Prince McLeanAmid growing concerns over digital piracy, major motion picture studios are pressuring Apple Computer to develop a new distribution model for digital films before they agree to make their flicks available on the company's iTunes download service.
"The studios want to avoid the experience of the music industry, which has yet to recover from years of illegal digital piracy," the report states. It quotes one studio executive involved in the talks as saying Apple must introduce a "new model" for feature film content delivery.
With the average cost of a blockbuster film approaching $100m, movie studios have more to lose than music companies, the exec said. "We’re very willing to do a deal but we’re keen to get some concessions from Apple that will account for the differences between the value of music and television content and feature film content."
Thus far, Apple has signed on just one major studio in Walt Disney Co., which joined iTunes in September and has since sold over 500,000 flicks through the service — a sell-through rate of approximately 62,500 movies a week or 9,000 each day.
Of the four motion picture heavyweights yet to ink a deal with Apple, Fox is rumored to be one of the closest to reaching an agreement to join iTunes. Earlier this month, CNN quoted the president of the studios parent company, News Corp., as saying the two parties were engaged in 'positive talks,' but that several details still needed to be worked out.
Lions Gate Entertainment, an independent, is also rumored to be closing in on a deal to distribute its films through iTunes.
Amber Neely
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew Orr
Andrew O'Hara
72 Comments
how is what apple does for its movies not safe? they are encripted (i think) and they can only go on 5 computers. these studios just do not get it.
Geez the studios need to back-off. Apple does not allow movies to be burned to DVD period, so what's the problem? You can backup a movie to DVD but that's totally different from burning a playable version of the movie.
Piracy is going to happen if there's a will no matter how much DRM. Greedy b-stardz!
[QUOTE=The studios (...) are demanding that company limit the number of devices that can use a film once it's purchased and downloaded from iTunes.[/QUOTE]
WFT?!? Did they even look at Apple's DRM?!?
As fas as I know Apple's (music) DRM scheme already takes care of this when buying songs from the iTunes Store. Unless you want to burn your own DVDs in order to re-rip them into some other format (which, by the way, takes ages...) for your friends, their claim is pretty worthless IMHO.
P.S. I'm sure that copy protection also applies to movies bought from iTunes - which all we people outside the US still can't... Grmpf...
The problem is the law is on the studio's side. We should own the damn DVD if we buy it.
Piracy is a product of the studio's bullshit. Let them deal with it. It's amazing how a company can put out a product and completely distrust their customers.
It;s just a matter of time until they are in exactly the same boat as the music industry was- The studios can't stop piracy with penalties and laws- only by making your content attractive to purchase. If no one wants to purchase their content, then improve your fukn product.
Back in the beginning days of music piracy that's all that was really pirated, music. Internet connections were too slow for movies, yet alone for high quality movies. Plus, there weren't any DRM/iTunes solutions back then. The landscape has changed and it's obvious the studios haven't fully grapsed this yet.