Bollywood Signs Up For Kazaa Movie Downloads... But Not Really

from the trading-on-the-name dept

There have been a few stories about "legitimate" companies doing deals with Kazaa, but once you get past the headline, you realize that it's not true at all. Just like all those other deals the headlines trumpeting a deal between some some Bollywood film makers and Kazaa isn't really about Kazaa at all. Instead, it's a deal with Kazaa's sister company Altnet, which runs a service within Kazaa to distribute approved copy protected content. So, this isn't at all about film makers understanding the promotional value of free downloads, but rather them trying to piggyback copy protection (in this case files that supposedly "self-destruct" after a single $3 viewing) on the popularity of Kazaa. The deal isn't even that good. $3 for a product that self-destructs after a single viewing? You get a better deal going to the local video store. Meanwhile, though, they get all the publicity of having the film "offered on Kazaa". All Altnet is really doing is bolting a pay-for service (like iTunes) into Kazaa. It doesn't leverage the real benefits of a distributed file sharing network at all.

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