Petteri Pyyny
3 Apr 2003 11:05
20th Century Fox, the last major movie studio that has stayed out of the online movie distribution business ever since its joint venture with Disney collapsed in last year, has signed a licensing agreement with CinemaNow.
CinemaNow competes against Movielink, a company owned by virtually all other major movie studios except Fox and Disney. Both services offer downloadabale versions of movies under pay-per-view model for broadband users. Studios have been cautious of entering into the business big time, fearing that the existing copy protection mechanisms available for such distribution, will be cracked and that would allow pirated copies to be made from movies distributed via online channels. CinemaNow has previous licensing agreements for movie catalogs from three other major movie studios -- MGM, French Vivendi's Universal Pictures and AOL TimeWarner's Warner Bros.
Probably two things have changed studios' way of thinking -- first of all, the DRM systems have improved a lot during the last year or so. And secondly, the movies they're so much protecting, are already available via P2P networks for free. 20th Century Fox is a unit of Australian News Corp..
Source: Reuters