Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. has made a deal to distribute movies and TV shows online via Guba LLC's search engine and video-sharing community, Guba.com, in one of the first moves by a major studio to embrace user-generated content.
Until yesterday, Guba displayed videos submitted mostly by amateurs, along with some professionally created material such as music videos posted illegally on the site. Now, the site will sell movies such as "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" along with TV shows such as "Babylon 5."
Studios and record labels have been struggling with how to embrace Internet distribution while fighting online piracy. While the technology lures studios with the promise of an expanded market -- people who would pay to watch more movies if they were easy to download -- it also allows easy online pilfering of movies, TV shows and other copyrighted content.
"The mistake of the [movie] industry has been to worry too much about piracy and not enough about providing easy, simple ways to find content legally online," says Thomas McInerney, chief executive officer and founder of Guba. He believes putting the titles in front of the 503,000 unique monthly visitors to Guba should drive sales and rentals of the titles. The number of visitors is far behind sites like MSN Video, with more than 16 million unique visitors, or YouTube.com, with more than 13 million, according to research firm comScore Networks Inc. Mr. McInerney believes even those who have illegally downloaded movies and shows in the past would be willing to pay for them on Guba.
New movies will cost $19.99 on Guba, and older titles will cost $9.99. The titles can be moved onto portable devices or streamed around the home. New titles can be rented for $2.99. Movies will be available to buy the same day they come out on DVD, while rentals will be available a few weeks later.
Alongside the legal Warner titles, Guba users can find unapproved material, such as videos from Beyoncé and Madonna, and TV content like Oprah Winfrey's spoof on "Desperate Housewives," which aired last year. Guba says it has a technology called "Johnny" that searches for videos and other copyrighted material and removes those clips from the site, but it is a work in progress. The filter system is being constantly updated to catch more copyrighted content.
Warner has been working to ensure its creations are available in as many corners of the Web as possible. Last month, it cut a deal with BitTorrent Inc. to sell and rent movies using that company's peer-to-peer technology.
At the start of the year, Warner Bros., Bertelsmann AG and its subsidiary Arvato announced a service for the German market that relies on peer-to-peer technology called In2Movies. In the U.S., Warner launched In2TV, an advertising-supported service that allows viewers to watch classic TV shows free online.
6.26.2006
Google Begins Streaming Free Videos
Google Inc. Thursday began streaming commercial videos, including movies and TV shows, for free on the Web as part of a trial of advertising support for its video offerings.
Google's move is a key test of how online ads can finance consumer access to premium video content on the Web, the way TV commercials have supported broadcast television for decades. It could impact the efforts of companies such as Apple Computer Inc. to charge users fees to access popular videos from the Internet. If successful, the video advertising could eventually develop into a significant new extension of Google's ad system that generated over $6 billion in revenue last year.
Owners of the videos included in the Google trial usually charged for the thousands of videos now available for free on the Google Video site (video.google.com). Google shared in the fees they previously collected.
Videos now accessible for free include movies such as Charlie Chaplin classics that previously cost 99 cents, episodes of the Mr. Magoo cartoon series that had cost $1.99 and wrestling matches that were $4.95.
Small graphical ads for advertisers including Burger King and Netflix appear above the videos, with short video commercials for them at the end of featured video content. Google said that fewer than 10 advertisers were currently involved in the test.
Google executives had previously said they were looking into ways to provide ad-supported commercial video. Many of the premium videos available through Google Video still carry fees.
Google's move is a key test of how online ads can finance consumer access to premium video content on the Web, the way TV commercials have supported broadcast television for decades. It could impact the efforts of companies such as Apple Computer Inc. to charge users fees to access popular videos from the Internet. If successful, the video advertising could eventually develop into a significant new extension of Google's ad system that generated over $6 billion in revenue last year.
Owners of the videos included in the Google trial usually charged for the thousands of videos now available for free on the Google Video site (video.google.com). Google shared in the fees they previously collected.
Videos now accessible for free include movies such as Charlie Chaplin classics that previously cost 99 cents, episodes of the Mr. Magoo cartoon series that had cost $1.99 and wrestling matches that were $4.95.
Small graphical ads for advertisers including Burger King and Netflix appear above the videos, with short video commercials for them at the end of featured video content. Google said that fewer than 10 advertisers were currently involved in the test.
Google executives had previously said they were looking into ways to provide ad-supported commercial video. Many of the premium videos available through Google Video still carry fees.
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