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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."
I hope that this will be a useful distribution and money-maker for Indie films.
Hopefully, it won't be stifled by the big studios.
I don't hate it. I just read 'This service is not available in your country' as 'Please use Bittorrent'.
Depends on the culture where you live. In many countries a tip is for exceptional service. It isn't part of the wages.
Which is nice for you, but everybody lives in a different market. It seems unlikely that I will be able to use this service as I use a non-windows O/S in a non-US country, but if they do offer this properly then I have three choices :
1. Walk 100m to a video store, rent a dvd for 2 euro a night. As a bonus I get to cache a rip of the dvd in case I want to watch it again.
2. Download a CD sized compression of the dvd. That takes about an hour on my connection on a popular torrent. The disadvantage of this is the illegality - and I don't really care about the legal/civil distinction as the odds of being busted for this are a million to one where I live. What does bother me is that the people who made the movie don't get any payment for their work.
3. So now there is (maybe) an online rental option. So it will be more expensive (2.66 euro is unlikely so we will end up with either 3 or 4 euro). Like option one some money is going to flow back to the makers so I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside while I watch the movie. Like option two the codec is probably going to piss me off while I watch the film.
So which will win? It's not a total ordering because cost is not the only criteria. Option two wins on cost and picture quality. Option three wins on getting revenue back to the creators. For now option one is my preferred compromise, but if the codec on option three is acceptable and it works here then I'll probably switch.
(The option of keeping a copy for a longer viewing window is irrelevant for me - I rarely watch a film more than once).
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Unless you're a total tool you've still got to tip the dude delivering the food if you get it delivered...
Tipping is a US cultural thing I believe, it's not quite as common in other parts of the world where workers actually have to get paid a proper wage. In fact in some cases it's quite rude to tip, although I can't imagine a delivery guy being offended under any circumstances :)
It costs them less to provide the service online. Each buyer provides part of the infrastructure. They avoid the expense of disks not returned, disks damaged, paying staff and maintaing kiosks. Fewer employees are needed per transaction to sell the product.
If it costs less to provide the price should be fall accordingly.
Pizza on the other hand costs more to deliver.
Bit more info on the first five films, taken from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8471635.stm
Summary: The first five films come from the Sundance Film Festival. The service will go live on 22 january, for US citizens only. The first five films available for rent are "The Cove," "Bass Ackwards," "One Too Many Mornings," "Homewrecker" and "Children of Invention."
Interesting excerpt from the BBC article: "Content providers will be able to set their own prices, with YouTube taking a cut of the revenue. All but one of the Sundance films is being offered for $3.99 (£2.50) each for users to watch over a 48-hour viewing period."
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.
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.
Not at all.
Youtube = watching on my laptop in low res (even their "hd" is low res.
Netflix = 720p HD on my Big TV.
it's no contest. Netflix wins. plus I can watch 60 movies for the price of 4 on Youtube.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I watch a lot of films, and I'm on a pretty tight budget, so it needs to really provide bang-per-buck for me to be satisfied. I'm actually on a pension for now, so not only is the budget really tight, but I have a huge amount of free time to try and fill each day and TV is not helping.
I've always been into alternative cinema far more than the mainstream films, but I tend to watch most things short of chick flicks and summer student films. I like my anime, Japanese horror, Korean cinema, and French films along with all kinds of other World Cinema - so my local store is never going to satisfy my desires.
At present I fan-sub what I can, pirate what I have to, purchase on DVD/Bluray as much as possible and every so often make a trip to the local cinema. Over time the divx's will be replaced with DVDs/Bluray or they end up deleted.
I divide films into several categories: see at the cinema, rent on dvd, buy it, download.
Putting aside the option to see it at the cinema there are three other ways that a single company could fulfill my purchasing needs.
On the day they release it to the rental places, they could also open up the opportunity for me to download a DRM copy that I can view at home for 2-3 days. The cost should be at least slightly cheaper than the rental stores because they have no overhead costs besides bandwidth.
On the day the DVDs hit the stores they should allow me the opportunity to download a copy with no DRM beyond that a normal DVD has - i.e. an ISO image I can burn to DVD and the covers so I can print both on the media and the slips for the box. Pirates working out the back of a shop in Chinatown can manage this, any decent company should be able to also.
The third way would be to make a DIVX/XVID copy available some time after release, and I really can't see them doing this or even being able to compete with the warez group - it doesn't make sense - so there are really just two ways to capitolise on me.
Now here's what grinds my gears. If I go to the cinema, or rent a DVD from the shop prior to buying, I still pay full price for the DVD. There is in fact almost no incentive for me to ever rent a DVD since they release for purchase soon enough after. The same applies to a cinema version - and with electronic ticketing and digital projectors there seems little reason not to propose this...if I paid you a whack of cash to see it at the cinema I should get a rebate on purchasing it to own.
Currently I might end up purchasing the "rights to view" a product three separate times. First it costs $22 AUS to view at the cinema, then $6 AUS to rent, then $30 AUS to buy to own. So on a really good title I have to pay a total of $58 AUS to see it at first release, then first home release, before finally buying to enjoy for the next few years.
So, what I want is this: Digital Rights Management - where I actually get "rights" and they are managed.
I want someone to whack up a pile of huge servers somewhere with plenty of bandwidth. When I pay my $22 for my cinema ticket I want that logged to my account and for them to offer me a modest discount on purchasing / renting the film in the future. When it's released to rental market I want that same site to let me know, and allow me to download the film. After I've seen the film I'd like to be able to indicate I want to purchase it on mainstream release, and get a decent sized discount on that. I'm a valued repeat customer, they should treat me like one and work hard to continue to do business with me. If for any reason whatsoever I lose a copy of a film I should be able to download it again at no cost. If a new print of the film comes out I should get access to this at minimal cost - why pay another $40 to buy the film again on Bluray when I already have a licence to watch it, and just want to see it in an improved bitrate/codec.
Currently I have to rent a film, just to see if it's even worth one watch, let alone the five or so watches that are required to break even on the cost of perhaps buying i
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.