blog #9 - Sony and online movie distribution

I just read an interesting article at arstechnica,(http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050331-4761.html) about how Sony plans to make a store similar iTunes except instead of distributing music they will be making their movies available for download. They also plan to distribute the movies on flash mediums so it can they can be played on PDAs, cell phones and their recently released PSP. I think this is a very interesting idea. The success of Apple's iTunes has already showed that there is a large interest in the distribution of paid media on the internet. With Sony's marketing skills and their large movie base I would say they have a good chance for success. Also as it is pointed out in the article and from my experience with Sony's previous endeavor's in portable players, DRM might be a problem. Sony really likes to use DRM media, such as the mini disc, memory stick and the UMD disc for the PSP. As long as Sony doesn't tie down the media too much I don't users will have a problem with it. The article does point out at that Sony does want to make the content own able by the user rather then just renting the movies. I think this is a great move on Sony's part and look forward to seeing how it pans out for them.