Monday, April 03, 2006

Movies Being Sold As Downloads

Major movie studios are finally starting to sell movies as downloads...but of course they're doing a miserable job of it. (People prefer to buy stuff legally, but if it's not available or onerous and expensive to get, they'll take the pirated copies. That's why biboy watches "24" on high-def download for free and doesn't feel guilty.) According to the NYT, many studios are making recent movies available at one site, Movielink. So what are they doing wrong? Everything. First, the movies cost $20 to $30 -- ie, more than a DVD. Plus, without a lot of fancy footwork, you can't watch them on your TV, the iPod or most anywhere but your computer screen. You can download the movie onto a DVD, but you CAN'T use that DVD in a DVD player. You can only use it to upload the movie onto two other computer harddrives. It's an idiotic attempt to halt piracy, as if people paying for legal donwloads are pirates or that a real pirate couldn't just buy a DVD, get a copy with all the extras and work around the security codes to use that instead. So you pay more money for less product that can't be used in 90% of the places you'd like to watch your movie. Brilliant.

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