Hollywood Backs Swedish Movie Streaming Site

paulraps writes "Forget Spotify and Skype: the latest strangely-named-but-hey-it's-free service from Sweden offers users streamed on-demand movies free of charge, has deals with two major Hollywood studios, and is called Voddler. Since its launch two weeks ago, the service has signed up a quarter of a million users and has almost the same number queuing for an invitation. After signing deals with Disney and Paramount, the company provides access to thousands of films, which are shown uninterrupted after a barrage of ads. The target is the file-sharing generation: 'Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure, and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files,' says executive vice president Zoran Slavic."

Comments

Interesting story

[BadAnalogyGuy]

There is a story further down the page: http://www.thelocal.se/23202/20091111/

A Swede was caught and fined for speeding on the autobahn.

As Americans, we sometimes willfully ignore facts, as most Americans believe the Autobahn to be this magical road where speed limits don't exist and every can drive as fast as they want.

Our perspective is very narrow and insular, and that is one of our greatest weaknesses. Our willingness to quickly grab ahold of any negative story about China, Iran, or other "enemy" of ours is precisely the result of this lack of perspective.

So when we see a new site that is offering up movies for free, we are quick to cheer. We are quick to glom on to any sort of thing that we find even somewhat pleasing without fully understanding all the consequences. How will the movie companies make money from this type of site? Who is actually paying for the movies you see?

Yes, the commercials are played before the movie now, but as that becomes unprofitable where are they going to start putting them? What are we going to lose down the road?

We all want free access to premium content. Is the price worth it?

Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"?

[xtracto]

Welcome to the rest of the world.
It's often that us non US-people only get a sparse page with a few fields to enter your data in, only to find out that the service you thought you were registering for doesn't work yet in your country.

Call it phishing if you like, but it's par for the course. It's just that you US-ians don't notice it as often.

LOL

By your definition, I have been living in "the rest of the world" all my life, As Germany, UK and Mexico are not part of the USA.

Hey, you may call me a beaner, alien, expat but a gringo? *that* I won't tolerate :P