Monday, March 13, 2006

 

How to make P2P legal.

Easy.

Netflixs, Blockbuster and Amazon (in the uk) are all making a nice profit shipping rental DVDs in the post. Heck, they are even covering the return postage!

This is legal, the industry approves, actors are paid, Hollywood smiles, big money no whammies. Everyone is happy.

Apart from me, because the shipping takes at least 24 hours and then there is the scam that involves them not actually shipping you the dvds you want when you want them.

I can download a movie in a couple of hours.

So ... I download it. But, I also log into Netflixs/Blockbuster/Amazon and add the movie to my list.

When the DVD arrives in the post, I keep it for a day or two, then ship it back, unwatched.

I don't keep the movie I downloaded - I delete it once I've watched it. I am, after all, only renting.

The model must work : for $10 a month they can afford to ship me DVDs in the post, pay hollywood AND make a profit.

So how much would they save if they used a BitTorrent network and had virtually no inventory to manage, no warehouse to light, no monkies to pay to package the disks and no shipping costs, no lost or scratched disks and didn't even have to pay for the bandwidth?

And forget DRM. If you offered me the ability to pay $10 a month to LEGALLY watch whatever I could find on bittorrent, I'd pay up right now.

 

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