Saturday, August 26, 2006

Hollywood Hates iTunes

Hollywood (and the music industry) are petrified at the idea of iTunes becoming the de facto standard for selling digital downloads of TV shows and movies the way they are virtually the sole portal for music downloads. That's why everyone is putting a mishmash of movies and TV shows on all sorts of websites in a desperate attempt to get someone else in the game. So AOL will offer downloads from four movie studios. Unfortunately, AOL won't tell the studios "no" on stupid strictures the way iTunes will (iTunes insists on one low price for all singles, for example). So you can buy movie downloads at AOL for $10 to $20. But you can't burn them to a DVD and play them on your TV's DVD player or on your iPod. You're stuck watching them on your computer. Why would anyone pay $20 to get a digital download of a movie without any extras that they can't play on their TV or anywhere they want? As we say on Popsurfing when someone does something stupid: Wipeout! (Okay, I just made that up.)

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