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Legal DVD Burnable Downloads Launched
rogabean writes to tell us that Hollywood studios have taken a large step into the future by launching their new program with CinemaNow which allows users to legally download and burn DVDs. While the current of offerings seems to be just the dregs, studio execs hope to expand the list quickly and offer a new way to find niche or older films that are difficult to locate.
What with these things costing $9-$15 for old titles, they'll be almost as dear as buying the real thing from stores, or online. But, when you've had enough, you certainly won't be able to raise any beer money selling them on, and ebay will probably think you're selling a dodgy copy!
That's what I was thinking. The movies you find in Wal-mart in the 2 for $10 bin are now going to be available for download for $9 (time, computer, internet connection, DVD burner and blank media not included).
Just be sure you don't burn a coaster on that first try...
After, a quick look of this site, they use DRM from Windows... So goodbye Linux and Apple. As per the article an agreement with Apple for the distribution... (M$ DRM on Apple...) And the worst part, they`re talking about something that prevent the burner to burn more than one copy, sounds like a rootkit to me. Basically, the movie branch of Sony will repeat the same mistake as the music branch.
From the CinemaNow Webpage: "To watch the movie or burn it to DVD, you will need CinemaNow's easy-to-use DVD Burner software"
So it is not just an easy distributable ISO that you download. I can see how they can prevent making more than one copy from the image file since you must use their own burning software but I fail to see what would stop a person from making a copy of the newly burned DVD. I also would be curious as to how they unforce the one copy limit, the only way that makes sense to me is to force the user to be online and do some type of validating with their servers, otherwise just making a copy of the file before burning it would be able to get around the one copy limit since they would have to edit the file in some way to recognize it as "used".
Either way, if the resulting disc is playable in a standalone DVD player then there is no way to prevent the movie from being lifted off the disc. This model might look good to a suit who doesn't know any better because they think, "This is great, even if the image file is shared over the internet it can only be used once!", and while that is true they will probably overlook the fact that people can still copy and create images of the burned disc just as easily as before.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.