Warner Bros. To Offer Content Online via Guba By SARAH MCBRIDE Wall Street Journal
June 27, 2006; Page B2 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115136867088291353.html?mod=home_whats_news_us Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. has made a deal to distribute movies and TV shows online via Guba LLC's search engine and video-sharing community, Guba.com, in one of the first moves by a major studio to embrace user-generated content. Until yesterday, Guba displayed videos submitted mostly by amateurs, along with some professionally created material such as music videos posted illegally on the site. Now, the site will sell movies such as "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" along with TV shows such as "Babylon 5." Studios and record labels have been struggling with how to embrace Internet distribution while fighting online piracy. While the technology lures studios with the promise of an expanded market, it also allows online pilfering of movies, TV shows and other copyrighted content. "The mistake of the [movie] industry has been to worry too much about piracy and not enough about providing easy, simple ways to find content legally online," says Thomas McInerney, chief executive officer and founder of Guba. He believes putting the titles in front of the 503,000 unique monthly visitors to Guba should drive sales and rentals. The number of visitors is far behind sites like MSN Video, with more than 16 million unique visitors, or YouTube.com, with more than 13 million, according to research firm comScore Networks Inc. Mr. McInerney believes even those who have illegally downloaded movies and shows in the past would be willing to pay for them on Guba. Many users already are used to paying Guba for certain search subscriptions. New movies will cost $19.99 on Guba, and older titles will cost $9.99. New titles can be rented for $2.99. Movies will be available to buy the same day they come out on DVD, while rentals will be available a few weeks later. Alongside the legal Warner titles, Guba users can find unapproved material, such as videos from Beyoncé and Madonna. Guba says it has a technology that searches for copyrighted material and removes it. The system is constantly updated to catch copyrighted content. "Nothing is ever perfect," said Darcy Antonellis, executive vice president for digital technology and operations at Warner Bros. "But they are applying all the right resources and technology" to fight piracy. Last month, Warner cut a deal with BitTorrent Inc. to sell and rent movies using that company's peer-to-peer technology. At the start of the year, Warner Bros., Bertelsmann AG and its subsidiary Arvato announced a service for the German market that relies on peer-to-peer technology called In2Movies. In the U.S., Warner launched In2TV, an advertising-supported service that allows viewers to watch classic TV shows free online. All the major studios sell movies through specialist online sites Movielink LLC and CinemaNow Inc. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
