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Apple to Announce iTunes Movie Rentals?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jul 18, 2006 09:56 AM
from the no-drm-is-safe dept.
from the no-drm-is-safe dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Think Secret is reporting that the next Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference may be the company's platform to announce movie rentals via iTunes. The files would probably have a built-in shutoff timer, or only allow a certain number of viewings." From the article: "Apple is said to have ironed out agreements with Walt Disney, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros., and is currently in talks with other major movie studios as well. It's unknown to what extent content will be available come the August 7 announcement, or whether Apple will announce all of its studio deals at that time ... Apple had been trying for months to persuade the movie studios that the a-la-carte model of buying individual titles, as the iTunes Music Store offers with music, was the way to go. The studios, however, have been fixed on offering only a subscription or rental-based model."
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And in other news later today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:2)
"some movie-napster-like site" = youtube.com
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:3, Interesting)
a hack you can download from some website that turns off whatever that flag is
Let's look at the current iTunes audio system, though: You can burn a FairPlay-DRMed audio file to disc, re-import it, and the DRM is gone. Sure, there's a small loss of quality, but it's pretty small for us non-audiophiles.
It seems like a pretty big loophole, it's VERY well-known, and Apple has never made a peep about it. It's almost like they're saying, "Hey, we WANT you to have unrestricted access to the stuff you buy; we
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:3, Interesting)
Their attitude seems to be 'release whatever we can squeeze by the studios, and then if something becomes a major problem, we'll change it.' Hence the original versions of iTunes had some neat remote-music-sharing features, but then when they became major sources of piracy and the studios starte
Netflix had better watch out (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Netflix had better watch out (Score:4, Insightful)
I can keep and watch a NetFlix DVD for days, even weeks if I choose. It takes up a slot of my subscription, but I incur no extra fees.
Can I do that with a rented download?
Also, am I willing to spend all day tying up my DSL downloading 8GB of data for a DVD-quality movie? No.
Will downloaded movies that are much smaller have degraded video quality, lack extras and other things that equivalent titles on DVD have? Probably.
Somehow, I don't think NetFlix is going to disappear quickly, even if they don't do downloads.
Parent
Re:Netflix had better watch out (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Apple will use MP4, as they already do with TV and music videos. That means for "effective" DVD quality they compress to something like 1.4Mbps instead of the more normal 7Mbps found on DVDs. A fourfold decrease in bitrate means a full DVD quality movie is only 2G
Video DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hell, it seems to me that more restrictive formats give rise to more piracy (arrrr).
Re:Video DRM? (Score:2)
Shut off timer / certain number of viewings (Score:3, Insightful)
Steve sell us out? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't wait to see the sugar coating.
Frankly, he should have told them to stuff it. I figure what happened is that they went full on developing the video iPod and supporting software figuring they could bully their way over the studios. Now with the hardware in hand and no progress he is being forced to do something to move the new product.... aren't shareholders wonderful - can't let the carpet ride end.
Still, no way, no how. I don't care who packages the DRM of this sort. Its wrong. If I pay for it I want access to it when I want to access it. Otherwise refund me when it expires.
As long as it's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as it's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
What if... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do I get my money back?
Not even that, lets say I get an hour through my hour and a half film, and there's a corruption in the file which causes it to stop playing. The player crashes, so I load it up again, navigate to 59 mins and it crashes again. Do I get my money back? How do I prove that it was corrupted on download and that I didn't fire up notepad and let my mind go beserk.
This isn't so much of a problem for music, because the files are relitively small. With film, I'd guess that there is a higher chance of a problem just because the files are bigger and the codecs more complex.
Are ISP's ready for this? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh joy, (Score:2)
This is thinksecret people, ... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's funny to see everyone commenting and producing all kinds of opinions based on a rumour from thinksecret. How many rumours have they actually ever gotten right?
It seems unlikely to me that S. Jobs who has already explicitely stated he does not like the rental model on several occasions, would suddenly change his mind (though I would not rule it out as an option). And he "managed to be convinced by Disney et al."? That must be real hard for Disney to do(considering he is
Re:This is thinksecret people, ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention the fact this is supposedly being announced at the WWDC.
The WWDC. World Wide Developers Conference. DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE.
I expect Jobs to be running around showing the new features of Leopard, but I highly doubt that a movie rental service is going to be one of them. The only people that will be able to make use of the service are those with Leopard? That makes no sense whatsoever. Ok, well, he'd be announcing a new feature of iTunes at the WWDC? In God's name, why? What next? Maybe he'
Good but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
1) Download screen and audio capture utility (google)
2)Download movie
3)Install screen and audio capture utility
4) Run screen and audio capture utillity
5) PLay the movie in full screen mode
6) Burn recorded movie to DVD 7)Enjoy! and/or Profit!
or provide unlimited viewing for a period of time, after which the movie will be "turned off
Conflicted Feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
However, the concept of rental clashes with the nature of the online and digital world. Everything that exists can be copied in exact form. You can't return data - you have a copy, not the original. The way I see it there are two options, the concept of rental can be preserved artificially with the introduction of DRM, or it can be abandoned in favor of purchases.
As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable). Where the problem occurs is the proprietary nature of DRM. At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data. Then I could buy online rental devices or software from any number of manufactures, and it would be guaranteed to work with any number of online rental stores. This is similar to the legal workings of DVDs, Blueray, WMV. At the worst you have proprietary technologies, where each company has it's own format and player, like with Apple or DVIX (the first one). In both cases there will never be an open source player - the best we could hope for is something like the new Real Player that has an open source core with proprietary plug-ins. Even that is unlikely, as the movie industry is demanding end-to-end security (HDMI, Trusted Computing) which an open source operating system would not provide.
In the other option, the internet utopia dream was that the price of media would drop to the point of making rental unnecessary and removing the allure of piracy from the general public. The media industries are strongly opposed to this model of the future, and the only way it will ever happen is if independent media producers embrace it with success, and eventually put the current media companies out of business. This is also unlikely given the weight that the media companies have in government. Therfore, media purchases will also be hindered with DRM for the conceivable future, and will continue to be priced at traditional rates.
So given DRM on rental verses DRM on purchase, I definitely prefer the previous, but there is another potential risk with DRM rental and it is a biggy. The media companies have shown themselves very fond of the idea of DRM rental, as seen with Napster. They like the model where people don't own copies of media, but instead just subscribe to services that provide them. If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up. We continue to hear stories about how the original archive copies of important cultural media is being lost due to the extreme length of copyright, and the mismanagement of the copyright holders (Dr Who, classic films). But in most of those cases, at least lower quality copies exist in the form of consumer media. However, if we can no longer record broadcast media, and there are no purchased copies of media, the copyright holders will be the only ones capable of preserving the records of our popular culture. Time and time again they show themselves inept at doing so.
Anyway, I plan on sticking to buying CD's and renting locally for as long as those options exist, and continue to support those independent producers who treat their customers with respect. I'll keep trying to inform my representatives about the issues. But I'm not optimistic. We'll see what happens.
* For the uninitiated:
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory
NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement
One word: DIVX (Score:3, Insightful)
Or FlexPlay (EZ-D) "self-destructing" DVDs, launched into the stratosphere by the hit 2004 Christmas movie, Noel?
Or RCA's single-play cassettes that would mechanically lock at the end of one play and could only be unlocked by the rental store with a special tool?
You do remember all of these, don't you?
You don't? That's funny. I wonder why not.
I can't see this working... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been a loyal ITMS customer since the onset, looking at my "purchased music" menu in iTunes (which includes TV shows) there's almost 900 items there (granted a couple of them are the 4 disc Final Fantasy soundtracks). I'm okay with the lax DRM on it, I burn CD's of the music for friends, and I burn both raw AAC files to DVD and AIFF copies on CD as backups. As I live in Ireland but use a US billing address, I use iTunes to watch the few TV shows I follow, namely Battlestar Galactica. Price-wise, an album costs less than half the price on iTunes than it does in shops here in Ireland (21 for a new album, that's about $29 - $30) so I haven't bought a CD in years.
I also have a couple UMD movies that I got fairly cheaply for the PSP (so I can be a sucker too... But really, UMD was a better format than this is, higher resolution, on a better screen and the occassional special feature. It was killed by 2 things: dumb prices, it should be $10, not more than a DVD, and the fact that they flooded the UMD market with crappy movies from the studios back catalogue. Who's gonna shell out for Cheaper By The Dozen on UMD? They ought to have made all the initial releases out of box office hits and films that got oscar nominations...)
But there's no way in hell I'll get a subscription based file. Thing is, I love movies, I am an animator in training so someday I may be working in movies... but the subscription model was why I could brag that iTunes was so much better than its competitors, now they buy into it... When I buy a movie, I like to scrutinize it privately, to observe editing, shot selection, etc, then I like to watch it with a few friends. I understand there's a hell of a lot of downright awful movies out there, but I dont even bother renting them, I wait for them to come on TV if I am at all bothered to see them. Thing is, the DRM on the iTunes music does allow you to share music with your friends just the same way CD's did, the only thing it stopped you from doing was making 30,000 copies or immediately dumping it onto limewire. It was designed to inconveniance people whose only intent was mass redistribution, but it let me give a copy to a buddy who was interested in it. The TV shows, on the other hand, don't let you burn the video to a readable DVD, thus, if I wasn't using it to keep up with TV shows that aren't in Ireland, it's just too closed for me to really be interested.
The problem is that the industry sees you loaning a DVD to a friend as a threat, a lost sale. This is crap, someone who's only willing to watch something if it's loaned wasn't necessarily inclined to buy it, and if the product is legitimately GOOD, after they watch the loaned copy, they should be more likely to buy it for themselves.
It all comes down to the industry finding ways to maximise profit without fostering good products. Sorry if the post is long and incohesive, I'm off to watch Zhang Ziyi on my PSP...
Hardware to complement a rental business? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well, we've always been very clear on that. We don't think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Well, they want to link sometimes. Like, when you make a movie, you burn a DVD and you take it to your DVD player. Someday that could happen over AirPort, so you don't have to burn a DVD -- you can just watch it right off your computer on your television set. But most of these products that have said, "Let's combine the television and the computer!" have failed. All of them have failed.
The problem is, when you're using your computer you're a foot away from it, you know? When you're using your television you want to be ten feet away from it. So they're really different animals."
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:2)
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple fanboys are about to mod me down.
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:4, Funny)
I am, however, going to point out the major difference between Apple and Microsoft: Apple uses lube.
Parent
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple took risk here. It refused to play ball, meaning that consumers who had bought the Dave Matthews' Band or Foo Fighters albums last year couldn't load them onto iTunes without a stupid workaround. Sony blamed Apple, saying that it was up to them to "flip the switch." The bands posted statements on their web sites telling people to complain to Apple. St
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:2)
And why shouldn't they? After all, you are renting the video. I don't see any particular problem in this specific scenario
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, nobody is even making the slightest suggestion that this time-limited DRM would apply to songs (but see point four below).
Third, the only area where there has been any "DRM creep" is the reduction in the number of times a playlist can be burned from 10 to 7. You fail to mention that DRM was simulatneously liberalized to allow a person to play their iTMS purchased music on 5 computers instead of 3. A slight, practically meaningless, restriction on the one hand, a somewhat meaningful liberalization on the other. You can't even claim "creep" because there is no trend. It is just a fiction.
Fourth, one of the most common complaints about iTunes is the lack of a music rental service, like the one offered by Napster or Yahoo!. If Apple were to respond to this complaint and offer a music rental service, they would have to do something like Microsoft's Janus DRM that causes the music to become unplayable if the user does not check in to show the subscription is current. By your reasoning, Apple's response to this demand is just DRM creep. They can't win, apparently.
Parent
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:2, Funny)
legal choices (Score:3, Interesting)
Some choices to obtain music:
1. Buy music infested with DRM, which may overstep the US legal copyright limits.
2. Buy music from Russian MP3 sites, which may avoid US legal copyright limits.
3. Only subscribe to DRM-free music services like emusic.com.
4. Only buy from opensource/creative-commons music labels like magnatune.
5. No
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, the right to culture does not have to be enumerated; it exists by default.
Second, what part of "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts" do you not understand? Not only does that phrase implicitly affirm the public's right to have access to information and culture (i.e. affirms the existence of the Public Domain), but it's also the only thing justifying the existence of copyright (and patents, and trademarks) to
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know full well the artist is seeing NO compensation when you buy his stuff from allofmp3. If you still want his songs, just steal them yourself already, instead of hiring goons to do it for you.
Parent
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I go to newsgroups, or other file sharing services, I can't always get the encoding that I want. There's also a good chance that the stuff is mislabele
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's still not legal in the p2p case, but it least it's more ethical than paying the RIAA."
The RIAA is a trade group; they don't see a cut of every sale. That's a bit like saying that you pay the AMA when you visit your doctor. A more accurate way to put it is "but at least it's more ethical than paying the record company that produced and distributed the music."
I agree wholeheartedly with your idea (paying the artist directly) if the artist was also the one who did the cover art, engineered and pr
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's $0.03 for a $0.99 song. Don't lie."
Mechanicals alone are around $0.07 per track by law. Even if you're only making the statutory mechanical rate, if 1,000 kids opt to buy rather than pirate, that's $70 more you'll have each month.
"And the first $2 million of that goes to the label for recording, promotion, etc. before the artist sees anything."
If the CD cost $2MM to produce, why then yes. That's because it was the record label, and not the artist, who invested the $2MM. The "Spend $2MM on
Re:DRM Creep? no, FUD. (Score:2, Informative)
Well, they changed the number of burns to CD. That is removing a function you could do (the 8th copy, or whatever).
> If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Do you get your money back from iTunes if you decide you don't like the change? No? Well, it's too late, then.
Re:DRM Creep? no, FUD. (Score:2)
Fromlawgeeks [typepad.com]
Surely you knew that Apple reserves the right to change the terms you can use its music under?
Re:Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)
I understand the concept of renting: When I'm done with it, I give the item back to the renter.
So, tell me, tech savy
I think it's a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
No outgoing mail? (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh?
What do you mean, it doesn't collect outgoing mail?
I live in a city too, and you can't go two blocks without tripping over a USPS "blue box." Plus, every apartment building that I've ever been in has an outgoing mailbox, right next to the incoming boxes (which are actually superior to the way you do outgoing mail in a rural area -- where you put it in your regular box and put the flag up -- since it c
Re:I think it's a good idea (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great! (Score:2)
Re:Great! (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno. Do you ever visit Blockbuster or use Netflix? Then this may be "too good to be true" as long as the price is reasonable (read: WAY BETTER THAN BLOCKBUSTER), the selection is good, and I get a whole week to rent it. I've used Movielink for a similar service, and I have to say that it's actually quite nice.
While I have a few nits with MovieLink, the only real complaint I have is that their selection sucks. When a new movie comes to DVD, you can forget about finding it on Movielink. First you have to wait to see if it's a failure, then you can rent it three months later. Gee, thanks MPAA members. You're killing your own movie rental service that was supposed to pave the way to the future. (Actually, I think it was to keep Congress off their backs.)
I for one look forward to Apple's offerings. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. No one is forcing you. Besides, Apple also offers the purchase of movies and TV shows for oddballs like you who wish to own every movie they watch. (Really, I think you're probably complaining because it's going to make DVD burning habits look even less legit.)
Parent
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
Re:I like the idea (Score:2)
Campus firewalls are a bitch. For those who don't care about legality, spend that money on some webhosting and setup a personal highspeed proxy.
You get internet privacy & no school port/shaping limits
Re:People have different expectations now (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that Apple is moving towards the living room (I have a Core Duo mini hooked into my home theater for just this reason). But I think they are not quite there yet, at least not enough that they would want to launch a rental service at this time without some hardware to make it more practical for most pe