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(Almost) Free Movies On-Line... Sorta
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Feb 03, 2002 10:15 AM
from the not-sure-if-I-trust-them-with-my-visa dept.
from the not-sure-if-I-trust-them-with-my-visa dept.
Snaller writes "See the latest movies on the net? Its possible - apparently the law in Taiwan says that for a movie to be protected by copyright law one has to apply for such protection within a month after the opening in the theaters. This rarely happens and as a consequence movie88 has opened a virtual movieplex: See any of their films for 1 dollar. The movie is streamed in a format that doesn't allow you to save it on the harddrive, but for that 1 dollar you can view it anytime and as much as you like for 3 days. The selection includes movies like "Shrek", "Legally Blonde","American Pie 2","Gone with the wind", James Bond and Batman." Yeah this'll last.
Right. But it really demonstrates what TV will be like in the future
when you have access to thousands of movies. And the buck a film
rate strikes me as awesome. I'd watch a lot more movies if they were
only a buck.
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(Almost) Free Movies On-Line... Sorta
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Imagine the time that went into this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't imagine that this will stay around for long, as the content producers will go nuts when they hear about it. It would seem that they took all this time to do this in futility.
O well (Score:3, Interesting)
And
roy
Re:O well (Score:4, Informative)
You don't really have to crack it. I've noticed they technique they use to make it difficult to change around links. they open up a no permission browser window and then from there redirect to the link of the actual
Re:O well (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.littlechapel.com/downloads/rp8-setup.e
It's a church site that lets you download real player to see one of their presentations. I guess they felt that it was sinful to let someone endure the pain of trying to navigate through www.real.com.
Re:O well (Score:4, Interesting)
For those interested in the dirty details, may I recommend:
With that combination (and sometimes "strings") I can download ANY Quicktime or Windows Media video that I want to - permissions be damned. Plus, get this: mplayer on Linux does a better job of playing Windows Media files than Windows Media Player on Windows! (And at a higher screen res too!)
BTW, the secret letter is 'm'. (This may become apparant if you have done the above.) I don't have time for a complete downloading HOWTO, but ... mov = wget, asf = wget, asx = asfrecorder, wmv = try asfrecorder then wget.
US Law vs. Taiwanese Law (Score:3, Funny)
Better mark Taiwan up on the Axis of Evil list too..
Re:US Law vs. Taiwanese Law (Score:5, Informative)
According to the Bern convention, you don't need to register for copyright protection.
But Taiwan was thrown out of the UN and most international bodies, in order to please China.
And thus Taiwan couldn't take part in the negotiations, didn't modify it's national laws.
Nice sideeffect.
price point (Score:5, Insightful)
Somethings that are free are not worth the price.
On the other hand, a dollar, euro, etc, is probably the minimum that most people would pay, since much less is possible too much of a hassle. dollar stores, dollar menus are popular because people think these provide good value, even if it is not true.
and think: when was the last time you changed a candy bar to a credit card? by itself? there is a point when paying by electronic means is perceived to be too much of a hassle.
A buck isn't worth anything? (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. Eat that, Terry Bradshaw.
Everyone ought to check it out - NOW (Score:5, Insightful)
Even thought it is real streamed at 300k bps, you'll get an idea of what the future could look like if we really could get our film libraries live.
Remember that many US concepts of copyright, fair use, etc don't translate into equivalent laws in other countries. This may be legal now and forever for agreements executed under the laws of Taiwan (this site). Note that some countries consider region coding to be unlawful (NZ?.
Note that the fair use concept in the US is stronger than in many others.
US owned a lot of IP and is considered to be unfair in its licensing practices in other countries -- they don't like embargoes on content, restrictive format licensing on contects, copy protection, delayed release dates in other countries and other US centric concepts.
I could have gotten a dollar? (Score:4, Funny)
but the MPAA managed to hunt me down and send me and my ISP really naughty obscene letters. they quoted obscene literature such as "Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3" and "we hereby state, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 512" Eventually the letters started to get to offensive so I decisted all activity. But man, if I only had a team of lawyers at the time....
Same treatment as the Ukraine? (Score:5, Insightful)
slashdotted? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:slashdotted? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is pretty interesting. I guess they did a good job scaling their video servers but not a good job on the web server. Kudos to them for devoting the most resources to the most important application.
Balls (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of their pricing decisions seem a bit arbitrary, however. For example, you can view the 3h17m movie Magnolia for the price of a single download, but the similarly long Schindler's list is broken up into three streams that must be viewed separately.
I give them five days before the US government threatens to give China the green light to annex unless the Taiwanese government cracks down on this site.
this is such crap... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a big endless loop of 'sign in', choose a movie, 'sign in', etc.
Already slowed to the point that it's worthless...
Also, no 'Clerks' or 'Chasing Amy'. Or the search function just doesn't work...
sigh.
Damn it (Score:3, Redundant)
Da *buffering*
mn *buffer--*
movi *buffering*
e got sla *buffering buffering buffering buffering 3 hours remaining*
shdot *buffering*
ted! *buffering*
--joshua
/.d (Score:3, Funny)
A new development - the site was slashdotted - it's extremely slow and video downloads do not work!
I can almost hear the engineer in the background... " She canna take much moore of it, keptin! "...
I'd suspect that even if they have access to the fattest pipes in Taiwan, the international feed to Taiwan would be saturated with
Here's to their good luck!
Movies for less than US$1 (Score:3, Interesting)