Warner Bros is using a Guba, company specializing in online pornography searches, to sell its DRM-loaded Warner movies and TV online.
“You may well know that some of the best porn gets circulated on newsgroups,” says Supervert. But, “You need a news reader, and often you miss some of the best posts, or you end up with just fragments of a series.” And, “That’s where GUBA comes in. GUBA archives all the porn from newsgroups. Rather than pay for a news account, you pay for a GUBA account and bingo! You have access to all that porn. Good deal!”
Now, in an agreement more than a little reminiscent of the deal the MPAA made with BitTorrent, the former (and continuing?) bane of both Hollywood and the Big Four Organized Music cartel, Guba has, “agreed to start filtering copyright and obscene content and institute tougher security measures after talks with the Motion Picture Association of America,” says the Associated Press.
BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen promised to take down links on his BitTorrent search site leading to Hollywood downloads and he and the MPAA were to, “work together and proactively identify ways to limit access to infringing material available via search engines like the one at BitTorrent.com and to promote constructive innovation in this area,” said the MPAA, owned by the Big Six movies studios, in November, 2005.
“We can kid ourselves, but in the end it’s probably porn that people want,” Wired News quoted Guba chief executive Thomas McInerney saying the same month.
The Wired story centred on the news that Guba would, “convert video files from Usenet into the format used by the iPod”.
But, while Guba, “offers up a wide variety of video, from the satirical news program The Daily Show to Japanese animation, its ‘erotica’ section is likely to be the biggest draw,” said the story.
Meanwhile, on the deal with the MPAA, AP has McInerney saying people will only pay for” top quality shows” and, “Nobody is going to pay for a video of a dog doing a stupid pet trick.” Unless it comes in a porn archive, of course.
Warner rental prices start at $2.00 for 24 hours, or Warner is under the impression punters will fork out $20 for, “permanent copies” of ‘new’ movies such as Good Night and Good Luck, or $10 for older (read ancient) titles such as Rebel Without a Cause.
‘New’ films will become available the same day the DVDs are released in stores, says AP. (How much do video stores charge for new rentals, these days?)
TV shows will sell for $1.80 per episode, adds AP.
