Slashdot Mirror
YouTube To Allow Video Rentals
poopdeville writes "Starting Friday, Google and YouTube will allow movie rentals. The first five films available to rent through YouTube will cost $3.99 for a 48-hour viewing period. Movie studios will be able to set their own prices, with rental viewing windows ranging from one to 90 days. YouTube will get an unspecified commission from each rental. Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuch expects YouTube to generate about $700 million in revenue this year, an estimated 55 percent increase from 2009. If YouTube hits that target, it likely will turn profitable, helping to justify the $1.76 billion in stock that Google paid for the site more than three years ago."
More expensive than renting a physical DVD either at my local store or Netflix -and- I have to provide the bandwidth as well...no thanks. (note: in Aus we don't get unlimited bandwidth, I'm on 50gb / month at present)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This is the sad truth. I said it before a million times (even to the IFPI and other organisations, but they refuse to listen): Legal merchandise has to have a higher customer value than counterfeit or stolen goods.
It works for real goods and thus there's a thriving market for it. If you buy the "real deal" brand item, you get more than what you would get if you bought the knockoff. If I buy a genuine intel CPU, I get warranty. If I buy a genuine nVidia video card, I get support and downloads. Essentially, if I buy "honestly", I get more out of it than what I'd get from something that fell off a truck.
With content you not only do not get more from a legit purchase than you get from a copyright infringing copy, it's even worse. You get less from the legal copy than you get from the illegal one. When I download content from P2P networks, I can freely choose how to use it. I can put it on my server and stream it to the TV. I can extract soundbits or video snippets without loss. With music, I can convert it in any format I please and put it on any arbitrary MP3 player, play it in my car stereo or, again, put it on my server and stream it anywhere. In theory, even the net if I so choose. Technically, there are very few limits of what I could do with the content. This is not true for legally bought content. I cannot (easily) transfer the movie to my server for streaming, I have to use specialized software to do that rather "simple" task. I might have to go through a lot of hassle to create a copy of the audio CD to put it in my MP3 player and, unless I plan to use possibly illegal software to do so, I could end up with a loss of quality in the process.
The key problem is that legal content often has less value to me, as the consumer, than content ackquired through illegal means. That is the core problem today with content. And unless that's solved, more and more people will reach for the illegal channels. People enjoy having convenience. They want their stuff to "just work". And if the only way to get "just working" stuff is by P2Ping it, they will do that instead of buying. They would buy, no doubt. Because it's easier and more convenient. But they're learning that buying does not give them "just working" stuff.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think he meant state as in 'Nation State', not in the US sense.
His point about the EU is likely valid, though. There are rules that imply "all for one" when it comes to certain things like border crossings, prices, etc. I could see where licensing agreements should/would/could span the whole EU instead of being issued to individual member countries.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Who said that we were going to stop paying people to make these things? We are talking about the idiotic and insulting attempts that these companies are undertaking to create scarcity where there is none. Times have changed, technology has changed, and it is time for the movie and music companies to update their businesses; instead, they are trying to use the law to move us backward, so that the computer capable of processing a thousand songs at a time is reduced to a glorified phonograph player.
I certainly do agree about shortening the duration of copyrights. The US constitution requires copyrights to have a finite length, but lobbyists for media companies simply convince congress to extend that duration by 20 years ever 20 years. We no longer see copyrighted work enter the public domain during the same generation it was created; it now skips three generations, and the copyright lobbyists are still not satisfied (I think they hate the constitution, since it limits copyrights and fails to mention profits).
Palm trees and 8
...as it becomes a part of the movie industry.
YouTube is headed for Commercialization hell (which is a very real place!) and that usually means:
- More restrictions
- More censorship
- More forced Ads
- Less fun
- Less freedom
- Less randomness
The same reason GOOGLE was COOL - applies to services like YouTube, a place where you can search for - and find ANYTHING, as it becomes more and more commercialized, we'll see the increased restrictions on EVERYTHING, and YouTube will eventually just be another X-Factor/Americal-Idol & movie rental service, and ADVERTISING / Viral-videos outlet than the peoples no#1 info-video channel.
Oh well - it was fun as long as it lasted.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The industry has been lying transparently about piracy for at least 20 years.
In the 80s, the news frequently trotted out the claim that profits from selling pirate videos were used to fund drug dealers. It only takes a tiny bit of analysis to realise that drug dealing is a profitable activity in itself.
Just like the war on drugs, the war on piracy might be a bit more successful if it refrained from telling lies.
That's always been my opinion too. A lot of people complain about Steam saying it is the ultimate form of DRM, but they fail to miss the point that while it may be a form of DRM it also adds a lot of value to the games you buy through it. I had to reformat a while ago and installing games was so much easier than it used to be because of Steam. Queue them up and go to bed. In the morning I had almost all the games I ever play ready to go. That convenience adds a great deal of value to the games for me.