Sunday, May 20, 2007
The New AllofMP3: MyVideoLib Offers DRM-Free Movies for $5
DRM-free music has made major inroads recently with Apple and Amazon announcing changes in how they will sell music online. Of course, this sort of consumer-friendly retailing strategy follows squarely in the footsteps of embattled Russian music retailer AllofMP3.
A similarly Russian-based e-tailer called MyVideoLib (www.myvideolib.com) extends the DRM-free theme into movies, offering them each at $5 a pop. Presumably they are taking advantage of the same lax copyright laws as AllofMP3. Hundreds of movies like Sin City, The Passion of the Christ, and Kill Bill are available as DVD-quality downloads on the site.
But that's not all they've copied. If you look closely at the movie descriptions, you'll see that they were scraped en-masse from IMDB.
The truly sinister thing is that you have to fill up your account using a credit card in set amounts: $19.95, $29.95, and $49.95. Since each download costs exactly $4.99, you'll always be leaving money on the table (or rather in the hands of IN Media, which runs the site). True, it's only pennies, but with enough users, those pennies start to add up to real money.
Who is the MPAA going to go after? Here's a screenshot of the Whois record:
[via]
Labels: Technology
