I’ve been saying it for YEARS. You can not fight internet downloading. It doesn’t matter if you’re the music industry or the movie industry. The internet has changed everything. 3 years before there was iTunes, I was telling the music industry that instead of trying to fight the internet… it should learn to profit from it… and for 3 more years it tried (in vain) to fight it. Then someone wised up and legal music downloading was born. According to most sources now legal music downloads have surpassed illegal music downloads. *cough* I told you so *cough* *cough*.
Now it seems that the brain trust that is Hollywood is finally wiseing up. They should have been doing this about 3 years ago… but they (like the music industry) thought they were bigger and more powerful than the internet and it’s users and they could beat movie downloading into submission. They were wrong and just made themselves look like idiots in the process. I guess getting the stuffing beaten out of you can make you change your tune. The good folks over at M&C are reporting the following:
The U.S. movie industry is gearing up for the latest technological advance in distribution, downloading from the Internet.
The New York Times reports several companies have been working for the past few months to get movies into a digital format suitable for download. Sony plans to put 500 titles on line, Universal is working on 200 and Warner Bros. told the Times it has most of its 5,000-film library in digital format and plans to start online sales before the end of the year.
Better late than never. This (in the long run) will make Hollywood LOADS of money. They just better realize that they need to keep it cheap or else piracy will continue at a huge rate. Keep it cheap and easy, and people won’t mind paying for higher quality and legal downloads. I’m one of them. Your thoughts?
