Look out! Forrester tells studios
p2pnet.net News:- The profile of movie downloaders is similar to that of the early music downloaders, “so it’s time to ring the alarm bells," says a research firm.
Therefore, more product packed with DRM is the way to go, says Forrester.
"Studios must accelerate a broader offering of digital rights management-protected movies for download to keep illegal movie downloading from spreading to the mainstream," it states, quoted by Vnunet.com.
Forrester says movie downloading is "still in its infancy,” but, “of the five per cent of the online population who have downloaded a movie, more than one in three has downloaded three or more movies in the past three months,” says the story, going on to say a Forrester thinks the film industry should, “respond to this new enthusiasm by targeting the P2P networks and providing consumers with legal alternatives”.
It must be reassuring for the studios to know Forrester is so au courant ; )
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See:-
alarm bells - Film studios warned over P2P threat, Vnunet.com, February 9, 2005





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February 9th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
Bit torrent accounts for 30% of the internet according to studies, and it dwarfs other p2p activity.
By far the greatest share of bit torrent consists of video data (e.g. MOVIES).
This means that video surpasses audio right now as far as the fraction of filesharing is concerned. In other words.. the analysis is old, and video sharing is already in the “main stream”.
Might I also point out another thing:
WMV sucks as a codec. Even when it’s free, the vast majority of traders will choose not to download a movie at all rather than accept wmv.
Quicktime, the only real rival here, offers streaming drm based on obscure and unique transfer protocols, but has not fixed file DRM. Combined with 3ivx, and offered the proper flexibility and quality, i might buy, but the acceptable price would be too low to support the massive bandwidth requirements to sell them.
February 9th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
Yup, Forrester sure is on top of things…
I love it when some baby-boomer tech-illiterate journalist/analyst (and there are a lot of ignorant tech analysts out there, just look at the SCO fiasco) hops on the bandwagon and spouts some BS that’s so off-base that it’s laughable…however it (written word) is accepted by that person’s peers, who are also tech-illiterate punters and the myth is perpetuated.
TT
February 9th, 2005 at 8:37 pm
Any movie studio exec that has not been living under a rock for the last few years is fully aware of the movie downloading that is occurring. Whoever this Forrester analyst rube is, I will give him some credit for suggesting that the studios make an attempt to give their customers what they want (short of free movies) instead of just turning into thugs, suing everybody in sight, and bribing lawmakers to get draconian laws passed to “protect” an outdated distribution model.