Darknet

Apple to begin selling movies on release date

San Jose Mercury News: Apple to begin selling movies on release date. Excerpt:

[On Apple's iTunes], new releases will sell for $14.99, while most catalog offerings are priced at $9.99. The movies can be viewed on video iPods, iPhones and computers, as well as a widescreen TV connected to an Apple TV. People who purchase a movie through iTunes can play it as many times as they like, just like a DVD. ...

We've been waiting for this for years -- a new wrinkle in Hollywood's film release system. Leave it to Apple to nudge the studios into serving the early adopters.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide

NY Times: Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide.

A story that Dan Scheinman, a senior vice president at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., likes to tell illustrates the cultural divide between Hollywood and his Silicon Valley.

Last year he met with an affluent film producer who marveled at the extraordinary riches afforded Google executives. Mr. Scheinman told him that most got wealthy accepting stock options instead of million-dollar salaries. When Mr. Scheinman asked if the producer would ever accept equity instead of cash if they worked together, the moviemaker sniffed.

“I fly a G4,” he told Mr. Scheinman, referring to the Gulfstream jet he owned. “How far do you think my G4 will go on stock options? I need cash.”

Only 350 miles separate the two California business cultures, and executives are once more trying to bridge the gap between technology and entertainment. But media moguls and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working together again has all the familiarity of a late-night rerun.  ...

Downloaded movies can go to DVD soon

Canadian Press: Consumers one step closer to burning digital movies onto DVD.

Expanding the limits of fair use

San Francisco Chronicle: Debate heats up on what's protected by copyright laws. Excerpt:

The new documentary "War Made Easy" isn't just a searing critique of how administrations over the past 40 years have manipulated the media to build support for war. The 72-minute film is a media provocation itself - a challenge to federal copyright laws.

Based on a 2005 book by Bay Area media critic Norman Solomon and narrated by actor Sean Penn, roughly 90 percent of "War Made Easy" consists of archival news footage from major television networks that would cost a ton of money to license - if the filmmakers had paid for all of it; they bought only about 60 percent from distributors.

The filmmakers say they are protected under the "fair use" provision of federal copyright law, a measure that is being tested in ways unimagined when it was codified 30 years ago. ...

Over the past few weeks, CNN, ABC and NBC have announced they will allow footage of the presidential debates that they broadcast to be used on other media platforms under certain conditions. For example, NBC requests that debate footage not be used for commercial purposes, that the network's moderators or journalists not be used in campaign advertising and that its logo be prominently displayed when a clip is used.

But while some of those provisions sound similar to what's in federal copyright law, what is fair use remains the subject of debate.

"The similarities in all this is that we're all feeling our way in the digital era in the area of fair use," said Patrick Ross, executive director of the newly formed Copyright Alliance, a Washington trade group whose supporters include movie studios, television networks and artists interested in preserving copyright protection.

The networks' decisions "are fantastic for anybody who has anything to say about the presidential race," said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at the Center for the Internet and Society at Stanford University. "What you're going to see in this election cycle is an explosion of people expressing themselves in different ways using video. This is going to get more people participating in the process."

After seeing how debate clips turned up on YouTube and blogs - and were mashed up into parodies - "the networks realized that you can either work with people or you can fight them," said Jason Schultz, an attorney specializing in intellectual property law at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. ...

Free content is being pitched as a civic offering, as CNN announced May 7: "The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process."

In recent weeks, other networks - including NBC and ABC - have changed their policies to allow use of footage from the presidential debates. NBC's policy went into effect after last week's AFL-CIO debate in Chicago, which was broadcast on MSNBC.

Getting the networks to release their debate footage is a rare example of bipartisan media organizing; liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin joined forces to pressure the networks.

"We know that people are going to do it. This just legitimizes it," said Mike Krempasky, a conservative who founded RedStateblogs.com.

The shape of cinema, transformed at the click of a mouse

From the Sunday NY Times:

The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (if You’re Patient)

The shape of cinema, transformed at the click of a mouse  

Movie editors racing against clock

Deseret News: Movie editors racing against clock. They use 'educational' loophole to stay open.

Is copyright a threat to creativity?

Brett Gaylor's site, Open Source Cinema, is a website he's been working on to create Basement Tapes, a documentary about music and copyright.  Writes Brett: "I'm trying to get to the bottom of all this copyright craziness that I've been following since the Internet kicked the legs out from underneath  the record industry - lawsuits, crackdowns, mashups and smackdowns. In the face of the hysteria around the downloading of music and illegal sampling, the film asks the question: is copyright a threat  to creativity?"

Software exploited by pirates goes to work for Hollywood

Brad Stone in the NY Times: Software exploited by pirates goes to work for Hollywood.

Hollywood studios are going into business with one of their biggest tormentors: the peer-to-peer pioneer BitTorrent.  

On Monday, the company, whose technology unleashed a wave of illegal file-sharing on the Internet, plans to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on its Web site, BitTorrent.com. The digital media store will offer around 3,000 new and classic movies and thousands more television shows, as well as a thousand PC games and music videos each, all legally available for purchase. ...

Wal-Mart's lame-o online film service

In this week's Newsweek, Steven Levy takes a look at Wal-Mart's lame online distribution service. Key grafs:

... Those technical difficulties are associated with the ridiculous necessity to play back movies with specialized software, because of digital rights management (DRM) requirements. Though the overall experience is much better in time-tested systems like iTunes, onerous copy-protections rules affect all legal movie downloads. Wal-Mart's rules are especially infuriating: you can watch a movie only on the computer you use to download it. (iTunes allows you five.) An alternative is to buy a version that lets you watch it on certain portable devices, but not iPods. But that means the movie won't look good if you play it on your computer. In contrast, a DVD plays on any computer or television in high quality, and friends and family members can borrow it.

Also, online movies do not include any of the bonus content that routinely comes with DVDs. Burning the file to a DVD is OK for backup, but the disk won't play on a computer or television set. ...

In short, even the entrance of Wal-Mart into the marketplace has not changed the fact that you're better off with the old model than the new. Wal-Mart's Kevin Swint lays this directly at the feet of Hollywood. "The studios set the pricing," he says. As for bonus content, "that's the way the studios provide the content." And, of course, it is the studios who set the rules for copy protection.

I wrote about the Hollywood studios' reticence in embracing their digital destiny in Darknet. And while Swint's point is well-taken, it's not the studios that are responsible for this inexcusable behavior on the part of the Wal-Mart service:

Unsupported Browser
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Our website requires the browser Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. It appears that you are using Firefox, Safari, or another browser that Wal-Mart Video Downloads doesn't currently support. Click here to get Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft.

The current Newsweek also has an observant essay on "Why TV is better than the movies" (if it's online, I can't find it). In passing, the piece spells out why Hollywood is not moving faster to offer digital delivery of its entertainment products:

Hollywood wants to be consumer friendly, but not too friendly, because that arm's length exclusivity is the essence of glamour. And without glamour, what is Hollywood? Yup -- television.

A search engine for Oscar nominees

OscarTorrents: an audacious new site from The Pirate Bay: a search-engine for torrents of this year's Oscar nominees.