NBC President says 'many more NBC TV shows' coming 2 iTunes in couple weeks

"Over the next couple of weeks, in fact, we will have many more announcements about many more shows there. We see it as a brand-new business, and it will be run like any television network, with new material refreshed and replenished all the time. I don't think there's a limit as to how many shows we can have available."

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The assumption that people will be watching the shows on smaller screens, is not very valid. Considering that a video ipod and play on a TV, all LCD televisions can have a computer hook directly up to them as if they are a monitor, and almost all computers today come with hook ups for TV, I think you might be surprised about how many downloads are actually played on the living room television.

Giving Thanks Online

Being Thanks Giving morning I would like to take a moment to give thanks online to some of the online services I could not live with out.

#3 MySpace.com, this is a site I love and I hate. I love keeping all of my friends together in one place, finding news friends, networking and everything else I can do there. I hate “An unexpected error has occurred” and it happens a little too often for me to over look it.

#2 Digg.com, I have never felt more connected to what is going on in the world as I do since I found digg.com. Every day I can see what the online community finds the most important news of the day.

#1 Google.com, I am sorry but I have to call google.com my number one online site. I would be lost with out it, and would never have found all of the sites I frequent had it not been for their search engine.

So, what in the online world are you thankful for?

No, I am not in favor of piracy

I feel like I should take a moment to clarify my position on piracy of movies and intellectual property rights. I do not condone the theft of intellectual property through piracy. My criticism of the entertainment industry and recently of the MPAA stems not from their desire to protect the property of their members. My criticism is of their approach. Instead of being solutions driven they are using the business equivalent of violence, by attacking individuals who have downloaded movies.

I truly believe that the majority of people downloading illegal copies of movies are not doing it because they do not want to pay or that they want to steal. I think that they want something that is not available to them through any legitimate means. I believe that the majority of people downloading movies just want to be able to download newly released, movies on demand and would be more than happy to have an Itunes or Rhapsody model to do it. If such a system was available only those with a desire to steal the movies would be downloading illegally.

Movie Link: I just want to be clear incase any MPAA people actually read this and say to them selves, “We did that it is called Movie Link.”. Movie Link is not the above mentioned solution. Movie Link costs more that the video store and only has old movies, so to say it plainly Movie Link is too expensive and out of date to be a viable solution.

Ok, I am done talking about the MPAA, I am going to go digg something else to talk about.

MPAA coming for you....

I really wonder how much one of these law suits costs. If they were to take the money form one of these and invest it in a good online, distrobution system, how much money woudl they save in law suits?

There will always be piracy and companies that produce intellectual property should take measures to protect their intellectual property. That being said I don’t think that the MPAA has taken a moment to wonder why so many people are downloading, movies produced by the studios they represent. Most people in the world do not want to work to get their movies, nor do they want to wait for them or get random quality from what they do get. But when people do not have the option of fast, high quality, easy to access license managed solutions they turn to what is available, in this case pirated movies.

Hey MPAA, give users access to new releases, for $1.00 per 24 hour viewing period, that download fast enough to start watching the movie instantly and you will more than recapture what you are loosing to movie piracy.

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Hollywood, BitTorrent Reach Agreement. (MPAA could you define agreement for me?)

So yesterday morning I read about an announcement that would be coming later in the day in a press release about an agreement between Bram Cohen ( of BitTorrent) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association). I was immediately filled with the hope, (I can never hold my optimism back), that the movie industry was finally realizing what the music industry had figured out over a year ago. That being that people want to be able to on demand access, download and watch/listen to all media for a reasonable price. I was looking forward to a statement such as “Bram will remove links to pirated movies from the BitTorrent search engine and in return the MPAA has selected Bram to lead the development of licensed distribution of movies over the internet”. I was practically giddy.

Then came the announcement. Which was only half what I hoped for and really the half I really did not care about. The announcement was (translated through my bull shit filter, to get the truth) “We have made Bram remove links to pirated movies on his search engine and in return we are going to dangle this carrot in front of him until he figures out he will never get it.”

Of course my optimism cannot really be held out of this conversion. I do think that it is possible for the industry to do right by us. The MPAA as an organization that represents many other organizations may actually just need time to approve plans with all of its member studios. It may actually be that in the near future we will be learning about the new plans to improve movie link with BitTorrent technology

Movie Link will not become useful in any way just by adding BitTorrent. The hope, or at least my hope, is that it will decrease their costs to a point that they can provide a service with value. Just looking at the front page of movie link I can see that I can rent “Rock School” for $4.99, that’s not cheaper than Block Buster, and it is not even a new release. Then we look at RedBox, I can drive 3 blocks to the nearest Mc Donald’s and rent “War of the Worlds” for $1.00. So for about the same investment in time I can have a new release for $1.00. And finally I would like to mention Stars Online from Real Media. Here I pay a low monthly fee, get a better selection of movies that Movie Link and I can play them immediately, the releases are not quite as fresh as RedBox but far fresher than Movie Link.

Ultimately the Movie industry and the MPAA seem to be looking into how the online world affects their business but, I don’t believe that any one in the industry realizes how far behind they are. I hope what ever the industry is offering Bram that he will be able to lead them to an offering that we as consumers actually want.