Hollywood May Let You Copy Movies, Sort Of

The New York Times Bits blog reports on how soon, consumers will be able download movies and write them to DVDs - but not easily.

“It has been a long painful process convincing getting the studios to accept that their content can be recorded on DVDs, using CSS, the same format they use now,” said Jim Taylor a senior vice president of Sonic Solutions, the maker of DVD writing software that has been pushing for the changes.

... As with every intersection between technology and Hollywood, there are more than a few catches. First of all, movies will have to be burned onto special DVDs, which will likely cost more than regular writable DVDs. That is because the disks will be preprinted with codes meant to prevent copying. And there is a royalty payment on the disks that will go to a group, led by Sonic, that helped develop the technology.

Moreover, you can’t use it to back up your existing DVDs. Nor can you use watch the downloaded version on your computer or on your portable video player.

So, like other forms of legal online movie distribution, it’s a safe bet that downloading to DVDs will take off slowly. Still every last bit of legal craziness that can be removed will make it easier for people to design the sort of services that people might eventually want to use."

emily | 1:42 PM | Full Length Movies Online |
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