AfterDawn: News

Ok, you must have already heard about Taiwanese site called Movie88.com? It's a small site that offers all the latest Hollywood blockbusters for $1 a movie. Users can stream the content using their accounts and one "rental" that costs $1 lasts up to three days, after which you need to pay $1 again if you wish to watch the same movie again. And they offer $5 for signing up to the service.

Obviously, they don't pay any royalties to Hollywood studios and they don't have any licensing deals from studios -- they just comply with Taiwanese laws that require copyright holders to register their works with local copyright office within certain period after the movie has been released -- and most of the studios fail to do so :-)



So, once again, overseas sites are testing how far MPAA's claws can reach. Ok, MPAA got DeCSS author sued in Norway even that it's not illegal to create a tool that circumvents copyright protection in Norway. And iMesh, an Israeli P2P software is filtering their network already. But how about now, do the copyright owners have enough firepower to stop this phenomenom?

I suggest that you visit the site and read this excellent article from MP3Newswire.net.

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 7 Feb 2002 13:41