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from the we-show-the-movies-you-don't-want-to-watch dept.
mendax writes:
A New York Times op-ed reports:
A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you'd want to watch. When you loaded Popcorn Time, you were presented with a menu of recent Hollywood releases: "American Hustle," "Gravity," "The Wolf of Wall Street," "12 Years A Slave," and hundreds of other acclaimed films were all right there, available for instant streaming at the click of a button.
If Popcorn Time sounds too good to be true, that's because it was. The app was illegal - a well-designed, easy-to-use interface for the movie-pirating services that have long ruled the Internet's underbelly. Shortly after the app went public, its creators faced a barrage of legal notices, and they pulled it down. But like Napster in the late 1990s, Popcorn Time offered a glimpse of what seemed like the future, a model for how painless it should be to stream movies and TV shows online. The app also highlighted something we've all felt when settling in for a night with today's popular streaming services, whether Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, or Google or Microsoft's media stores: They just aren't good enough.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nukkel on Friday March 28 2014, @02:02PM
Even more preposterous than the trailers on DVDs is the cartel's "infotainment" trailers telling you it is wrong to "pirate" movies.
I mean, WTF?? I just bought a DVD fair-n-square and I am rewarded for my honest purchase by having to suffer watching through a non-skippable, patronizing clip trying to impress upon me the faulty logic that "piracy" equates to stealing a purse from an old lady or smash a window to break into a car.
Another aspect where the quality of the torrented version exceeds that of the official package ;)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Friday March 28 2014, @02:56PM
Those themselves wouldn't bother me if you could simply press the menu button, but they always have the flag set that instructs the player that it can't skip them.
I bought an album recently (Mr. Bill's IRL - well recommended) that typified just how to approach selling digital content. This artist had released tracks on his Soundcloud for two months or so up to release in full, with a link to his bandcamp stating the release date. After being able to listen to half the album beforehand, I was perfectly happy to throw £10 at it, paying a bit extra than the stated minimum of £7 simply because I felt it was worth it.
I got a wide array of download links including MP3, FLAC, OGG etc. and an email link so I can redownload them whenever I wish. No stipulations, no hassle, and I'm not treated like I'm a criminal.
Instead, the film industry still insists on the adversarial model. The purchaser is treated as a ne'er-do-well who will rip off their precious multi billion dollar industry as soon as look at it. I see DRM schemes as essentially saying "you've bought our content, but we still don't trust you". Very well, then why should I buy your content? Why can't I have the same courtesy from you as I get from a Glitch-hop artist on bandcamp who has a fraction of the resources you do?
The victim card the film industry uses to justify their behaviour is nauseating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 28 2014, @08:08PM
£10
Slashcode still doesn't do Unicode. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by umafuckitt on Friday March 28 2014, @08:44PM
There was a really awesomely dumb trailer on the Showtime DVDs for the penultimate season of Dexter. They force you watch a minute or two of snippets from Showtime shows each time you enter any of the DVDs from the box set. You can't skip it. The real issue, however, is that one of the snippets they show you is a spoiler for what happens at the end of the season. So if you watch the trailer you've lost the surprise. Big backlash about this on Amazon comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Friday March 28 2014, @03:08PM
VLC.
Not the slickest video player by a long shot, but I can't remember the last time I watched any sort of trailer on a DVD - pop it in, up comes the navigation menu.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday March 28 2014, @03:27PM
i'm still waiting for somebody to release a 3d printer file for a vehicle, because yes, MPAA, i sure as hell would download a car if it were possible. ideally the print-a-vehicle file will be included with every movie and album torrent on tpb.
(Score: 1) by useless on Friday March 28 2014, @06:22PM
Here you go:7 13.html [tf3dm.com]
http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/lamborghini-reventon-17