Earlier this week, Movielink, the movie-download site that’s owned by a number of movie studios, said it had licensed technology to allow users to burn downloaded movies to DVDs, but couldn’t yet offer the service as it still needed to license some encryption software as well as get approval from the studios that their movies could be used for the service.
Much to Movielink’s chagrin, its major rival, CinemaNow, says it will start letting customers burn some movies to DVD, with the studios’ blessing. It’s slightly odd that the studios would let CinemaNow introduce the functionality before a site in which they have a financial stake, but they apparently feel somewhat comfortable with the technology the site’s been using to let users burn porn DVDs for several months.
Of course, there’s a catch — only about 100 movies are initially available to be burned, none of them new releases. According to BusinessWeek, the studios want to see if the movies “end up littering the nation’s piracy sites” — which, as usual, is completely pointless, since the movies will have long been available on pirate sites.
It almost sounds like they’re setting the system up to fail, perhaps to protect physical DVD retailers, or to once again put forth the nonsensical “you can’t compete with free” argument.
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LOL this whole thing is a joke because if I wanted to copy a DVD I’d go down to blockbuster rent a movie copy it to my hard drive in 5 minutes and take it back and lie and say my mom wouldn’t let me watch it and I wanted my money back and they’d probably do it. And even if they didn’t I still got a movie for the price these sites charge for downloading it and it’s completely DRM free and anyone who is smart enough to worry about decrypting the DVD would probably just rip it back to their hard drive after it’s been burned instead of worrying about making more than one copy although that is probably the least of their worries since as I already stated it’s so easy to get the movie anyway (not to mention just downloading it) and why would I need more than one copy? Most people aren’t going to try to start a bootleg DVD selling business. Even if I did I don’t know anyone that would buy a bootleg because with the price of renting it then the dual layer DVD which you’d need to retain all the original quality (I don’t care what you say it never looks as good reencoded) and then the time it would take to scan the DVD cover and get a DVD jewel case and put the art on it and on the DVD itself I’d still have to compete with Wal Mart or the internet which is probably still going to be able to beat me in price so even then it’s never going to have the same printing quality as a real store bought version so no one will want to buy it anyway and I might as well just have gotten the original from there.
Yup this is ridiculous. ALL retail DVDs are available online at least 2 weeks prior to store release. All these downloads would be nuked as dupes anyway and loaded with DRM and probably have ads on them too.
The honest consumer is being punished once again.
Well I have said it before and will say it again….until they offer first run movies I am simply not interested! It is stupid and foolish to think that someone cannot do as the first poster suggested and just get a movie at blockbuster and rip it to your hard drive and then you have a DRM free version.
I don’t know who is more stupid…the RIAA or the MPAA….BOTH are pretty dumb.
They are gonna have to learn the hard way that their days of “control” are over!
I think it’s a great idea! Brand new movies are allready out there on torrent sites and are the easiest to get anyway due to all the seeders / leechers. Older movies are harder to get so If the big boy’s want to re-release some older flix digitally that’s awesome! “Rent” an old flick and pass it on that’s how “File Sharing” works!
“end up littering the nation’s piracy sites” What litter? It’s all good! And that’s not nice to label good people as “Pirates”.. Shame!
Well if you want to pay their stupidly high prices for a mivie that you can get cheaper ANYWHERE ELSE then go for it! But I am not that stupid.
If they want to charge me for something I can get at blockbuster then they had better have a two for one sale or something they don’t have.
And PM Harper…in case you didn’t know blockbuster and emule BOTH have older movies also!