Legal and DRM-free Movie Torrents from Sweden
Written by Ernesto on April 04, 2008For most people, Sweden and BitTorrent equals The Pirate Bay. There is more though, Headweb, a new online movie store now offers over 500 authorized and DRM-free movies, which can be downloaded via BitTorrent. True to the BitTorrent philosophy, sharing is rewarded.
At the moment Swedish customers will have to use the official Headweb download manager in order to download files, but support for regular BitTorrent clients might be added later.
The downloaded movies can be played with any media player, and are free of DRM. On top of that, the download manager comes with a built in DVD-burner so you can burn the movies onto a disk and play them with any standalone DVD-player.
One of the interesting things about the service is that it rewards people who share their purchases. That is, people get credits for sharing the downloaded files with other Headweb users.
Peter Alvarsson of Headweb told TorrentFreak: “We believe it’s fair to pay for our users’ time and resources and we give credits back to those that upload to other users. The ratio is 1 credit per 10mb which makes it possible to get a free movie after some 50 GB upload.
“We’ve seen that some users are really good at predicting “hot” movies and earn a lot of credits by keeping their clients running after the download has finished,” Peter added. A win-win situation really, the sharing mechanism saves Headweb bandwidth and server resources, and the users get free downloads.
All movies offered by Headweb are DRM-free, which is great, and quite unique for a movie download service. Not surprisingly, they had a hard time convincing the movie studios to offer their content without access restrictions.
“It has taken us nearly 2 years to convince movie studios that DRM-free downloads are the future,” says Peter “We’re not there yet with everyone but we are getting closer. More studios now start to realize that DRM isn’t consumer friendly and that it has to go.”
Several surveys have shown that a lot of people are willing to pay to download movies as long a there is enough content available, and if the files are high quality and thus DRM-free.
Headweb’s users seem to confirm these findings. “We’ve received lot of feedback from people telling us that they would switch to support legal services completely, if only the services had the same selection,” Peter told TorrentFreak.
In the near future, Headweb will be working on more new features, groundbreaking innovations and more content. em toThey are confident that this will enable them to compete with The Pirate Bay.
Previously: ISP Will Protect File-Sharers From Music Industry Disconnection Threat
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59 Responses
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interesting…
actually, this is something I definately would pay for.
50Gig upload for one movie seems a bit steep, but this will probably fall as more people use the system. Great news about DRM-Free, High Quality video for download. Haven’t looked at the price’s for the movies. What’s the average?
Also, get the posting system sorted TF. I’m sick of seeing “You are posting too quickly, please slow down.” even though I haven’t posted. I did have a lengthy post but now it’s just this as I couldn’t be bothered retyping it all and trying to remember what I had said.
I can buy DVD movies from shop at that prices…
so if average joe leaves his computer on seeding for a month he gets a free movie that he could’ve downloaded from tpb anyway. how innovative.
The innovation is that it’s legal and is what people want and the movie studios aren’t offering
As much as I wouldn’t like to admit it, this is a very good idea. Living in Sweden myself, I haven’t really got a reason not to use this, if I was willing to pay, that is. :P
This is looking more like the future of legal entertainment distribution. TPB needs competition so that it can get even better, and that at the same time it can get heckled less. (Not that it seems to make a difference anyway!)
There will always be pirates, the ones that are at the cutting edge of innovation, we are the ones actually driving the market forward and evolving the content industry. We will always be here, and whenever the industry catches up, we will be on to the next thing.
I think many of us will be happy with the legal alternatives that will ensue, but there will always remain a small group which will adopt the next *even more* advanced distribution method. This small bubble will grow, with escalating problems for the industry and growing clashes between the content providers and the consumers, just like we’ve seen in the last decade, and then the bubble will burst, and they will catch up…again.
It’s a natural cycle.
They may not like it but get used to it guys, it’s called progress.
I tried this and this is IMO how legal services should be made. I congratulate them for the initiative but they’ll have a hard time convincing people to use it.
I’m not impressed with the credit ratio of 1/5120. That’s not even one free beer per year if I drank ten beers a day. I’m not impressed by customer reward programs anyway. They make us transparent, to say the least. Customer rewards just appeal to our greed of gain instead of sharing is caring. What matters with the file sharing idea is the upload/download ratio, not credits with a company. Well, if DRM-free movies get spread around that’s at least a positive aspect.
Still baffles me this kinda thing wasnt done years ago..
Is it just me or does noone see the huge cash cow sitting in front of the entire industry.. why is this so hard.
Yah Sweden!
Love living here… a bit of crap (mostly from outside influences) but has its own perks like fighting back against the MAFIAA, putting privacy above nearly everything, and REALLY good net connections (am on a 100mb myself.. and its nothing to brag about here… around $60 a month)
Another bonus is, shipping of tShirts from the pirate bay is cheaper :p
http://www.ezee.se/
(.se = Swedish domain)
Ameibo is another swedish bit torrent-service that sort of has the same idea as Headweb. Unfortunately not all of the movies are DRM-free.
You can check them out here:
http://www.ameibo.com/
KserX: “I can buy DVD movies from shop at that prices…”
But you can’t seed those DVDs and then get more DVDs for free. That’s what these guys let you do.
Whats the point getting even more expensive movies then theres already out there in the normal shops? dont praise this yet, its cheaper to buy a movie ticket to most of the movies, some you even get some coke and chips with…
If you want to buy a movie, dont use this service until they reduce the price by 70-80%…. its a rippoff tbh >.<
Nice service! I just signed up to see what it’s about and it seems like movies are between 40 and 100 SEK (100 SEK = about 10 euro = about 17 U$). The content seems a bit shitty now cause only some outback swedish movie companies seem to be offering their movies.. anyway.. good step forward! :) Also, i seem to have gotten 2000 credits for signing up :)))
@ The right price, this is a GREAT idea!
The great thing is that is allows you to do what you actually pay for. You get good quality and the burn to dvd feature. And I can transcode to my ipod etc. Now I dont even have to bother ripping a purchased dvd, i just download it!
This is no fucking alternative. Think I download my movies without beeing a 50 Gig bitch. Nice try, but the idea are stupid and childish. Fuck You!!”
10% bonus is better than any credit card currently offers. If you’re a movie buff and with a seedbox, every movie you download could be legally purchased. Makes think ISPs should get involved and get in on this!
I’ve thought for a while that the way to run an online media store is to model it on BitTorrent and reward users for sharing. Although 50GB is ridiculously steep for anybody used to torrenting, it’s a big step forward and I’m sure the upload requirement will fall soon. It should be possible for an online store to use a fraction of the bandwidth they’d need without p2p and still distribute content amongst users effectively.
too expensive… 1408 costs 16$… No way..
@ 17 The reality is that we all need to support the creators in one way or another.
Besides, the movie studios aren’t so fucking retarted as the music companies.
@ 18 I agree, but from the companies point of view - suppy & demand
It would be nice if this thing could be done at the right price world world. Its a genuine alternative.
good initiative!
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