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Why There's No iTunes For Movies
theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo would gladly pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows — if someone would just take his money. In reality, he pays nothing because no company sells such a plan, and instead resorts to getting his programming from the friendly BitTorrent network.
It's under 'Movies' in the iTunes Store.
Well but the problem is... it's iTunes. I don't buy Hard- or Software from Apple. Why should I buy my movies from them. Completely neglecting the fact I can't even install their shitty software -of course.
Interesting article. It seems that the studios etc. are wary of losing the guaranteed revenue that comes from the premium and pay-per-view TV channels. But what happens when these channels wise up to the fact that an increasing number of people are getting these films for free online? Will they become more reluctant to pay the studios for the right to show a movie that everyone's already seen via bittorrent?
Does anyone have any figures on how pay-per-view services are doing? I wouldn't be surprised to see that the number of people paying for the Hollywood blockbusters is on a downward trend as broadband speeds increase.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Perhaps he doesn't have the right, but the MPAA shouldn't act so surprised when people do it.
The only thing I pirate are episodes of a TV series, it only started showing here about a month ago (5 months after it started showing in the US). At the end of the first series I bought the DVDs of the season, and I intend to do the same for the second. I've tried to find a legit way to watch it, mainly because I would like to contribute towards the ratings of the series. I've tried watching it through NBC's website, Amazon, Hulu, and many other websites but no one will offer it to viewers outside of the US.
I'm a fan of the show, I want to watch it legitimately and if I could I would pay to do so.
It just goes to show how far behind with the times the entire industry is that people *want* to pay them and can't, so they break the law instead.
So basically Manjoo is saying that copyright holders are obligated to make their works available to him in the format and timing he demands, or else he has the right to get them illegally?
No, he calls himself a scofflaw. He's saying that there's a market for works in the format and timing that the customer chooses. Currently it's a black market, and the studios are going to lose a ton of money because they don't offer a legal alternative.
The answer is twofold. First, the vast majority of people will not pay a hefty monthly fee for immediate access to recent movies and TV shows. So there really is not market for it. You cannot compete with free by putting a "hefty" fee on it. God, that's fricken ludicrous. Why is this completely asinine idea even posted here?!
Second, the movie industry makes a lot of money with its gated approach to releasing movies. First, to theaters. Then to premium TV channels and pay-per-view. Then to DVD/Blue-ray. Than the normal TV. If the studios started releasing new movies as soon as they were released in they theaters, or even soon after, the money from the premium TV/pay-per-view/DVD/Blu-ray releases would drastically decrease. It's all about making the Benjamins, not about making it convenient for the viewer.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Apparently they see some magic gain in *not* making their product available in *preferred* distribution channels.
It's not magic, it's real money. Follow the entertainment trades like "Variety" and you will see that the studios are selling nice lump-sum deals for some movies into broadcast and cable distribution windows even before they hit the theaters. The domestic and foreign TV distribution channels are not going to pay this big money if the movie is widely distributed in one form or another prior to their contracted window of distribution. The studio *must* restrict online distribution -- or at least make a big show that it is trying to. It's part of their contractual obligations.
When a studio gets confident that the money it can make via "easy early global online" distribution will be enough to off-set the reduced fees it can charge its "old school" distribution partners, believe me, they'll pull the trigger on it. But the old school guys pay big bucks, and, currently, the new skool online direct-to-consumer model is, literally, pennies.
I must have missed that 'iTunes for Linux' release announcement...
Read something like Terry Ramsaye's "A Million and One Nights," about the early history of the movies--up to the early twenties--(Ramsaye doesn't believe the talkies have much of a future)--and, to a technical guy like me, it's incredibly boring.
It's all about complicated business maneuvers based on artificial restrictions. (The phrase "B movie" dates back to the days when distributors wouldn't rent a good movie to a theatre unless they agreed to rent a lousy movie too). The various Laemmles and Selznicks and Zukors are doing nothing but finding clever ways to restrict product flow, cutting complex deals to outdo each other.
The movies themselves are sort of a byproduct of the real industry, which is business deals. The movies are sort of a necessary evil, like the chips that are needed at a casino. Who cares who designed the chips, or whether the artwork on the chips is great or mediocre?
Patents, too. Patents and patent pools and trusts and cartels, the whole nine yards.
Why is the movie industry associated with Hollywood rather than New Jersey? No, it's not because of reliable daylight. Anyone old enough to be familiar with the little loop of film in a camera or projector that buffers between the intermittent motion at the film gate and the smooth motion of the reels, so the claw doesn't need to pull against the inertia of the reels and tear the film? You need that if you want to put the film on reels and run continuously for more than a couple of minutes.
Well, that's the famous patented Latham Loop, and the people that held the patent refused to sell cameras, only rent them at exorbitant costs. So a bunch of people decided to make movies with pirated, illegal cameras... and they did it in California to make it harder for the process servers to find them.
Printing has always been about making books cheap and available... starting with the Bible. Movies have always been about restricting product. It's in their DNA.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So you are saying, rather than buying an MP3 player that does all this properly without installing bloatware (such as my Zen or my Sansa)
1) Your Zen or Sansa lacks a lot of features iPods have. Last play time/date, skip count, play count, and so on, that all two-way sync back to itunes. And I use this meta data heavily to generate smart playlists that automatically rotate tracks to the ipod etc.
Some of that stuff needs a separate database.
Sure it would be better if that database were open instead of proprietary. But quite bluntly, until someone defines an open standard, and Creative and Sansa step up and implement it, the iPod will remain my mp3 player of choice.
2) I don't -want- to manage my music library by dragging dropping files around. I do -want- to manage it by creating smart self-updating playlists based on meta data including play history, song ratings, and so on, and to have that automatically sync to the device. So installing a piece of software to handle the sync is something I'd be doing even if I didn't have to.
we should cripple ourselves to satisfy the apple fanboys on /.?
Using a Zen or Sansa is crippling yourself.
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
There are a lot of things I don't like about apple. I don't currently own a Mac because they refuse to release a tower with anywhere near the specs or price I want. There even a lot of things I don't like about itunes. But I've had other mp3 players... Sansa, Yepp -- the iPod is, for me at least, the best device hands down.
>>Fuck that, Apple is just another Microsoft, and the reason people don't see it is this weird blindness people get when the "in-thing" is around
Gosh, I really am tired of this argument. I think it's annoying because when you say that someone bought something just because it's the 'in thing', you are telling that person that they are so stupid that they don't know what they want, don't know why they want what they want, and in fact want stupid things.
My iPod is not a slap bracelet or zubaz or a mullet. It's a tool that I use to get something done (it plays music for me). I don't use it in public. Only one of my friends owns an iPod besides me. In addition, it comes with tools for managing and aquiring music, videos, podcasts, games, and other stuff.
Maybe, just maybe, you could get off your high horse and admit that some people aren't fucking idiots and consciously chose iPod over something else for good reasons. You want a car, I want a truck, and I don't need to hear your theories about why owning a truck makes me a trendy redneck asshat. Some people buy trucks because they're remodeling their house and can't fit lumber and sheetrock in their geo prizm.
Sorry to pick on your post but I am pretty sick of pretentious trolls considering anything popular to be crap.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.