Right off the bat, let me own up to writing a sensationalised headline for the sake of making it sound snappy. What I'm actually going to be writing (ranting) about today is UltraViolet. Not the atrocious Milla Jovovitch movie of 2006, or the comic books on which it was based, but the cloud-based licensing system that all the cool kids (movie studios) seem to be using these days to allow disc-free access to their content, be it in the form of downloads or online streaming. In theory it sounds like a great idea, and something I'd like to see more of - making content more easily available and playable on a range of devices, allowing consumers to enjoy the content they've bought (or bought access to, if we're being pedantic) as and when they wish.
In practice, however, I've spent the last hour setting up three separate accounts (UltraViolet, Sony Pictures and Flixster), installing three separate applications on my computer (the Sony Pictures download manager and two versions of Microsoft Silverlight, because the first one Sony linked me to was out of date), and for the last 45 minutes I've had a download of The Amazing Spiderman running which as I type is not even halfway complete. Currently the Sony Pictures account is refusing to accept the password I just set it up with, and the "forgot password" link isn't working either. The site advises me to contact customer support, but they've all gone home for the day.
Okay, so this is really more of a rant about Sony than about UltraViolet, but it's still a hell of a hassle when you consider I could just torrent copies of the movies (which, I remind you, I have already paid for), and they would download faster and play on a wider range of devices. Oh, and I could back them up as many times as I liked without encountering DRM problems. This is the problem with the current legal offerings in the download market - they still expect their audience to pay exorbitant prices for content while forcing us to install all kinds of crap and endure all kinds of hassle if we wish to access it in anything other than a 20th-century fashion (i.e. by putting a disc in a player and watching the film the old-fashioned way). The film industry is a collection of businesses whose business model has evolved very little in the last 50 years and is still incredibly resistant to change. In an era when technology is evolving faster than ever, is it any wonder these companies are losing so much money (still nowhere near what they claim, but undoubtedly some) to piracy? No, it really isn't.
So, to the film studios I make this plea. For heaven's sake make downloading as easy, quick and hassle-free as the illegal alternatives. I don't mind having to pay for the films I watch - I realise they cost a lot of money to make and that that money has to come from somewhere, and I really don't mind being the source of some of that funding if the payoff is I get to keep watching great movies. What I'm not cool with though is paying to be inconvenienced by your ridiculously backward systems. I know all this bullshit exists for the purpose of making piracy as unattractive as possible, but you're accomplishing the exact reverse.
YAAAARRRRR!
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