We Know Hollywood Is This Dumb. Et Tu, Netflix?

Back in August, we wrote about the Hollywood movie studios conspiring to keep new release DVDs away from services like Netflix and Redbox for as many as 30 days after their release. The idea behind this from Hollywood’s perspective is simple: If people can’t rent movies right away, they’ll buy more. Sorry, did I say the idea was “simple”? I meant, “idiotic”.

At the time, it was reported that Blockbuster, the former video giant that is aging anything but gracefully, was also backing this 30-day window idea (where it might see a 30-day rental exclusive on some titles). With the company bleeding money, it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re aligning themselves with the studios. But more recently, there has been some very disheartening news: Netflix seems to be willing to back this idea too. Yes, the poster child for much of what is right about the consumer movie business these days may be on the verge of making a deal with the devil.

Let’s be clear about what this means: If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you will no longer be able to rent new movies until 30 days after they’ve been released on DVD.

The show business trade publication Video Business reported last week that Netflix would be willing to accept this 30-day model for huge discounts on the movies after that period — perhaps as much as 50%. As a business decision, this would seem to make sense since 70% of Netflix’s main business is catalog (older) release rentals. As a long-term strategy, this is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Here’s what this will do: It may drive sales of DVDs a bit short term. But soon, online movie piracy will pick up to new heights. If the movie studios have nightmares about piracy now, their reality will be truly terrifying with this plan in place.

There are two major factors that stop movie piracy from being as bad as music piracy was a few years ago: Broadband speeds and convenience. Let’s speak to the latter one first: With services like Netflix, Redbox, iTunes, and the like all offering fairly easy ways to get movies you want, when you want them, it’s less of a headache for most people to use them rather than digging around online to get them for free.

But with this new 30-day window in place, the masses would be driven online to search for more illegal content — and more importantly, it would begin to fuel a piracy ecosystem for Hollywood content. There would be more people downloading, but also more people sharing. That’s the…

Read the rest of the article and commentary on TechCrunch

This is why personally we always preferred the RedBox approach, if Hollywood or the music industry ever get their hands on something good, be sure that they will screw it up with their out dated way of thinking.

We just hope this translates into bigger sales and adaption of the RedBox concept, we also hope that RedBox continues to fight the good fight in the Hollywood arena.

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