Word: downloading
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...everyone in Silicon Valley is unsympathetic--even those promoting downloading technology. "Studios will not support downloading of new releases for the same reason book publishers don't go direct to paperback," says Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, the hugely successful online movie-rental company. Hastings has his own version of an iTunes-like solution to the movie-download problem. Right now his 2 million customers rent DVDs online and receive them through the mail, but he says he has always intended to make the transition to movie downloads. Nothing is likely to be launched in the next year, but Hastings...
...copyright management has hamstrung the movie industry's attempts to make a business out of file-sharing technology. Two years ago, major studios launched a service called Movielink, which offers movies for downloading to your computer at about the same time they hit the pay-per-view window. Not only do the movies take hours to download, but they also disappear from Movielink's catalog altogether 90 days later, when they enter the premium-cable window. Because channels like HBO and Starz! offer lucrative licensing deals, Movielink has not been able to compete in the latter window...
...full-fledged Netflix-TiVo deal in the immediate future.) The delay in incorporating file sharing has a lot to do with the slow speed of most Americans' Internet access. Even with cable and DSL connections that average 2 megabits per second, it can take 16 hours to download a movie with just a third of the quality of a DVD. Not to mention that most of us prefer watching a movie on our TV to watching it on a computer screen. "This isn't going to be a tidal wave of change," says Hastings. "More like global warming...
...Download speed is just one reason file sharing may not be as immediate a threat to the movie business as it may seem. "There were very beautiful copies of Shrek 2 available on the Internet when it was released," says Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix. "That didn't seem to hurt [Shrek's] ticket sales any." When DVDs are packed with special features and available to rent for $2 or to buy for $15, who wants to waste a day downloading a movie? "I've frequently suggested they give up on all this copy protection because it doesn...
Millions of people have figured out how to download movies, using file-sharing services that traffic in other people's pirated copies. But acquiring movies this way is problematic, not to mention illegal: sometimes it works, sometimes you accidentally get porn. And sometimes the studios catch you. Here's how you can do it legally...