AMCP Tech Blog

In the race to become the sole distributor of online media, Apple Computer is looking to offer full-length movies to customers of their popular iTunes Music Store software, according to reports from Variety. It is said that Apple is negotiating with many major movie studios to have downloadable movie content online by the end of this year. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, is reported to be personally involved with the negotiations and wants to sell the movies for $9.99 each. In March, Apple started selling Disney's, High School Musical, for under $10.

A similar question was given by Steve Jobs to music executives five years ago. They could either work with him, or get lost in his dust - They worked with him. Today, iTunes has sold over 1 billion songs and has yet to stop; Not to mention that Apple basically owns 80% of digital music sales made over the Internet. A similar partnership with movie companies could yield the same results, and I'd be surprised if they didn't take Job's offer. Steve Jobs is one of the most influential people in the world, and his sense of good business won't disappoint them. The only conflict that I'm able to think of is variable pricing (Which means that new music on iTunes will cost more than the older music, for example). For now, iTunes won't have variable pricing (which Lord Jobs opposes). However, Forbes reported that the studios flatly rejected a $9.99 price tag on every single movie - regardless of age.

More importantly, however, is if consumers will actually want to download movies using iTunes. Sure, it could make it easier to add movies to you iPod, but do you really want to have your movies DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected? I personally wouldn't want to have my movie content restricted to Apple products. Consumers should have the right to copy media that they own onto existing devices that they own (Disclaimer: I'm not an Internet-law layer). DRM-protected movies on iTunes will just bring up the huge brawl over sharing media between devices when they are protected with DRM. Anyone want to argue that point out?

Update: BusinessWeek is running a similar story that goes into more detail about movies in iTunes. A suggested read for anyone interested in this news story.