Warner Bros. to Try File Sharing Of Films
Found on Wall Street Journal on Sunday, 29 January 2006
In a move that shows Hollywood is examining the benefits of a technology it long reviled, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. is expected to announce today that it will sell movies and television shows online in Germany using peer-to-peer technology.
Users, who will have to register for the service, will be able to keep the movie indefinitely. But instead of getting a movie from a central server, pieces of it could come from other people on the network who also bought that movie.
The Arvato architecture is similar to that used by peer-to-peer systems like BitTorrent, a technology that enables millions of people to share copyrighted movies and other material online without paying for them.
Rumours say that the price for a movie will be similar to DVDs. Now, who would download a lower quality version if you can get the same on a DVD with extras in better quality, ready for your player? DVD prices include the production, shipping, profit margins of dealers and so on. If you sell a smaller version via P2P, you only pay for a fraction of the total traffic, since other users upload too. Still the price will be the same? Later they will wonder if that doesn't catch on and blame it on the users again who refuse new innovations.