Sunday, October 9, 2011

For a unified online "Rights" database for digital media



Right now, if you buy a movie from itunes in SD (standard definition), you paid for that, and that only. You do not have access to the other features (making of, etc), and you can only watcht the movie from the itunes compatible devices, in SD.

Wouldn't it be great if you could simply buy the "Rights" of a movie (or other media) in a unified database?

What I mean is that, if you buy a movie from itunes or any other stores, you would pay for the "Rights" of the movie instead of the file in itself. This mean that you would get access to all the other features found in the movie, to the SD version as well as all other versions (HD, 3D, etc) that exist, you get all the languages for that movie, and you can actually download the file from any store you want after you bought the right, and play if on any devices, nothing would then be locked in the format.

I understand that online download takes bandwidth and that cost money, but again, by pricing the online version the same as the printed version, it would pay itselft automatically. Instead of paying for the paper, the disc, the distribution and the losses, you would simply pay for the downloads instead (the bandwidth). As an exemple, if you buy "The Black Swan" 30$ from itunes, a part of those 30$ goes to the Store (itunes, the seller), a part goes the the unified database (this database streams the data for the Stores, so when you download a movie from itunes, it would actually download from the unified database, and this part of the money would pay for that), and a part goes to the Movie Studio (that made the movie).

This way, nobody could fear of loosing all of their content in the next years if a Store closes for exemple. Also, this would let us access more content, like when we buy the printed copy of a movie right now. And if the movie have a new version, like an extended version or a 3D version (or something more in the future), you could simply buy the rights of the new content instead of paying for the full movie again (e.g.: If the 3D version goes to sale, you could simply pay a 3$ fee to gain the Rights of the 3D version of the film that you already bought the original Rights).

What do you think? Would you be more inclined to buy movies and other media in a digital form?