The studio executives would rather not be the next to be
Napstered. The problem is that while these people are reasonably bright
about how to make and sell movies, they don't know squat about the Internet
or personal technology. And so they've come up with something called
MovieLink--an attempt by five major studios to create an Internet- based
service that lets users rent and download movies to a PC.
I came to MovieLink with thoughts of video-on-demand, one of the long-
dreamed-about killer apps for the broadband Internet. The idea behind
video-on-demand is that you can sit cuddled up with your remote control in
your living room and watch anything you want whenever you want. Feel like
seeing Braveheart? Simply punch in a request on your advanced TV, confirm
the price, then prepare the popcorn. A digitized version of the movie
stored on a server somewhere will pipe the flick to your house and your
house only.
Great vision, huh? . . .
. . .
. . . . Video-on-demand? Hardly. In the same time we could have made 20
roundtrips to our neighborhood Blockbuster. Then there's the fact that
MovieLink requires you to watch the movie within 24 hours of starting to
play it or have it expire. Blockbuster lets you keep a movie for three to
four days. Both, however, feature equally unfriendly help. . . .
It's clear that the studios' motivation in designing MovieLink is fear of
piracy. But they forgot to make the service usable, appealing, or
compelling. So MovieLink will fail, people will argue that you can't sell
digital content on the Internet--and the studios will have proved
nothing.
