Movie

Saturday March 19, 2005 - 1:48AM EDT

I still can't believe that movie companies haven't offered download services. They could do the same as netflix but provide on demand downloading of all the movies in their library. Just like movies come out on DVD, movies could be available for download. I envision it differently than what they have now, with pay-per-view downloading. I see it as more like netflix and blockbuster's maild order service except that you don't need the mail, you just download whatever you want over the net and watch it. Who wouldn't pay for that type of service. Maybe if they wanted to be assholes they could created some type of credit system where you get a certain amount of downloads per month and have a graduated pay scale where the more you pay per month the more you can download in a month. The best part about it is that, one wouldn't really need to keep the movies on their computer, they could but why would you if you always had access to it, you just download and watch when you need, watch it as many times as you want then just delete. The movies would take up massive amounts of space, for sure but with new movies coming out the average person couldn't keep every single movie on their harddrive as of yet. Especially with HD movies where they could provided resolution that is better than current DVDs. In fact it could alleviate some of the issues with manufactures not agreeing on a new high-definition DVD format, because it would eliminate the need for physical media. Besides, solid state storage should take over in the next 10 years anyway, optical storage may have its place, but nothing beats solid state speed and reliability, they use it in freaking fighter jets, so you know it has to be reliable. It is just expensive right now, that will change. I can't believe they haven't come out with this yet, people will still go see movies because you go to the movies as something to do, not to watch a movie. We've learned that from the whole VCR debate back in the 80's. But it would open a whole new revenue stream for them. The major problem is video and DVD sales. Studios make so much money from them right now and it would probably cut into that. But it probably wouldn't matter in the long run. Think about how much the average person spends on DVDs in a month, is it more than what could be gotten from a monthly subscription? I don't know, probably not. Besides with monthly subscription you could probably get more people to sign on and easily make up the loss in average DVD purchases per person. The yearly averages might end up being equal. As for spliting the money for those that make the movies, you could probably do something based on downloads per month, so that a percentage of the subscription revenues is given based on how many times a movie is downloaded in a month. That way if a new movie gets a lot of downloads the studio would get more, than if on of their older movies is barely downloaded. Another issue is the whole copying and illegal distrubution problems. Everytime we move to a new medium or technology this problem is always overstated. Piracy is always going to be an issue when you try and sell something. It simply becomes a matter of how you look at it. You could see the movie downloading thing as curbing the now prevalent street corner piracy by providing people with cheaper, faster, more reliable alternatives. You could essentially destroy the physical media piracy market, because who would pay per movie when you just download whatever you want for a monthly fee. The question of internet access can be brought up, but if fucking communication companies would get of their high horse and realize the potential in getting every single person broadband access they would open up huge new markets for products and services. Yes I understand they are in the service access game, but they are just not seeing the big picture. A company can't live of one revenue source forever. Adapt and change got dammit.

Back to the piracy issue, the physical media piracy could be curtailed (if those places where it is prevalent would have access to broadband at reasonable prices, in my world it would be free, a fucking constitutional amendment, the right to freely access the global communication netowork know as the internet without fee). So, I assume that physical media piracy could be greatly reduced. This leaves the question of electronic piracy. Sharing of movie files, I admit it may increase more than it is today, but I wouldn't suspect by much, just as music piracy didn't increase when they introduced the services, in fact it decreased now that people has a high quality reliable source to get music from. I would think the same would happen with movies. I don't like the per download fees, it is a freaking rip off for the consumer especially with their ultra-restrictive policies with the files you download. Often I find it more economical and easier to just buy the CD and rip the files yourself, though obviously the majority of computer users don't know how to do this. I would assume that the majority of the target market for movie downloading either don't know or won't bother with electronic piracy by sharing. Mainly because the files are so freaking huge, so in the begining it would just be a technological hassle. In fact you could take advantage of the file sharing capabilities of a program like BitTorrent to reduce operational cost of such a service, by allowing those who have a subscription to download movies using peer to peer connections as well as a client server system. They only thing stopping this is the movie studios and those providing the service, and I think I see their primary concerns. One would be that they would probably want a per download fee, similar to what is done now with movie rentals, although I am not sure how the new mail order things work, so maybe that is not such a huge concern for them. Second is piracy, both physical and electronic. As I said before, I'm pretty sure having the service avaialable would reduce physical medium piracy. One may argue the point of someone signing up for the service downloading movies and illegalling distributing them through physical medium as well as electronically. DRM software is at a point where is would discourage the average user from doing it, though you probably couldn't prevent it. We are going to ignore the casual sharer and also assume that subscriptions will be by more by household and not by person. I suppose there is a grey area with groups of say college students in a dorm that signup for one account for a lot of people, but the whole credit download thing could help solve that. Lets assume that an unscrupulous person signed up for an account and figured out a way to break whatever DRM there was and could produce perfect copies of the downloaded movies without restriction. If they were to put in on a physical medium and distribute, would would be the impact. In areas that had the download service would would pay a per copy fee for physical medium. Some would no doubt but less than if they didn't have the download service. As for this unscrupulous persons prices. It may be a little easier to digitally bootleg than traditional taping in the theater or something like that but, they could never match the sheer selection of readily available movies from the download service without greatly increasing their workload and in turn their prices. Maybe they could target certain popular movies, but again they could never match the cost of subscription based downloading. So physical piracy is going to be more difficult because essentially you trump the pricing of any pirate. No pirate could offer through physical medium the value of the online service (even while using the online service themselves to pirate). The other form of piracy would be electronic. Illegal download services. The success of current litigation to shutdown such illicit download services is apparent so although things like that would exist they couldn easily be dealt with from an illegal standpoint, now that precedent has been set. The client/server type of service could easily be dealt with as such sites when they become to prominent are usually shutdown fairly quickly. The peer to peer services like BitTorrent could flourish with a readily available source of perfect copies from the unscrupulous pirate. If we look at current music download services and their affect on illegal downloading I would assume the same would happen with movie download services. Illegal downloading would still occur but many more would download legally. There is one service out there, but it is fucking pathetic in my opinion. Crappy quality, pay/per download and you have a limited time window to watch the movie. The service I want is full DVD or HD resolution, no time window, subscription based. Also there should be a set-top device that connects to the service, like a Tivo or something, so you don't need a computer to use the service just this small dvd player sized magic box. I'd also make it so you could download the movies to portable devices using flash based storage. But that is the kind of service you will never see with today's techno morons running things. If I ever make enough money and buy a movie studio and this type of thing isn't out there, I'll make it.