James Delahunty
3 Apr 2005 19:39
Sony wants to create its own sort of "iTunes for Films" by making the most popular 500 Sony movies available for download within the next year. Sony has an impressive movie catalogue of about 2,500 titles including classics like Lawrence of Arabia. Sony is going to use this massive resource to test Internet movie downloaders.
"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like Jobs did for music, but for the film industry," said Michael Arrieta, the senior vice-president of Sony Pictures. Sony also plans to make the films viewable on mobile phones. The movie industry has been slow to provide ways for people to legally download movies on the Internet but the major movie studios are already suing people who are using P2P as their means to download and share movies online. The recording industry is also suing file sharers it alleges to have downloaded and shared copyrighted music illegally but claims there are several different legitimate sites those users (and anybody) can purchase music from legally.
Microsoft warned film makers that they have to adapt to this new demand or else they will face the same experience that the recording industry did over the last few years. Now also with the growth of broadband Internet connections worldwide and a vast selection of P2P based software and networks, movie piracy is growing at a huge rate, in most cases allowing movies to be downloaded in a matter of a few hours. The movie industry is afraid this type of file sharing will damage its $17.5bn annual DVD sales. Sony will go ahead and open their download store for movies, and we will more than likely see many more legal download stores open up shortly afterwards, just like with legal music download stores.
Source:
Independent