give the 'net credit

My wife asked me the other day if I could find a clip from Christmas with the Kranks for her blog. I half-heartedly went on YouTube and searched for “hickory honey ham,” but didn’t find the clip. I resigned myself to grabbing our DVD, illegally ripping it (I still use DVDShrink), converting it to a .AVI and then editing out the clip in Final Cut Express. Of course, I started complaining as well. Why if I own a movie, can’t it be easier to make a copy for my own personal use? Why do I have to rely on dated shareware? In this age or iPods, Zunes, and other digital media players, why do I have to still play DVDs or illegally download torrents?

This isn’t a new complaint for me. In fact, it’s something I’ve thought and wrote about a lot. The ability to legally allow people to import the media they already own onto digital media players is the next great frontier that is waiting to be conquered online. Thanks to my Twitter feed and having to reinstall a few programs I commonly use, I learned that some are already trying. I can only hope they succeed.

First, MovieClips.com has a wealth of completely legal movie clips you can share on your blog. Thanks to Christina Warren and Mashable for sharing this. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t have Christmas with the Kranks, but I did spend about an hour yesterday watching Throw Momma from the Train in bits and pieces. What an underrated movie! MovieClips has partnerships with six major Hollywood studios — 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Warner Bros, so I expect the site might soon. What is really needs is a feedback section where users can suggest clips to include. I strongly suggest Bill Paxton’s “Game Over” speech from Aliens. (Sorry about the language.)

Next, I had to reinstall Vuze and Real Player when I upgraded to Windows 7 and found a couple of features I didn’t notice before. Both programs added features that allow you to convert media files into portable formats. Vuze has been great in helping me put films on my iPod and my Xbox 360, but it lacks a Zune converter. RealPlayer has that, plus a handy way to download YouTube clips and other Flash videos. It also allows you to play them from your hard drive without converting them. I’m surprised these companies aren’t advertising these features more. This is a great way to distance themselves from the competition and add new users. I’m thinking, however, that the same media industry that resisted sites such as Hulu and still fights YouTube is making that difficult.

Hollywood, too, has made some strides, but I don’t think it’s enough. Disney movies, for example, now come with software that allows you to make one digital copy. That’s a good start, but I’d love to see this on other movies. I’m not sure a laptop is where most users want to make their digital copy.

The news industry needs to jump on the bandwagon too. There’s as much harm in allowing users to download and share news clips as allow them to share a copy of the paper. But I don’t seriously see this happening until news site re-establish the pay walls they seem so fond of.

Oh, and sweetie, I found the clip, but I’m betting it won’t last long.

Popularity: 2% [?]

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.