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from the we-show-the-movies-you-don't-want-to-watch dept.
mendax writes:
A New York Times op-ed reports:
A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you'd want to watch. When you loaded Popcorn Time, you were presented with a menu of recent Hollywood releases: "American Hustle," "Gravity," "The Wolf of Wall Street," "12 Years A Slave," and hundreds of other acclaimed films were all right there, available for instant streaming at the click of a button.
If Popcorn Time sounds too good to be true, that's because it was. The app was illegal - a well-designed, easy-to-use interface for the movie-pirating services that have long ruled the Internet's underbelly. Shortly after the app went public, its creators faced a barrage of legal notices, and they pulled it down. But like Napster in the late 1990s, Popcorn Time offered a glimpse of what seemed like the future, a model for how painless it should be to stream movies and TV shows online. The app also highlighted something we've all felt when settling in for a night with today's popular streaming services, whether Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, or Google or Microsoft's media stores: They just aren't good enough.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Friday March 28 2014, @09:18AM
Boston Globe had a nice article [bostonglobe.com] on this topic as well. A lot of good insight, but this talks to your point:
In another SN article was a discussion of the value of something or what will people pay. I can see why the *IAA hate this stuff, because the public is finally getting wiser to the idea that they do not need to mortgage the house just to have entertainment. I still think that a $1 a song is a bit much and even $9 is over-priced for older movies. I loved the allmp3 models for they got that millions of people will by songs at a cheap price more then less millions for more cost. The model fails since it does not compensate the original artist, but that is how the laws were set up and not the fault of artists or music sellers.
This was one of the best lines from the article and it speaks to how powerful the internet can be today and how much power People can really have to make changes...
"Besides, a little video piracy might prove to be a blessing, in the long run."
It forced the music industry to change how it sold/delivered music. Now, will or can do the same for the movie/TV industry only time will tell. I may check out the popcorn time alternates....for research purposes of course.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Friday March 28 2014, @11:56AM
The MPAA after all these years has basically FINALLY succeeded in killing the industry dedicated to allowing people to rent any movie they wanted, whenever they wanted. Blockbuster's out of business, and Redbox is a pale shadow.
The first sale doctrine locked them out of a share of Blockbuster's profits, which they resented for decades. They wanted a cut when I rented a movie to watch some weekend for $2.50, and didn't get it.
Now, with the landscape finally opened wide up, they have the chance they wanted for so long! They can rent the movies direct to consumers themselves, and eat the whole meal of the rental price.
So what did they do? They f*cked it up! Completely! They decided that the $2.50 that they so craved for $0.50 of isn't worth it to them anymore. Why sell them milk when you can make them buy the cow? Now you have to purchase for $10 and up if you want it! We'll make 4x as much!
Except we won't, because now you've basically killed demand, and driven consumers to either very limited subscription streaming services (where once again you're sharing most of the cut with someone else) or to illegal means.
Gawd, I wouldn't hire these clowns to run a banana stand.
(Score: 1) by arulatas on Friday March 28 2014, @12:44PM
And as Arrested Development taught us... "There is always money is in the banana stand"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuHILqDIvis [youtube.com]
10 turns around
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Friday March 28 2014, @07:59PM
" Why sell them milk when you can make them buy the cow? Now you have to purchase for $10 and up if you want it! We'll make 4x as much!"
Not entirely true, because neither the "cow" nor the milk are even for sale in the first place. And don't even get me started on region locking. I live in Latin America, which somehow means that even if I want to pay, I'm not allowed to stream movies because there are several checks in place to prevent me - PREVENT ME - from being a legitimate customer. First my credit card must be a US credit card. And second, my IP of course must originate in North America.
I really have no idea why they shut themselves out of customers like this. I have a choice of course, since I do have US based credit cards and I do know how to set up a VPN, I can "pretend" to be a worthy N. American. But to be honest it is much, much simpler for me to pirate.
So yeah, not only do you NOT get to choose the content you'd like because the selection is arbitrarily limited, but also let's lock out the rest of the world and limit ourselves to 300 million customers instead of 7+ billion. Remember, we didn't make our projected 20% increase in revenue - blame piracy!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Friday March 28 2014, @09:09PM
I think the reason is they are after complete control, not immediate profits. I believe that, ironically for one of the few instances they are thinking long term instead of short term, they have it backwards. They are not only missing out on the short term profits, the long term control (and thus even potential greater profit) will likely always elude them as technology keeps developing that end runs their efforts. Unless they succeed in legally locking down the internet to their ends they will ultimately fail. Hopefully sooner than later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 28 2014, @03:54PM
> It forced the music industry to change how it sold/delivered music.
Actually, what forced the music industry to wake-up was Apple and the Ipod.
Essentially, in the beginning there was Apple and the Ipod. And the Ipod had DRM. And the music industry wanted to use the DRM. And to use the DRM, they had to sell through iTunes and only iTunes. And so they did.
But then, the great and powerful Apple began to extract a cut of the revenue. And for a while the industry paid the tax. But then, Amazon appeared and offered music sales. And Amazon offered a lower tax cut on the sales. But by this point, the iPod was essentially the only music player remaining in the market. And so, to increase their profits, they desperately wanted to sell through Amazon. But to do so, they had to give up on DRM.
So, after much hand wringing, the desire for more money won out over the desire for DRM, and they started selling DRM free music.
Piracy wasn't much of the effect here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 28 2014, @04:04PM
“Goldfinger,â€
Slashcode still doesn't do Unicode. [dev.soylentnews.org]