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AfterDawn to launch DRM-less movie download service

1 April 2005 0:20 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 30 comments

Cuban AfterDawn Holdings Inc, the sole owner of the Finnish website AfterDawn.com, announced today its plans to launch the world's first legal, fully DRM-less movie download service.

AfterDawn aims to provide unlimited downloads of DVD-quality movies with a monthly subscription fee of $29.95, thus competing directly against the movie industry heavy-weights such as Blockbuster and Hollywood -backed movie download services such as Movielink. However, AfterDawn's service differs from its competitors in several ways -- downloaded files wont contain any usage restrictions and all files are transferred to users utilizing modern P2P technologies.

"As Cuba's Internet connections aren't suitable for delivering DVD-quality movies to thousands of users directly, we've decided to use BitTorrent network as our main method of delivering the movies, thus cutting down the bandwidth costs by up to 90 percent compared to our competitors. This helps us to deliver the savings directly to our customers," said Jari Ketola, AfterDawn's CTO in a phone interview.

According to AfterDawn's CTO, company had to decide which format they would use with their upcoming service. "After considering our options, we felt that it would serve our customers best if we would deliver the movies using the old, but reliable MPEG-2 video encoding instead of more modern solutions, such as MPEG-4. This also eases the process of transferring the movies to the Net, as the movies don't need any re-encoding when they're transferred from DVD-Video discs to DVD images. Users will also benefit from our solution, because the files can be easily burned to blank DVDR discs and watched on a regular DVD player rather than with a desktop computer", says Mr. Ketola.

Several Hollywood studios have already expressed their concerns about the upcoming service, but as the service is based in Cuba, the odds seem to be on AfterDawn Holding's side. Legal experts say that the operation resembles the notorious Movie88's service, but as the service is hosted in a country that doesn't recognize WIPO's worldwide copyright mandates, it is highly likely to succeed.

According to the company's spokesman, James Delahunty, the new service is about to launch by the end of the year and will be available worldwide. Service will feature thousands of Hollywood movies, including all the latest blockbusters, he promises.

Source: Twisted April Fool's joke

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Discuss this article!	There are more user comments available, read them here
Agent_007 (Staff Member) 1 April 2005 1:58
Always good thing to report breaking news on April 1 [ + quote]
domie (Member) 1 April 2005 2:01
Groan , you might have convinced some people this was real if it wasn�t for the reference to Finland and the $ 29.95 price for using bot torrent....far too obvious to be a good april fool�s joke i�m afraid. Better luck next year ;) Looks like you snared one dimwit newbie though lol [ + quote]
ozzy1 (Member) 1 April 2005 2:55
Well you fooled me but i have the maturity of a five year old. It would be great if you guys actually did it. Lol. [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 4:06
hahahaha VERY funny dRD. I took one look and said "Its real" Then I checked the date lol. [ + quote]
The_OGS (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 7:32
Aaarrrgh... Got me! April Fools ;^) [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 1 April 2005 9:44
venomX05 (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 7:48
DAMMIT...YOU GOT ME!!! I was all excited and wrote this long @ss pleasant paragraph about the service. Damn! ;P [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 1 April 2005 9:44
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 1 April 2005 8:04
damn good one dRD. I was really convinced for a second. [ + quote]
pieman (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 9:55
ha ha ha lol!! [ + quote]
Toiletman (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 11:22
LOL you would've had me there. If it wasn't April's Fools today. [ + quote]
#afonic (Member) 1 April 2005 12:44
I would believe it if you didn't say about Cuba though, good try! :-P [ + quote]
squizzle (AfterDawn Addict) 1 April 2005 16:54
I would say that you got me on this one, but I don't want the world to know how gullable I am. Thanks :) It's a good idea though. Why not turn it into reality? [ + quote]
Pop_Smith (Senior Member) 1 April 2005 19:16
world's first legal, fully DRM-less movie download service. Without DRM, almost zero major labels would sign with aD. If we could get labels to sign though, BT would not be a bad way to distribute them lol. To bad this is all an april fools joke. :( [ + quote]
smackfrog (Junior Member) 1 April 2005 21:10
wow.. I was fooled. Although I was wondering about the price. LOL. Nice one. [ + quote]
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 2 April 2005 14:33
yeah I was half-way thru cancelling my netflix account until I noticed the date. [ + quote]
ddp (Moderator) 2 April 2005 17:38
& i was thinking that the us government would have to invade cuba supported by RIAA & mpaa [ + quote]
JMG (Newbie) 2 April 2005 19:19
dam......you had me at hello.... [ + quote]
Excel2005 (Junior Member) 3 April 2005 15:32
I wonder if it will include foriegn films in its library. [ + quote]
ddp (Moderator) 3 April 2005 15:39
Excel2005, it was an april fool's joke! [ + quote]
Excel2005 (Junior Member) 3 April 2005 15:46
You think that I would have noticed that first. I really think that such a service will be concieved in the far future. [ + quote]
ddp (Moderator) 3 April 2005 16:05
teach & learn [ + quote]
jimmyjojo (Junior Member) 3 April 2005 19:57
Is April Fool's a week long celebration in Finland (or where ever the hell this site is run from)??? Christ almighty, take this stupid thread down already. [ + quote]
A_Klingon (Moderator) 3 April 2005 20:42
Sssssssssssssppppptttttt!!!! ....... Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Far out, Man! Hey! I see you have decided to team-up with the good folks over in Fidel Castro-Town! Cool! Do you think the new, Cuban-Owned AfterDawn would be willing to consider drm-free downloadable Habana Cigars? A buddy of mine said he was able to download a few trial sample cigars from a non-related site, but they were DRM-restricted (you only get three puffs before the thing goes out automatically). Many thanks for the update ! [ + quote]
doc57 (Inactive) 4 April 2005 14:41
Ya got me... [ + quote]
DVD1111 (Inactive) 5 April 2005 15:46
Good one! I am a Newbie...when I saw Twisted April Fool's Joke as the source, I knew something was up! [ + quote]
kaxmir (Junior Member) 13 October 2006 11:31
does afterdawn have shareware/freeware movie downloads? I would also like to contribute. [ + quote]
djscoop (AfterDawn Addict) 16 October 2006 16:39
LOL no....it was an april fools joke...read the posts above [ + quote]