(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick




Harry Potter Offered For Download

from the in-as-painful-a-way-as-possible dept

Just like with music, it seems the movie industry is working hard to offer you "downloadable" entertainment under the worst possible set of restrictions. Warner Brothers has announced that they're making the Harry Potter movie downloadable online. However, it costs $4 to download (about the same as it would cost to rent the DVD at Blockbuster), is a 700 meg download with copy protection, and will only work for 24 hours. Knowing the flakiness of most people's internet connections, it's going to take most people half a day to download the damn thing anyway. All that, just to watch it on your tiny computer monitor before your time runs out? I'd rather run down to the local video store and rent it.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Sep 10th, 2002 @ 8:33am
  • It's just a game...

    on the part of the big dogs to drive legislation their way. A weird sort of lobbying effort, if you will.
    By putting out these lame schemes, they can say to congress "See, we tried to offer download service, but nobody used it. those nasty pirates still went around us an gave it to people for free."
    Never mind the fact that nobody will use it because it's too restrictive or otherwise doomed to failure. Never mind the fact that pirated versions were no easier to get WITH their scheme in place than without.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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