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.
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus
