Apple to Announce iTunes Movie Rentals? 347
An anonymous reader writes "Think Secret is reporting that the next Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference may be the company's platform to announce movie rentals via iTunes. The files would probably have a built-in shutoff timer, or only allow a certain number of viewings." From the article: "Apple is said to have ironed out agreements with Walt Disney, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Bros., and is currently in talks with other major movie studios as well. It's unknown to what extent content will be available come the August 7 announcement, or whether Apple will announce all of its studio deals at that time ... Apple had been trying for months to persuade the movie studios that the a-la-carte model of buying individual titles, as the iTunes Music Store offers with music, was the way to go. The studios, however, have been fixed on offering only a subscription or rental-based model."
I like the idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
Coming soon (Score:1, Interesting)
Video DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hell, it seems to me that more restrictive formats give rise to more piracy (arrrr).
What if... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do I get my money back?
Not even that, lets say I get an hour through my hour and a half film, and there's a corruption in the file which causes it to stop playing. The player crashes, so I load it up again, navigate to 59 mins and it crashes again. Do I get my money back? How do I prove that it was corrupted on download and that I didn't fire up notepad and let my mind go beserk.
This isn't so much of a problem for music, because the files are relitively small. With film, I'd guess that there is a higher chance of a problem just because the files are bigger and the codecs more complex.
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:3, Interesting)
a hack you can download from some website that turns off whatever that flag is
Let's look at the current iTunes audio system, though: You can burn a FairPlay-DRMed audio file to disc, re-import it, and the DRM is gone. Sure, there's a small loss of quality, but it's pretty small for us non-audiophiles.
It seems like a pretty big loophole, it's VERY well-known, and Apple has never made a peep about it. It's almost like they're saying, "Hey, we WANT you to have unrestricted access to the stuff you buy; we just had to put this DRM thing in to please The Man. Heck, I'm surprised that the recording studios haven't freaked out about this... it's really a very sweet deal for Joe Consumer.
If Apple could pull this off for movies...
Conflicted Feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
However, the concept of rental clashes with the nature of the online and digital world. Everything that exists can be copied in exact form. You can't return data - you have a copy, not the original. The way I see it there are two options, the concept of rental can be preserved artificially with the introduction of DRM, or it can be abandoned in favor of purchases.
As a consumer I don't have a problem with the general idea of DRM on a rental - my fair use rights aren't being violated, because I don't have the right to backup, timeshift, or format shift rentals to begin with (unlike media I own, for which any DRM is intolerable). Where the problem occurs is the proprietary nature of DRM. At best, the rental DRM would be an "Open Standard" meaning anyone who pays RAND* patent fees and signs an NDA will be allowed to implement a device, and be given keys (specific to them) to decode the data. Then I could buy online rental devices or software from any number of manufactures, and it would be guaranteed to work with any number of online rental stores. This is similar to the legal workings of DVDs, Blueray, WMV. At the worst you have proprietary technologies, where each company has it's own format and player, like with Apple or DVIX (the first one). In both cases there will never be an open source player - the best we could hope for is something like the new Real Player that has an open source core with proprietary plug-ins. Even that is unlikely, as the movie industry is demanding end-to-end security (HDMI, Trusted Computing) which an open source operating system would not provide.
In the other option, the internet utopia dream was that the price of media would drop to the point of making rental unnecessary and removing the allure of piracy from the general public. The media industries are strongly opposed to this model of the future, and the only way it will ever happen is if independent media producers embrace it with success, and eventually put the current media companies out of business. This is also unlikely given the weight that the media companies have in government. Therfore, media purchases will also be hindered with DRM for the conceivable future, and will continue to be priced at traditional rates.
So given DRM on rental verses DRM on purchase, I definitely prefer the previous, but there is another potential risk with DRM rental and it is a biggy. The media companies have shown themselves very fond of the idea of DRM rental, as seen with Napster. They like the model where people don't own copies of media, but instead just subscribe to services that provide them. If too many people embrace these services, we could end up in a situation where everything is locked up. We continue to hear stories about how the original archive copies of important cultural media is being lost due to the extreme length of copyright, and the mismanagement of the copyright holders (Dr Who, classic films). But in most of those cases, at least lower quality copies exist in the form of consumer media. However, if we can no longer record broadcast media, and there are no purchased copies of media, the copyright holders will be the only ones capable of preserving the records of our popular culture. Time and time again they show themselves inept at doing so.
Anyway, I plan on sticking to buying CD's and renting locally for as long as those options exist, and continue to support those independent producers who treat their customers with respect. I'll keep trying to inform my representatives about the issues. But I'm not optimistic. We'll see what happens.
* For the uninitiated:
RAND = Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory
NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:1, Interesting)
Get them hooked then ramp up the price (or in this case, the restrictions).
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, nobody is even making the slightest suggestion that this time-limited DRM would apply to songs (but see point four below).
Third, the only area where there has been any "DRM creep" is the reduction in the number of times a playlist can be burned from 10 to 7. You fail to mention that DRM was simulatneously liberalized to allow a person to play their iTMS purchased music on 5 computers instead of 3. A slight, practically meaningless, restriction on the one hand, a somewhat meaningful liberalization on the other. You can't even claim "creep" because there is no trend. It is just a fiction.
Fourth, one of the most common complaints about iTunes is the lack of a music rental service, like the one offered by Napster or Yahoo!. If Apple were to respond to this complaint and offer a music rental service, they would have to do something like Microsoft's Janus DRM that causes the music to become unplayable if the user does not check in to show the subscription is current. By your reasoning, Apple's response to this demand is just DRM creep. They can't win, apparently.
legal choices (Score:3, Interesting)
Some choices to obtain music:
1. Buy music infested with DRM, which may overstep the US legal copyright limits.
2. Buy music from Russian MP3 sites, which may avoid US legal copyright limits.
3. Only subscribe to DRM-free music services like emusic.com.
4. Only buy from opensource/creative-commons music labels like magnatune.
5. No music
If state that only 3-5 are really legally legitimate, many people will ignore the legal or moral problems with DRM music or Russian music, because they do not directly see any negative impact.
Though I would suggest 4 if you really want to encourage healthy legal creativity.
Re:DRM Creep? (Score:2, Interesting)
WRONG! The People have an inherent Right to their culture; the only "right" that artists have to restrict that is a bargain created for the purpose of "Promoting the Progess of Science and the Useful Arts." The artist's permission is not required in order to distribute in Russia, nor is it required here in the US (depending on the circumstances -- see "Compulsory Licensing" [wikipedia.org])!
Allofmp3.com IS LEGAL IN RUSSIA, and you have no right whatsoever to tell the Russians what laws they can or cannot make for themselves!
Re:I think it's a good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
You mean your not supposed to just put your outgoing mail in your mailbox?!? Oops! I've done it for years an my mailman has always taken the mail.
Re:And in other news later today... (Score:3, Interesting)
Their attitude seems to be 'release whatever we can squeeze by the studios, and then if something becomes a major problem, we'll change it.' Hence the original versions of iTunes had some neat remote-music-sharing features, but then when they became major sources of piracy and the studios started to complain (assumedly -- I can only imagine the irate phone calls from Sony/Warner/BMG), they got removed.
Obviously as long as Apple has to maintain a relationship with the content monopolies, we probably won't see much in the way of a relaxation of the rules, but it's never seemed like Apple was really the one pushing the restrictions. If they were, their products would look a lot different (more like the early Sony attempts at running a music store).
I'm not being a complete Apple apologist -- they've obviously crippled their products in order to do business with the Sonys of the world, so at the very least they're guilty of some level of collaboration, but if they thought the same way as Sony does on a fundamental level, we'd never have seen the abilities that iTunes has now or had initially.
Slightly OT: does anyone know whether the iPod Video imposes Macrovision on the analog composite video output? I'm guessing that it doesn't, meaning that if you really wanted to un-DRM something that you bought, it would be pretty simple to loop the output of the iPod back into the analog input of a ADC (like an EyeTV or similar) and re-dig the video. Like burning music to CD and back there's an obvious quality loss, which personally I wouldn't find acceptable, but people who happily watch shitty videos produced by somebody in a theater with a camcorder probably wouldn't mind.
I can't see this working... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been a loyal ITMS customer since the onset, looking at my "purchased music" menu in iTunes (which includes TV shows) there's almost 900 items there (granted a couple of them are the 4 disc Final Fantasy soundtracks). I'm okay with the lax DRM on it, I burn CD's of the music for friends, and I burn both raw AAC files to DVD and AIFF copies on CD as backups. As I live in Ireland but use a US billing address, I use iTunes to watch the few TV shows I follow, namely Battlestar Galactica. Price-wise, an album costs less than half the price on iTunes than it does in shops here in Ireland (21 for a new album, that's about $29 - $30) so I haven't bought a CD in years.
I also have a couple UMD movies that I got fairly cheaply for the PSP (so I can be a sucker too... But really, UMD was a better format than this is, higher resolution, on a better screen and the occassional special feature. It was killed by 2 things: dumb prices, it should be $10, not more than a DVD, and the fact that they flooded the UMD market with crappy movies from the studios back catalogue. Who's gonna shell out for Cheaper By The Dozen on UMD? They ought to have made all the initial releases out of box office hits and films that got oscar nominations...)
But there's no way in hell I'll get a subscription based file. Thing is, I love movies, I am an animator in training so someday I may be working in movies... but the subscription model was why I could brag that iTunes was so much better than its competitors, now they buy into it... When I buy a movie, I like to scrutinize it privately, to observe editing, shot selection, etc, then I like to watch it with a few friends. I understand there's a hell of a lot of downright awful movies out there, but I dont even bother renting them, I wait for them to come on TV if I am at all bothered to see them. Thing is, the DRM on the iTunes music does allow you to share music with your friends just the same way CD's did, the only thing it stopped you from doing was making 30,000 copies or immediately dumping it onto limewire. It was designed to inconveniance people whose only intent was mass redistribution, but it let me give a copy to a buddy who was interested in it. The TV shows, on the other hand, don't let you burn the video to a readable DVD, thus, if I wasn't using it to keep up with TV shows that aren't in Ireland, it's just too closed for me to really be interested.
The problem is that the industry sees you loaning a DVD to a friend as a threat, a lost sale. This is crap, someone who's only willing to watch something if it's loaned wasn't necessarily inclined to buy it, and if the product is legitimately GOOD, after they watch the loaned copy, they should be more likely to buy it for themselves.
It all comes down to the industry finding ways to maximise profit without fostering good products. Sorry if the post is long and incohesive, I'm off to watch Zhang Ziyi on my PSP...
Re:People have different expectations now (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that Apple is moving towards the living room (I have a Core Duo mini hooked into my home theater for just this reason). But I think they are not quite there yet, at least not enough that they would want to launch a rental service at this time without some hardware to make it more practical for most people - a version of AirTunes for video with a front-row extender might do that. But to me that still leans more to outright sales than rentals, basically I just think the "rental" aspect of the predcition is wrong while being generally right about video.
Besides, expectations about what prices people are willing to pay are often quite wrong. Experts predicted the iPod would be an expensive flop, sales of TV shows through iTunes exceeded most people's expectations, etc. So, I think your estimate of $.50 is probably far too low, but then we shall have to wait and see.
Those are really different though - the iPod I don't think you can compare on pricing terms with media, it's just a different model. And the TV stuff was outright purchases for a reasonable fee, I've bought a few shows myself - that's why I'm saying for a rental, the price woould have to be lower - because the expectation right now is that can get an hour or so of video for just $2 (or less with a season pass) and be able to watch it forever. To me it says online movie sales could work while not really indicating anything about how rentals would fare. The only model we have for that are the really unpopular online movie rental sites that exist today. If Apple does nothing more than what they are already doing, I cannot see success coming to them any more than it has to the current attempts.
I agree with you on the effect of Netflix on local rentals, but you aren't getting a freebie by sitting on a Netflix DVD for months. You still pay for it, and the longer you wait the more you pay.
That is true but it does not really feel that way to the end consumer, who may be watching other movies and thus have a flow of movies continuing before the time is right to watch one particular movie. I personally dislike things that require monthly fees but Netflix is the one I don't mind paying. For an online rental service it would have to offer essentially the same degree of freedom in viewing, possibly the exact same model of Netflix where you could only have a certain number of movies downloaded for viewing at one time and have to explicting de-authorize a movie before obtaining a new one.
Some of those "no late fee" policies, such as Blockbuster's, proved to be little more than a publicity stunt (they had to settle a legal claims filed by 47 states because they deceptively left out the crucial detail that customers would be charged the full price of the movie if they didn't return it before the end of a one-week grace period).
Indeed they were not actually free of late fees - but I think it's telling they felt the need to make it look like they were following a netflix model in order to contiue to survive as a compay. So I am using that as more of an example of what rental services must look like to a consumer considering using them rather than as a practical example of something that worked.
Hardware to complement a rental business? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Well, we've always been very clear on that. We don't think that televisions and personal computers are going to merge. We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on.
Well, they want to link sometimes. Like, when you make a movie, you burn a DVD and you take it to your DVD player. Someday that could happen over AirPort, so you don't have to burn a DVD -- you can just watch it right off your computer on your television set. But most of these products that have said, "Let's combine the television and the computer!" have failed. All of them have failed.
The problem is, when you're using your computer you're a foot away from it, you know? When you're using your television you want to be ten feet away from it. So they're really different animals."