p2pnet - rss feed: Wal-Mart film download kiosks?
p2p news / p2pnet: Wal-Mart is debating whether or not to install download film kiosks in its stores from so people could burn movies to disc.
"The move aims to alleviate the shortage of space on Wal-Mart’s shelves, which has been identified by Wall Street analysts and film executives as a cause for the slowdown in DVD sales," says the Financial Times. "At the same time, it would benefit the studios by lowering their shipping costs and the expense of dealing with returned inventory."
The studio and movie cartels could, of course, kill a whole flock of birds with very few stones if they looked to p2p as a saviour and not a mortal enemy. In the process, they’d also win back some of the literally millions of customers they’ve alienated by trying to sue them into buying ‘product’.
Instead, "We’re exploring all different types of distribution mechanisms to the customer," Wal-Mart VP David Porter is quoted as saying. "There have been discussions with most of the studios."
The studios, including Warner Brothers, which holds a leading share of the home video business, are also looking at other retailers, such as Target and Best Buy in the US, and the UK’s Tesc, says the FT.
Nothing was imminent but, "the discussions reflect the entertainment industry’s new focus on using digital technology to make their products available to consumers on a variety of platforms, from mobile phones and MP3 players to video-on-demand services offered by cable and satellite TV operators," it states, also mentioning the arrival of Warner’s In2TV.
See:-
Financial Times - Wal-Mart mulls DVD download booths, November 14, 2005
In2TV - AOL, Warner In2TV team-up, November 14, 2005
November 14th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
I know that Walmart’s CD sampler and their price checking stations use a free operating system called “Linux” to provide these services. If this is also the case with the download kiosks, an enterprising Wal-Mart low wage employee might consider plugging in a wireless router in order to provide downloaders in the parking lot service. Talking about Walmart always having the lowest prices, this (wireless router) would actually make the advertisement true
I have no repect for Wal-Mart. They destroyed the small businesses in the town where I used to live and ruined the town’s atmosphere. Wal-Mart patronizes countries that engage in the practice of slave labor and contribute to the ever larger U.S. trade deficit. Wal-Mart is more of a threat to our freedom than most terrorists. Even this so called service would no get me to patronize their stores.
November 14th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
How about proofreading the articles posted here before posting them? Der…
November 15th, 2005 at 8:42 am
Create a hard drive clust of several terabytes, that way you can hold several hundred movies — and it’ll be faster than downloading each time (not to mention the redundancy of downloading for each person).
This sounds like it might work… Interesting idea, but it probably fail in its first trial, but the next trial will work better.
November 15th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
The idea is good but……..
1. The kiosks should include music.
2. The suppliers of content should not be just the monopolies. Small producers and independent musicians should get space too.
3. The system should be used any stores and web sites that wants to participate and qualify, not just Wall-Mart.
4. Royalty collection for artists should be incorporated by the system, so that royalty payments are made to artists directly.
5. Public domain works should be offered at lower costs. A quota is needed.
A negative aspect of a propietary Wal-Mart system is that we may wind up with hundreds of propietary and incompatible systems and that will be bad for delivering the value to the customers.
Also if the system is not regulated by the people, what will be offered will be limited by tha profit motive. Since public domain works will be less profitable, they will not be sold. That is bad for the people and for culture.
It is time that the people and the governments of the people start recognizing that society and not merchants or industries make decisions so that the best value is made available to the people.
At present by allowing merchants and industries to decide what the people are offred and all that people are getting offered are products that people do not need, too costly, or hard to maintain and repai. I live in a small island (Puerto Rico) and if you are going to buy a new car you must chose from over 200 models, all made of non interchangeable parts, so that when repair times comes around (very soon) the replacement parts are extremely high or not found at all. all of which leads to the junking of cars very soon and the enslavement of the people into new financing, never ending cycles and the destruction of the environment.
Music products are also consumer products. The governmet must step in so that the people get value. I do not suggest that government get into manufacturing or distribution. That is best let in private hand, but the people, throught the people’s government must make decisions so that private enterprise delivers value to the people.
Just like banks, pharmacies, hospitals, private schools, etc. are regulated and limited as to how they operate and what services they can sell and which services thay cannot sell, so should the music/video industries. The people need to regulate the businees so the business delivers value, value being what the people really want (not pushed at them through payola) at a reasonable cost.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
November 15th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Wal-Mart and the likes will not do what you suggested. Big businesses exists not only to make a fair profit, but also huge windfalls (usually at other peoples’ expense). The only way that they can make such a huge windfall is by sucking as much money from peoples’ wallets as they possibly can. What “Republicans” call capitalism is the suppression of competition and allowing only those with the right connections to prosper. This type of “capitalism” keeps the little guy (who may actually provide much better product) while enriching members of the elite. I like the idea of kiosks, but I want to see theses kiosks in many locations and not just at “Wally World.”
That is why I have been pushing for FreeWan. A FreeWan main server acts in ways much like this Kiosk. A good FreeWan main server could be set up like a vending machine in which customers can select which titles that want to purchase. Samples can also be provided if the artist so chooses. A FreeWan Cell could be set up so that thousands of (freely licenced) songs and videos can be stored on a group of hard drives. These songs and videos can be made available for free download. Super high speed downoads will allow laptop and pda users to sample different products in order to allow them to choose which commercial products they would like to support. These kiosks would work best id thy were place in local eigborhoods as well as at “Wally-World.” This would be true free enterprize.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
if your going to call someone out on something give them examples of what they did wrong so they can improve on it instead of just saying basically Good job, dumbass and offering no examples of how they screwed up to help them out so they wont do it again