YouTube wants to offer film rentals

YouTube wants to offer movie rentals and is in talks with several top movie studios about obtaining licenses to stream feature films on a rental basis.

YouTube is discussing the service with Sony Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., and Warner Bros. Studios, according to a story published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.

This is a natural progression for YouTube which has been engaged in a year-long campaign to secure more professionally made content. The Google-owned video company offers films on an ad-supported basis from Sony Pictures and MGM. YouTube declined to confirm or deny the Journal report.

One studio executive familiar with the talks downplayed the significance of the talks, saying no deals have been struck and the conversations are at best in the early stages. The executive pointed out that the studios have these discussions all the time and that there's a large host of services that already sell downloads or offer digital rentals, including Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, and Microsoft's Xbox.

"Why wouldn't the studios talk to YouTube?" the executive said.

There are also full-length films available to the public for free on ad-supported sites, such as Sony Pictures' video site, Crackle.com, and on Hulu.

But YouTube's U.S. audience is now over 100 million and the site's potential to generate big ad revenue from premium content is still not fully understood.

Sources in the film industry say however that if Google can prove it can protect streaming content from piracy and will offer a lucrative deal beyond just a percentage of ad revenue, there's no reason why YouTube can't be the Comcast of the Web.

[10092]

I wonder...
if i played monopoly with google... will it buy all the properties or replace the board.

[akljsdj]

Now it will force everyone else into bankruptcy and buy other players property to bail them out until they have everything on the board. All the other players will then stay in jail because it will be safest and pay the jail fine every turn.

[d4nowar]

Isn't this old news? Google tried this with Google Video before they bought out youtube.

[nwzomer]

Yeah u'r right D4nowar.... It's still a good idea since nobody thinks lets go watch an online video on google video, automatically you think to go to youtube you have to admit that... Legally they can do this... There should be no problem and I'm a big fan of Google.

[nwzomer]

Replace the board 100092! i LOVE GOOGLE IT'S AWESOME!

[10092]

I have no idea why my name pops up as a number.... so much for facebook connect

[Hunnter2k3]

Totally behind this idea!
I would be more than happy to rent things online more often than physical.

Also, the whole "copyright protection" stuff is laughable, why do they even bother?
Anything that comes to my computer will HAVE to be decrypted in some way to be displayed.
Even if they create some sort of convoluted mess of code and write the frames in some weird way, it will still be cracked.
They could change encryption methods bi-monthly if they are up to it.
But, in the end, since it has to be displayed in a way that a human understands, it can be recorded by a screen recorder / video-camera quite easily, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent that.

[unknown unknown]

"Why wouldn't the studios talk to YouTube?"

Cause giving consumers more legal ways to easily get your content makes it less likely they'll go download it on BitTorrent etc. As far as I know YouTube is still the number one video sharing site.

[QA_Tester]

The question was purely rhetorical I suspect

[maxmax12345]

One interesting thing is what Apple is going to think about this because they have youtube inside AppleTV. I am sure they will block any rent of movies thru AppleTV.

[renGek]

so don't use appletv.
Plug an old computer into your TV, (dvi --> hdmi) and you're good to go.

[Rolker]

I hope they'll do this internationally, and not US only (as usual...).

[Samuelsoon]

In my mind this is a bad idea. Youtube should stick to being youtube, once they stop focusing on making the main feature (which is video sharing) better, then other websites will catch up. People are fickle.

[renGek]

they can always branch it off and spin it into its own subsidiary. But its smart to use the youTube branding to get the customers first.

[prince_f_swords]

"Sources in the film industry say however that if Google can prove it can protect streaming content from piracy"

why on earth any one will pirate a movie through you tube stream when its Blue ray and DVD version are available. They will end up spending more money on protection , hence less profits. If they are so worried about piracy why don't they stop selling and renting Dvd's.

[rich12313]

exactly. even if they do this..i would never spend time finding a way to download it haha. torrents all da way

torrents ftw

[QA_Tester]

People will always pirate stuff no matter what the source is. Apparently there is enough money to be made in streaming video for Google to get involved.

[renGek]

These industries need to learn from the video game industry who faced massive piracy problems way back in the 80s. They figured out how to make big profit while piracy is still going on. Initially, they tried and tried in vain to stop piracy and it kept hitting themselves in the face. Then they realize that they can still make good profit by appealing to the masses who buys legally because piracy of games is a hassle to mainstream. Movie industry needs to learn this.

[moviegeek65]

I can already stream movies to my PC and TV with Netflix for $8.99 a month.

[Thinkster]

Netflix isn't available in Canada though. Neither is Hulu or any other video streaming provider..... which probably means that this also won't be available up here.