Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

Not a bad start with the pricing but dump the DRM as it doesn’t help stop piracy anyway.

Warner Bros. plans to experiment with online movie rentals in China in an attempt to compete with pirates. The company has announced that it has partnered up with the Beijing-based Voole, which will offer DRM-protected copies of various Warner Bros. films (including some that have never been released theatrically in China) for a fraction of the rental cost, compared to other parts of the world.

Some of the films Warner Bros. plans to make available will include I Am Legend, Fool’s Gold, and Speed Racer, with more new titles coming soon and a “wide range” of classic library titles. The studio’s movies will reportedly be available for rent for a mere 4 to 7 yuan, roughly 60¢ to $1.03. That seems pretty low to those of us who live in the US and pay anywhere from $3 to $5 to rent movies from iTunes, for example, but Warner Bros. is trying to compete with street pirates who hawk burned movies on the cheap.

I’ve said before that cheap, convenient, portable and ubiquitous content is the way to beat the pirates. But the movie studious and TV networks still remain mostly clueless about this.

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