The Motion Picture Association of America has tried any number of tactics to fight piracy, but its latest scheme might actually prove useful to movie consumers on the Internet. The group is supposedly working on a new website that will offer information on how to find legit sources of movies so that users won’t have to resort to copyright infringement.
The site, which does not yet have a name, would allow users to search for film titles, and in return it would provide links to places to buy movie tickets, to locations where searchers could buy or rent a DVD, or to sites where they can buy or rent a download from an online source. All of the major movie studios are behind the initiative, an anonymous movie studio source told Variety, and all legit “partners” would be linked on the site.
I’ve long argued that if the movie and music industry spent half as much energy into competing with the “pirates” as they do trying to criminalize their customers they’d be much further ahead. If only rights holders would make their content digitally available, findable, in a reasonable/usable format (this almost always means DRM-free) at a price that’s affordable, and not just available in the US we’d all be better off.
Business idea #63. Go build a for-profit version of this service for the music that lets user discover and price shop DRM-free sources of music for any band wherever they live. Hypemachine sort of acheives this. But not really.