2 posts tagged “copyright”
Think Secret has just learned that Steve and the boys from Cupertino will be announcing iTunes movie rentals in early August.
...Rentals?
It's been pretty well publicized lately that Apple was pushing hard on the MPAA to come up with a single - and reasonable - price point for movie purchases through iTunes. - bringing movies to the masses like they did with music, and more recently, TV programming. But this new shift to rentals is an interesting development that drives me to a bit of hope - and a bit of disappointment.
The dealings with the MPAA has been a game of poor timing on Apple's part. Jobs waited to long to approach the movie execs, finally calling them to the table just as the record industry started making noises that there $.99 a song deal was just a LITTLE too easy and wanted to try and pull more money from the consumers. The MPAA had to notice the parallels and decided to nip the issue in the bud right from the start. Jobs wanted a $9.99 price point, the MPAA called for scaling prices for hot properties. Jobs thought he could wait them out, letting the piracy and torrent networks pick at the carcass until the movie studios were begging for SOME measure of profit from the digital copies infesting the Internet. But from this recent news, it appears Apple had to blink first.
It's been pretty clear to me that Apple is banking on movies to move the sales of their next generation iPod. We've seen so many mock-ups, patents, and rumors in the past few months of the wondrous touch-sensitive 16:9 ratio screen that it might as well be on the shelves... but we knew it wouldn't be announced until a deal was worked out with the studios. Now with Microsoft's "Zune" knocking around the gadget sites, it's more imparitive than ever that Apple finish up their product and get it out to maintain what has become THEIR marketplace.
The upside of this recent turn of events is that Apple is gearing up to release the next round of iPods to finally compete with the wide aspect video players out there. It also means the movie studios might begin to understand the advantages of digital distribution at a scale that only iTunes can provide.
The downside however, is that the MPAA got their concessions which will end up hurting them in the long run. By exerting visable control over the content users purchase, their sales will suffer. When users begin noticing their content disappearing from their pretty new iPods, it's only a matter of time before they stop dealing with an unsatisfactory distribution model and turn to less legal alternatives.
I'm a mobile viewer of movies. I spend close to 3 hours a day sitting on trains with time to kill. I AM the market Apple and the MPAA should be salivating over - but if they expect me to spend money on a product, then dictate WHEN as well as where I should be allowed to watch it then they are sorely mistaken. I'll just continue to purchase, or rent DVDs of a higher video quality, and with more extras, and rip them to a format that can be viewed whenever I want on any device I want (currently a PSP - but when the new iPod comes out we'll talk).
I'm a student of movies, a video editor by trade, I WANT to reward good film-making, but the studios can't try to overreach their control. A $9.99 price point for a device locked, copy-protected movie that may only be watched once by a user was a overly generous offer by Apple (Just imagine the long tail of movies that could receive a new life, and added revenue) but If you try to add restrictions on TOP of that and charge more than, lets say $2 (Maybe $3 for the convince of download) you're going to loose most of your customers after the first rental.
As for me? Netflix and Handbrake are a powerful combination.
Yea yea yea, I saw this video about a year or two ago on Undergroundfilm.org, but it's easier to point to on youtube, and I really just wanted to test what vox does with videos.
