MPAA Plans To Launch Movie Links Site

eldavojohn writes "To combat piracy, the MPAA's latest idea involves a site that would allow users to search for a movie and then provide links to legit legal downloads or ticket purchases for it. Why are they doing this? Because their research showed 'many users have a hard time differentiating between legal and illegal content online.' And all this time I thought people pirated movies because it was cheaper to do! Turns out they were just confused."

Comments

Paranoia or legit concern?

[Exanon]

Is it just me being paranoid or have I learned my lesson from the whole MediaSentry debacle?

The ability for MPAA to log your IP and your search query gives them a precise target to look for in whatever data they collect from various filesharing networks (with the help of either MediaSentry or someone else).

I know I am sounding paranoid, but at this point I would not be surprised.

Not that aweful of an idea IMO.

[RingDev]

A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.

But what I really wanted was a reliable and LEGAL way to download content. Sure, I'll pay $3 to rent a movie with a 72-hour DRM on it. Heck, I used to pay $3-5 to rent movies off of Charter's on demand system. If a movie is worth watching twice, I'll go buy it, if not, I'll rent it for a night, enjoy the show, and not clutter up my house with yet another DVD that I'm not going to watch. I'm fine with that, so long as it plays with out difficulty, and allows ample time to see the movie. But, at the time, there was no functional way to achieve this.

If this new service offers that opportunity, even if it is just a standardized public listing, I'm all for it. Open up an API and let us integrate it into other systems.

-Rick