The MacWorld Expo is the time when Steve Jobs and company traditionally roll out killer apps and whatever else every geek you know will want for Christmas next year. This time around, one announcement is that the iTunes online store will be rolling out a digital 'rental' service for movies, allowing those who pay a fee -- reportedly a staggering four bucks a day -- to download streaming video of movies by a number of major studios direct to their computers. Determined to fill the gap left by WalMart's largely unsuccessful attempt to do the same, Netflix, the revolutionary mail-order movie rental company, is likewise rolling out their Netflix Unlimited plan, allowing higher-tier subscribers (with PCs; the iTunes plan is platform-neutral) to 'rent' movies via download as often as they like.
In a way, it's a typically hardheaded and pointless duel of technologies: Apple's plan is ridiculously overpriced, even for their snob-factor demographic (a fact likely attributable to hardheaded licensing restrictions by the studios). Netflix's plan is platform-limited and, despite their 'unlimited' hype, not available to all subscribers. While the video quality is still a bit mysterious (though, as with all online content, likely less clear than even an old VHS tape on a low-definition television monitor), it's likely to be a slow, time-consuming process — even users with high-end broadband internet access might spend upwards of half an hour downloading the films, and normal users are likely to get the movies in more time than it would take to go see them in a theatre. And the selection of films, again due to licensing restrictions, is likely to be tiny for at least the first few years of the service. Contrast this to Netflix's own DVD service, where you can get almost every movie ever made and, with quick turnaround, see as many as five or six movies a month for five bucks, and in high-quality digital picture on a real television screen. Any neighborhood video store even beats both digital download services in terms of price, selection and quality. For that matter, the iTunes music store will sell you a movie online, that you can keep and watch as often as you like, for not much more than it costs to rent under the new plan. It's just technology for technology's sake, an overpriced gimmick that does less than a lower-tech service for more money and worse quality.
But, as New York magazine's Vulture blog points out, it also serves to illustrate why the industry's product control paranoia and digitial rights management restrictions have made online piracy so appealing. Almost any movie — including current theatrical releases — can be found on the various torrent sites with ease; they download as fast or faster than any legitimate retail site; the quality is generally good, and the format easily translated to any major operating system platform; and the cost is zero. Of course, that's because they're stolen; but Apple and Netflix both have access to the same technology that pirates and file-sharers do. There's only one reason that you can't order a first-run theatrical movie on your computer, and download it faster, and have it play on any computer at best quality for a fair price, and that's because the studios don't want you to. iTunes has proven again and again that there's a legitimate, legal, paying market for digital downloads of almost any entertainment media you can think of — music, games, television, or movies — and the industry has proven again and again that if they can't completely control every aspect of the sale of their product (a condition largely unknown in every other kind of retailing), they'll refuse to allow it at all. By putting absurd restrictions on their digital rights, scorning any new technologies they don't control, overpricing their product, and constantly staying two steps behind consumer demands, the studios, for all their highfalutin talk, are inviting piracy. Something to think about next time you're in a theater and a PSA begs you not to download movies.