Movie Burning Kiosks Coming To Retailers

Vitaly Friedman writes "The motion picture industry is in talks with some major retailers about installing DVD burning kiosks in stores. It's an interesting idea, but one that almost entirely misses the point. Hollywood's movie distribution system is in dire need of a fix - very few will dispute that. Movie attendance has been suffering, DVD sales are slumping, and all the industry has managed to do is come up with a half-baked, unpopular download service and a scant handful of simultaneous releases. In another attempt to sort of give consumers what they want, the motion picture industry is thinking about allowing retailers to set up in-store kiosks for distribution."

Movie burning?

[MadFarmAnimalz]

For a second, I thought this had something to do with the proper disposal of movies like Battlefield Earth...

I have one already...

[AudioEfex]

I already have a movie-burning kiosk in my home.

It's called BitTorrent. :)

AE

Well, I guess the obvious question is...

[zodiaccat]

...when are we gonna start seeing book burning kiosks?

Re:Well, I guess the obvious question is...

[Opportunist]

There were a few in Germany and Austria a few decades ago, but they weren't that popular in the long run. Also because they kinda lacked the value.

Industry insiders describe...

[jeffehobbs]

Industry insiders describe the kiosk prototypes they have seen as a DVD burning iMac with the browser's homepage set to "http://thepiratebay.org/ [thepiratebay.org]". This strikes me as an mindblowingly ill-fated idea -- I mean, if I had to drive somewhere to get to the iTunes Music Store, I can't imagine I'd use it. It's all about the American I wannit now impulse.

~jeff

First Amendment issue:

[LiftOp]

Can I shout "fire!" in a movie burning kiosk?

Re:DVD cannibalising the industry?

[isecore]

But there aren't compulsory trailers on DVDs (and if there were i would get very pissed off and boycott the DVDs concerned), and so audiences aren't exposed to future movies that they might like. So they are then less likely to continue seeing as many more movies.

True, but instead we get non-skippable "informational" commercials calling us pirates and sprouting corporate bullshit about how pirates are not only evil, but also communists.