Hollywood movie studios are tentatively taking a first step towards the digital future by moving forward with the idea of making some of their older releases available to download, very wise
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/technology/04studio.html?ex=1278129600&en=8b37a099a9bfd855&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssThe movie industry has in years past made half-hearted attempts to let people rent a small number of movies online, but the rapidly growing use of Internet video, both legal and pirated, is prompting it to create more robust download options and to consider online business models it dismissed as recently as a year ago.
Sony, for example, is converting 500 movie titles to a digital format that can be downloaded and sold. Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal, which is 80 percent owned by General Electric and 20 percent owned by Vivendi Universal, is preparing nearly 200 titles for digital online sale. And Warner Brothers, a division of Time Warner, says it has already digitized most of its library of 5,000 films and will start selling some of them online later this year.
Why this sort of idea has taken this long to bear fruit is beyond me but I applaud the sensible idea of being able to purchase the content legally and look forward to being able to obtain many old and rare movies via this route in the future, it is after all what we have been asking for from day one.
I hope they will see now that there is a market for there goods and cease to attack the p2p networks and their users, who after all only wish to chat and trade their own files in peace.
