wrong way. It's definitely a good thing that customers will be able to keep their purchases forever (instead of some 'limited time' offer), but I still have trouble seeing the value for customers in a P2P environment where they have to pay the same price as a DVD.
The article mentions the videos will have security features added to them so they can't be copied. Without more details, it's impossible to say how much of a hassle this will be. What if I have two computers and want to watch the video on the other one? The article is a bit weak on the details...
...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.
No Bay Watch or Hasselhoff music videos??
This may work in EU countries where most broadband users have uncapped links, but in countries like Australia (or India, but there are bigger problems in that case), where most connections have usage caps, this is not going to work. People are going to refuse to pay for the content and then pay for the data transfer.
That said, it's a nice change to see some positive developments as far as the ??AA and the internet go, and a very welcome change from banning all innovation, as they tried recently...
StrayByte.Net
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/
This reminds me of grade school, where an adult against tooth decay or something would try to "speak our language."
Flossing is stupid ill! 23 Skidoo!
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.
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?
What I'm most excited about is Firefly Season 2. From the buzz I've been hearing, they intend on doing something really revolutionary with it: it's going to be a subscription-based show not available on any networks. If the Browncoats can fully support a show the caliber of FireFly, that's going to force the network execs to sit up and take notice.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
This sucks. I read about something like this on /. previously. People fork over their bandwidth, yet they pay fall fare for content. A movie costs the same for a guy with OC12 as it does for a guy on a 9600 baud courier modem. A pricing scheme that rewards fast uploads would be a fantastic way to improve the strength of the internet - everyone would pay more for fast uprate to save money!
Malicious note - here's a chance for movie pirates to use the same guerilla tactics as the industry - poisoning commercial P2P seeds! Inject that 1 frame of shlong and make Tyler Durden proud!
Everyone is complaining about the fact that it will be "similar to the cost of a DVD." What if it will be 1/2 the cost of a DVD. Would you want to use it then. Would that make it worth the hassle of downloaded, potentially using up dl quotas, DRM, etc?
When you can illegally download nearly anything for free or goto Blockbusters and rent whatever for $5, what would you pay to be able to legally download content using P2P that will be DRMed?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
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.
Any reasonable P2P protocol splits the file up into packets and sends out requests for packet numbers- you aren't going to be pulling from just one source, so upload bandwidth really doesn't matter as much.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
...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
The problem is, is that they are very afraid to undercut their own retailers. If they significantly undercut the DVDs, and people actually start buying a significant amount of stuff online, many retailers won't see it as worth their time to continue to even stock the DVDs. They have to keep the retailers happy. If you don't then they will revolt. It's the same reason why buying a computer direct from HP costs the same amount as buying it from the retailer, even though there should be no distribution markup.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I am a Rogers Broadband customer. Rogers has, in the last year, set a data cap for my digital data service. Specifically, Rogers gives me 60GB per month, upload and download combined. I pay $40CDN per month for the service.
Now I finally have a way to compute the value of such things as this Warner P2P offering.
We need a little bit more data, though. Specifically, how big is a DVD quality movie? Between 600MB and 1.4GB for an MPEG encoded video of sufficient quality to (subjectively) look good on my big TV. 600MB for an animation, 1.4GB for a feature movie. Lets "split the difference" and call it 1GB.
Which means I can download 60 movies per month for $40. Each movie will cost me 67 cents to download.
But the P2P (Peer to Peer) model only works if I upload the material as well. To one (or more) clients. Note that my cap applies to uploads as well. I am going to assume a 1:1 ratio for down to uploads - which means my data pipe price is doubled. Specifically, to $1.33 per movie.
There is also a cost associated with having material on the hard disk for servicing uploads. I know the cost of on-line storage. My average price is now $2 per gigabyte (for my drives in service), and I replace drives every 2 years. Which means $1 per movie per year. If I assume data retension for a year (got to fill this in with something. and there has to be client retension to make P2P work!), this adds a buck, bringing my cost to $2.33.
Would I spend $2.33 to download a movie? Rental at BlockBuster average $3.50 (ish) per movie. One buck more. Which is then what the content is worth to me. Without DRM, unlimited personal use: the price of the DVD minus the above costs, minus a factor related to the time it takes to actually download/upload (because my Internet connection is tied up... and its a nuisance). I figure a MINIMUM of 5 bucks.
So, "Unencumbered DVD quality downloads using our P2P, at 30% under store DVD price" is the beginning of the play for me.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
...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.
Nope. They're not beginning to use a new model at all. At most, they are trying to apply their current (old) business model to a new medium. At the very least, they are going to try this "intarweb distribution" thingie and do it so poorly that they can then say, "but we TRIED selling this stuff online, and no one bought it! They're all filthy pirates!"
The old business model is: "We create content. You pay for this content, but you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and have no concept of supply and demand, so our prices are unfairly high and we blame the internet on low sales, not taking the quality of our product into account."
Their new model is: "We create content. You pay for this content online at the same inflated prices as physical media, except that we don't have to pay for printing any physical media, and this is a peer-to-peer system which means the customers are paying for bandwidth costs as well! We don't allow them to alter or burn this content in any way because of the restrictive DRM we place on it. Basically, you only get to watch it when, where, and how we say so, because of our precious IP. Oh, and we're greedy bastards and will blame the failure of this system on the filthy pirates and not on the inherent flaws."
How is this new or innovative, again?
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