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posted by janrinok on Friday March 28 2014, @10:35AM   Printer-friendly
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.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Friday March 28 2014, @03:56PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Friday March 28 2014, @03:56PM (#22561)

    The MPAA after all these years has basically FINALLY succeeded in killing the industry dedicated to allowing people to rent any movie they wanted, whenever they wanted. Blockbuster's out of business, and Redbox is a pale shadow.

    The first sale doctrine locked them out of a share of Blockbuster's profits, which they resented for decades. They wanted a cut when I rented a movie to watch some weekend for $2.50, and didn't get it.

    Now, with the landscape finally opened wide up, they have the chance they wanted for so long! They can rent the movies direct to consumers themselves, and eat the whole meal of the rental price.

    So what did they do? They f*cked it up! Completely! They decided that the $2.50 that they so craved for $0.50 of isn't worth it to them anymore. Why sell them milk when you can make them buy the cow? Now you have to purchase for $10 and up if you want it! We'll make 4x as much!

    Except we won't, because now you've basically killed demand, and driven consumers to either very limited subscription streaming services (where once again you're sharing most of the cut with someone else) or to illegal means.

    Gawd, I wouldn't hire these clowns to run a banana stand.

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  • (Score: 1) by arulatas on Friday March 28 2014, @04:44PM

    by arulatas (3600) on Friday March 28 2014, @04:44PM (#22584)

    And as Arrested Development taught us... "There is always money is in the banana stand"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuHILqDIvis [youtube.com]

    --
    ----- 10 turns around
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Friday March 28 2014, @11:59PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Friday March 28 2014, @11:59PM (#22757)

    " Why sell them milk when you can make them buy the cow? Now you have to purchase for $10 and up if you want it! We'll make 4x as much!"

    Not entirely true, because neither the "cow" nor the milk are even for sale in the first place. And don't even get me started on region locking. I live in Latin America, which somehow means that even if I want to pay, I'm not allowed to stream movies because there are several checks in place to prevent me - PREVENT ME - from being a legitimate customer. First my credit card must be a US credit card. And second, my IP of course must originate in North America.

    I really have no idea why they shut themselves out of customers like this. I have a choice of course, since I do have US based credit cards and I do know how to set up a VPN, I can "pretend" to be a worthy N. American. But to be honest it is much, much simpler for me to pirate.

    So yeah, not only do you NOT get to choose the content you'd like because the selection is arbitrarily limited, but also let's lock out the rest of the world and limit ourselves to 300 million customers instead of 7+ billion. Remember, we didn't make our projected 20% increase in revenue - blame piracy!

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday March 29 2014, @01:09AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Saturday March 29 2014, @01:09AM (#22771)

      ...I really have no idea why they shut themselves out of customers like this. I have a choice of course, since I do have US based credit cards and I do know how to set up a VPN, I can "pretend" to be a worthy N. American. But to be honest it is much, much simpler for me to pirate.

      So yeah, not only do you NOT get to choose the content you'd like because the selection is arbitrarily limited, but also let's lock out the rest of the world and limit ourselves to 300 million customers instead of 7+ billion. Remember, we didn't make our projected 20% increase in revenue - blame piracy!

      I think the reason is they are after complete control, not immediate profits. I believe that, ironically for one of the few instances they are thinking long term instead of short term, they have it backwards. They are not only missing out on the short term profits, the long term control (and thus even potential greater profit) will likely always elude them as technology keeps developing that end runs their efforts. Unless they succeed in legally locking down the internet to their ends they will ultimately fail. Hopefully sooner than later.