Warner Bros. to Sell Movies Over BitTorrent

martinmarv writes "The BBC is reporting that Warner Bros. is to sell movies over BitTorrent. Disappointingly, the pricing is set to be about the same as the DVD, even though the download will only become available at the same time as the DVD release, and can only play on one machine. In distributing films via download, Warner will join the ranks of MovieLink and CinemaNow. Perhaps they should wait to see how their $1.50 experiment works out first?." From the article: "Other Hollywood studios are now likely to launch similar services. They believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film. "

But!

But you can allready download Warner Bros movies over bittorrent!

Oh wait, sell. Nevermind.

Re:But!

Exactly!. How do they expect a DRM encumbered download which costs as much as the DVD to succeed against a superior quality free download which you can play in your standard DVD player and came out months earlier.

This is a token gesture which offers nothing of value and is designed to fail. Hollywood just wants to crow about being able to offer legal alternatives, their not at all interested in giving the consumer what they really want.

Re:But!

How do they expect a DRM encumbered download which costs as much as the DVD to succeed

I don't think they do expect it to succeed. When their half-assed attempt at legal downloads fails they'll have more FUD to spread to lawmakers about evil downloading hurting their bottom line.

At least their accountants will work out a way to write off the losses for the hardware, networking and other things required for this.

Re:But!

I don't think they do expect it to succeed. When their half-assed attempt at legal downloads fails they'll have more FUD to spread to lawmakers about evil downloading hurting their bottom line.

I don't understand what is so special about movies and music. They are just data/software.

People have been downloading and _paying_ for data/software for well over 10 years now, but the movie and music people can't seem to be able to do it.

Trends I have noticed that apparently the people that are in the business have not.

1) People tend to have more variety and quantity of media today than 10-20 years ago. Its normal for people to have 100-200 CDs worth of audio content today and to have between 20-50 DVDs. 20 years ago, 100-200 LPs were only for music freaks/diehards, and video was pretty much not collected before DVDs. I'm basing this on my experience and observations, I have no hard data behind this, but it seems to be accurate in my observations.

2) Despite the increase in demand and basically an infinite supply, prices have not dropped. In my eye, if DVDs were shipped at $5/movie they would not be able to keep them on the shelves. However, movies are slightly different because their old primary cash cow was the big screen/box office takes. Its a little tough for me to speculate here about how to balance those markets because I really don't participate in the big screen version, nor was I ever much of a box office guy, so I don't know that market. However, music in my opinion and all of the people I have met online and in person is too expensive for what it is. I mean, even downloads of live concerts are about 1/2 or 1/3 of the cost to see the real thing.

3) Quality is dropping, yet for some reason demand is still high. I don't know if this is just a normal perception as one gets in his mid 30s or if this is a real trend or not, but it seems to be a common consensus that quality is not there as it once was. To me, rock music peaked in the 70s and the 60s-70s era bands were still strong in the 80s with a more polished and professional approach. There was a slight resurgence in the early 90s, but things are tapering off from there. Personally, I've been disappointed in most movies all of my life. There are anomalies, but for 1.5 to 3 hours of one piece of material, you have to keep people interested with solid character development and character constancy and, duh, the thing needs a plot too.

I simply do not understand why these markets have such a reluctance to give people what they want and stick with the times. Audio formats used to change fairly frequently, but that has stopped. 78s, LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs -- MP3s are still almost a black market item even though people want them. Movies were pretty much inaccessible in people's homes (and cars I guess now) before the 70s and 80s with the video tapes. Then DVDs came out, and people really liked the form factor, pause and skipping abilities, no rewinding, better quality, extra features, etc. But it looks like the movie studio's media diversity has stopped in favor of media that is unwatchable because of DRM or whatever restrictions for making the media play.

What I see happening, are lower production quality, more grass roots music and video that is shared over the internet, and the big movie/music studios are sitting on the sidelines with their dicks in their hands.

Re:But!

Its normal for people to have 100-200 CDs worth of audio content today and to have between 20-50 DVDs. 20 years ago, 100-200 LPs were only for music freaks/diehards, and video was pretty much not collected before DVDs. I'm basing this on my experience and observations, I have no hard data behind this, but it seems to be accurate in my observations.

Not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but I don't think this part is accurate. Lots of people had large VHS video collections after the videos became reasonably priced (for a few years they were $80+ per tape, so mostly it was only rental stores that bought them). I still have a few hundred VHS tapes that I haven't gotten around to chucking yet.

And looking at the LP collections of my parents, my wife's parents and their friends, I think it was also quite common to have large LP collections. I know plenty of people who still have boxes of LPs around who were never really heavily involved in music. If you buy a record once a month or so, it doesn't take that many years to amass a large collection.

Thanks, Warner Bros....I *guess*...

From TFA:

Pricing for a feature film will be about the same as the DVD release.

Warner added that whether a TV show or feature film, it will only play on the initial computer used to make the download.

The downloads will not therefore work on other PCs or standard DVD players.

So let me get this straight...I can download a feature film, but can only play it on the system I downloaded it to, while for the same price I could have a DVD that I can play anywhere I wish. Hmm.

Also the issue of extra content (out-takes, deleted scenes, yadda yadda yadda) is not addressed. The article says I can download a 'feature film', but it mentions nothing regarding the bonus features (personally, I despise the bonus features, but I know many people who purchase DVDs with the bonus features specifically in mind). Even if the extra content is included (making for a hefty download), that still doesn't justify the price tag, seeing how the download is locked to one machine.

This doesn't really sound like Warner Bros. "believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film"...it sounds more like:

• Warner Bros. wants to appear as if they are supporting movie downloads,
  while,
  
• Warner Bros.' actual objective is to discourage the adoption of downloadable content as a standard.
  

Thanks for nothing, Warner Bros..

Why aren't they trying the $1.50 experiment [msn.com] here in the U.S.? Apparently, we're not pirating enough.

Re:Thanks, Warner Bros....I *guess*...

I'm wondering how they will go about using bittorrent and DRM at the same time, effectively. Bittorrent's strength lies in many people having the exact same file, so if the DRM is added post-download, it would be trivial to intercept the data before the lockdown and use it as such. If the DRM is added before the download, I am having difficulties seeing how BT can be used to any significant advantage.

Encapsulating the movie in an encrypted executable that phones home for authorization? Ugh.

Re:Thanks, Warner Bros....I *guess*...

iTunes doesn't use Bittorrent for distribution of it's content. It uses regular HTTP transfers (I think) from a lot of servers placed strategically around the country/world (by Akamai). The Akamai servers have the unencrypted files, and then encrypt them for a particular user when you go to buy/download one. The result is that the file I download with my iTunes userid is different from the file that you download, with your iTunes userid. This would keep us from using Bittorrent to download the files -- they're not the same.

What the GP was referring to is that Bittorrent relies on the files being the same (or at least having a lot of identical chunks) -- and if the files are the same, then they aren't being encrypted/DRMed in transit, like iTunes' are. Thus, it ought to be fairly trivial to intercept the data before it gets DRMed all to hell on your computer and locked down. At least theoretically ... it'll be interesting to see how they deal with this.

The other option is to send an encrypted file, for which there is only one key, but then once one person recovers the key, they can share it with everyone else who's downloaded the file and you lose a lot of security.

Basically it just doesn't seem like Bittorrent in general is really conducive to transmitting DRMed content, at least in the way that most companies are implementing DRM right now.

Re:Thanks, Warner Bros....I *guess*...

not to mention, if nobody is seeding it all you paid for is a headache!

This brings up an even more interesting point. So let me get this straight - WB will charge DVD prices for a less-than-DVD quality download crippled with DRM - and will use other people's computers to serve the bits.

Wow - lower quality, same price point, crippled DRM, and they don't even pick up the cost of hosting.

I'm sold - how do I get my computer to act as a server for them? Because I've always wanted my $45/m for internet to be used at the will of media companies to avoid the hosting fees associated with "allowing" users to download DRM crippled overly-expensive movie releases. Huzzah!

No.

The movies they're distributing will be in Windows Media Player format and won't play on Linux or Mac OS X. (Yes, there is a "Windows Media Player" for Mac but it doesn't support DRMed content.)

I'll stick with The Pirate Bay for my cross-platform movie needs. Warner Bros. should set up a PayPal tip jar so that I can send them a few bucks if I think their movie was good.

Good idea in Theory

I like the idea of being able to download DVDs legally from the studios directly. However, I would NEVER pay the same price as the normal DVD and only be able to play the movie on one machine. If I could burn it to DVD, and be able to enjoy it on my big screen LCD TV, this would be a service I would use as opposed to going to say Bestbuy or Walmart to purchase the DVD. I always thought that the Internet was supposed to supply convinence, not another thing that will cause me to NOT want to use the service because the movie could only be played on my computer. What is with that? I think the movies should be about $10 and be able to be burned once to a DVD Disc so that people can enjoy them elsewhere and not on a PC. Just my thoughts.

Designed to fail, with a darker purpose.

I like the idea of being able to download DVDs legally from the studios directly. However, I would NEVER pay the same price as the normal DVD and only be able to play the movie on one machine.

That's because they want this initiative to fail. It is explicitly designed to fail, miserably.

Distribution of digital files over the Internet is enemy of the content industry. Their entire business model is built upon keeping the supply of their product scarce. The Internet is frightening to them (and always will be) because scarcity of easily-reproducable data is impossible to maintain on a free Internet. The business model that works for the industry is physical media, purchased one at a time. This way control is maintained. The media industry will never stop trying to prevent the free movement of all data on the Internet, because any data could be their data!

This is a smokescreen, nothing more. The movie studios want to be able to go before congress during the future hearings for ever-more restrictive copyright initiatives, saying "We tried to offer legal online distribution: no one would pay for it! Piracy continues unabated! We need to regulate the Internet! NOW!"

Then they will be able to go back to printing physical copies and stomping on the occasional soul who tries to share a file. In the process, they would like to see ISPs be forbidden to provide customers with actual Internet connections: they would like them to be crippled to prevent anyone from providing any content at all. We should good little consumers and buy what they provide: how dare we be allowed to actually contribute anything! Why, that might make the content industry irrelevant. Horrors!

You're Competing with Piracy!

First off, I wish Warner Brothers would get it through their head that if they are to compete with piracy, they have to price the movies as such.

If they price them as much as the hardcopies, who's going to buy them? Nobody. Your pirates are trying to escape high prices & your regular DVD buyers are going to balk at the offer for the fact that they could order a nice shiny cased DVD off amazon for the same price.

I highly doubt anyone will use this service if they keep the prices on par with the DVDs. If they offer them at even half price, then you might see some movement from both sides (pirates and DVD buyers) to that middle ground and hopefully recoup some of your losses from the pirates.

Offer downloads so cheap that you run the pirates out of business but leave quality lacking so true fans will always buy the DVDs.

Re:You're Competing with Piracy!

I don't work in the movie industry, but I'm willing to bet that pricing these at anything below current DVD prices won't increase revenue.

I can't imagine that people who pirate movie represent a large portion of the buying public. They don't like paying and they know they don't have to. I don't think you will see a ton of pirates stopping that and purchasing downloads.

Instead, I think you would see people who already buy DVD's buying these downloads. So, to cut the cost of the product would only take people who are already paying a high price for the product, and giving them a lower cost alternative.

Studios make most of their money from DVD sales. It is in their interest to keep the price high. The cost of media and packaging isn't really that high. At least not high enough to justify a significant price break.

Re:You're Competing with Piracy!

But people who buy DVDs today might download MORE movies if prices were lower. I only buy movies of which i'm sure that i'll watch them more than once. If prices were lower, i would also take the risk and download an unknown movie. hrshgn

Re:You're Competing with Piracy!

Nonsense.

Kids, unemployed people maybe. Adults much less so. At some point you realize: "Hmm, I can either pay for this with 15 minutes of work, or spend 2 hours looking for a crack that might be loaded with spyware. Then I'll probably have to spend a day to reinstall Windows."

If you don't have money, you just "pay" with your time instead. Give me MP3 at $0.1 per song and pirating will be completely pointless. Movies I'd be willing to buy at about $5, with no DRM, as a DVD image.

Personally, I don't buy DVDs. Why? Expensive, insane industry, forced ads in content I'm paying for, DRM interfaces... like hell I will pay for that. Remove all that insanity, offer it with an easy to access system that works from Linux, and I'll happily start buying.

viruses and quality

I'm far more concerned about getting slapped with a lawsuit than I am about getting a virus or crappy quality when I download.

Cost of bandwidth

So, I have to pay the same price for the movie, minus the physical media? Shouldn't WB be paying people who are helping to distribute the movie too? Users using this service will have to pay for their bandwidth AND the cost of the movie at the same price of a DVD?

Thanks WB. Wonderful business plan you got there.

Poor quality, or...

Perhaps it'd be worth it to not spend 8 days downloading the Swedish version of Star Wars Ep. I like my friend did, thinking it was english.

Re:Am I an idiot???

If the media player you use is unsecure, the media file could cause a buffer overrun (or even use innate scripting abilities... remember word macro viruses?) to run "arbitrary code." It's even possible to do this simply viewing a picture...

No, just uneducated.

Considering Windows Media Player interprets scripts embedded in video files, they can contain executable code. Then there's always the possibility of buffer overflows within the player code that handles the data part, which turns your data into executable code, and there are probably dozens of other things I haven't thought of off the top of my head, too.

Re:Am I an idiot???

The article claims pirated videos can "contain viruses." Am I an idiot, or how is this possible? My understanding is that a virus can only be contained in executable code.

You're not thinking like a Windows user are you? This is the platform that brought us e-mail viruses. E-MAIL VIRUSES for Christ's sake! Who would have thought 10 years ago as we were all laughing at the newbies passing around the Good Times virus hoax chain letter that Microsoft's "innovative" e-mail client Outbreak and Outbreak Express would make it entirely possible to spread very virulent e-mail viruses within a few years? You could get infected without even opening the e-mail message! Ugh. So, do you really trust your Windows PC to not be susceptible to viruses embedded in video streams? I sure don't.

Oh, and as for other platforms, I'd bet you 100 DVD-RWs that the only platform this service will support is Windows.

New Computers?

What about when a person who upgrades their family computer and wants to be able to watch the movies he purchased and backed up? Is he forced to buy another copy of the movie to watch it because his old copy won't play on his new machine? Why should I pay for something that will simply be unusable in 5 years after I upgrade my computer?

Count me out. I'll just stick with DVDs: the price is the same, without the gimping of the product (region codes aside).

Do they know

Kazaa's era is over?

They believe movie fans will prefer to pay a reasonable price for a legal downloaded movie rather than risk illegally swapping a computer file that could contain viruses or be a poor quality copy of a film.

No we won't. Not all of us. People who already download movies illegaly now have access to forums where quality copies are available, feedbacks and comments let people judge if the movie is worth the download, some titles are posted before they're released on DVD, many languages, subs and regions can be found rather easily -- FOR FREE. Of course, there's always the crappy cam or the bad compression here and there. But it's not like you pay much for them either...

I think the industry just missed the boat. If they want "pirates" to use their service instead, they'll need to provide some insentive, which same-as-DVD release date and prices are not.

Destined for Failure

The whole using Bittorrent to distribute anything for a profit should be axed by users until they get a cut. No media, no home theater, single machine, no bandwidth, no storage, but the full DVD price!? Yeah, that'll fly.

Xesdeeni

Uh, no thanks.

Warner added that whether a TV show or feature film, it will only play on the initial computer used to make the download. The downloads will not therefore work on other PCs or standard DVD players.

A small step in the right direction, but no thanks. I'd gladly buy an un-DRM'd file that I can burn to DVD and shrink to put on my ipod.

I require AMP (that's Absolute Media Portability). Can I play it on my non-network connected TV in the bedroom? Can my kids watch it in the car? Can I loan it to my friend? If the answer to any of those is "No", then I'm really not interested. If "Yes", then I'll be VERY interested.

It seems incredibly stupid to me for media companies to waste money on physical distribution when they could be distributing bits. But I requite that I can do the same thing with those bits that I can do with physical media.

-S

Tell me why I should buy it

1. It costs the same as a DVD.

Getting a DVD requires:
1. Going to the DVD store (10-20 minutes and about a buck for gas)
2. Looking for the DVD I want (5 minutes or 50, depends on whether you enjoy browsing)
3. Grabbing the DVD and paying for it (5 minutes and whatever the thing costs).

Getting the torrent:
1. Going on their webpage, looking for the movie, going through the payment routine etc (15 minutes, a credit card and the amount of dough they want for it)
2. Waiting for 10 hours to DL the thing (plus cost for bandwidth if you're not on a flat, which is quite rare here).

So it takes longer, costs the same (with the difference that I'll need some kind of CC) to get something that I can ONLY play on the machine I DLed on, and if I should decide to kill said machine it's gone, and I can't watch it on the DVD player hooked to the large screen, no, I gotta watch it on the smaller PC screen without good sound and other gizmos...

Again, WB, why should I buy it that way?

Or is it just another attempt to "prove" that nobody would "buy stuff" over torrent and that torrent should be shut down 'cause it's only a pirate tool?

No use to me.

This is no use to me. What I want is simple:

My preferred movie characterastics (in order of priority)

1) No (or easily circumventable) DRM.
2) Legal.
3) High quality.
4) Cheap.

This matches 2 and 3, but misses my number 1 priority.

The best match so far is a DVD, since its easy to bypass the DRM in order to copy the movies onto my home built media devices. Other times I end up downloading the odd movie which fulfils 1, 4, and often 3 as well.

Currently for many downloading is the best option by far, which is unfortunate because of its questionable legality. If only the industry would lower the price and remove the DRM it would match all four for me and I would be jumping at it. I think they are just too scared and/or greedy to do that though.

So Let's Just Think About This A Moment...

Warner Brothers want *me* to pay *them* to download a DRM-enabled movie via BitTorrent.

And presumably whilst I'm downloading that movie via BitTorrent, I am also using some of the bandwidth I *pay* to rent from my ISP to *upload* part of the same movie to *other* users who are downloading the movie but have *paid* Warner Brothers for the privelige.

Okay, so maybe I'm missing something and there's a possible explanation for this:

1. The author of the article has omitted to mention that Warner Brothers will pay me with cash or stock options as the result of my contributing my resources to their film distribution network.

2. Warner Brothers are on mind-expanding drugs.

3. I am on mind-expanding drugs.

4. According to some ancient Incan calendar system, yesterday was March 31st making today April Fool's Day.

Wonder if this is part of a legal strategy?

I wonder if this is part of a legal strategy on Warner's part. They offer movie downloads at the same price as retail DVDs. Then, after a few months, they start to sue pirates who "illegally" download Warner films: "My client offered digital downloads, your honour, but the defendent continued to illegally download bootleg copies of Harry Potter 4. Since he had the choice to legally purchase and download this film, he should definitely be found guilty."

How It Works

It will use the DRM mechanism built into Windows Media Player:

• The file is DRMed before being distributed

• User downloads DRMed file from BitTorrent, using a modified client. This is the clever bit; it will use a distribution network of dedicated caches created and run by CacheLogic [cachelogic.com] - see a press-release on a trial of this technology [cachelogic.com], which act as 'super-peers', greatly increasing download speeds and reliability. This also cuts the amount of upload bandwidth for users.

• When the user plays the file, WMP reads the DRM header, which has a URL to get a licence

• WMP goes to the URL, which contains a username/password form; user logs in, and receives a licence, for that computer. This also allows the distributer to manage/bill users.

Magic, the authorised user can play the content on his computer, but it can't be copied (or rather it can - but won't be playable without an account!). (I previousply posted some of this before logging in, just to make it clear I'm not pinching it)

Video Quality

The key to drawing many bittorrent users is video Quality. If they can get a Hi-Def version of the show online that they can't get via TV then there is a reason to get it from the studio.

A 45 min episode of LOST in 720p Xvid Hi-Def looks GREAT. H.264 would be nice but most computers just can't hack it yet.

I can think of a few reasons

Why would anyone pay almost as much for a drm'd file than a dvd?

I can think of a few reasons (unfortunately Warner Bros does not appear to be implementing any of them):

• The DRMed file is released before the DVD
• The DRMed file is in a high resolution format
• The cost of the download is refunded if you decide to buy the physical DVD
• You get a rebate for seeding the file to others
• The DRMed file contains additional content not available on DVD

There's lots of things they could do to add value to the downloaded file (even with DRM) but the whole scheme seems to be set up with the intention to fail so they can say "we tried, but people just want to steal from us".