Hollywood relents, approves downloadable movies

Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, James Caan and John Cazale in The Godfather - one of the films fans can download from the new filmfresh site.

As peer to peer services and sites such as Bittorrent and the PirateBay continue to generate a massive amount of media attention and money for legal firms, digital media piracy continues to fuel the digital entertainment debate.

In what could be a landmark move, US website www.filmfresh.com have joined the fray and are delivering over 600 downloadable big title Hollywood movies.

Whilst downloadable movies are nothing new with subscribers to other services such as iTunes have long been able to rent movies, Film Fresh are supplying movies as DivX formatted files.

This is big news in that it brings a whole lot more flexibility to the equation. Not only is there a huge number of DivX video playback compatible consumer electronics already available (such as DVD players, PCs and of course the PlayStation 3), Film Fresh's movie titles are not totally hobbled with digital rights management (DRM) which means they won't become unwatchable a week after you've downloaded them and can be burnt to a DVD or copied to a USB stick.

Even better still, Film Fresh movie titles are also legit downloads so you wont have the copyright police knocking on your door.

Perhaps most important of all, delivering a solid range of blockbuster Hollywood movies that are relatively un-crippled by DRM provides a legitimate alternative to copyright infringing downloads.

Providing consumers with the digital equivalent of a carrot rather than hitting them with the legal equivalent of a stick not only stands to reduce copyright infringement but also makes considerable commercial sense as it supplies and existing demand.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Fresh Films is only available to folks living in the US and there's no sign of it arriving here any time soon. The other catch for those that can download Fresh Film titles is the price which ranges from US$10 to US$13.

Whilst that isn't too steep (especially considering that the movie hasn't been lobotomised by DRM), it is a little steep in that it is comparable to US budget DVD pricing and you don't get the special features and other goodies usually bundled with a DVD.

Bad news aside, the move by Fresh Films backers (Paramount, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and Sony Pictures) to allow semi un-crippled legit movie downloads could signal a softening in the hard-line stance of the major studios, potentially opening the floodgates for other similar local services.