Miramax Feature Films Go Online
A major Hollywood studio will experiment next week with making full-length feature films available on the Internet.
Starting Monday, Miramax will make available its 1999 release Guinevere, starring Sarah Polley and Stephen Rea, for $3.49 at three Web sites. The 500-megabyte file will take about 30 minutes to download over a high-speed Internet connection and can be used for 24 hours.
Movie studios are struggling to fight Internet piracy. Last year, the studios succeeded in shutting down Scour.com, a file-sharing Web site that allowed people to swap digitized films.
Earlier Internet forays failed. They left original short films and animation vulnerable to pirating and studios wondering how to use new technology while protecting valuable copyrights.
Miramax Films , a unit of The Walt Disney Co., signed a deal with SightSound.com last April to offer 12 full-length feature films on the Web.
The arrangement will test whether consumers will watch downloaded features on a pay-per-view basis.
"If this is how people want to get movies, we're going to give it to them legit," said Scott Sander, chief executive officer of SightSound.com.
Other studios have been exploring video on demand strategies as well.
Guinevere will play on home computers at full screen in near-DVD quality, Sander said. But after its 24-hour license expires, the downloaded file will be useless. A copy of the movie sent via e-mail or copied to a mobile storage device also will not play, even with a valid license.
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