Extreme Justin

By Extreme Justin at http://extremejustin.com/

[Update: Since the time that I originally wrote this article, more video-based streaming options have become available.  Netfllix is the clear choice for movie streaming.  It will even work with Playstation 3, XBOX 360, and Wii (Wii support is brand new).  Many TV shows have been made available for streaming either through their own network's websites or hulu.com (most of these only work in the U.S. though.  I currently recommend Zinc TV (windows version available at http://zinc.tv) for access to ALL of these streaming options.]

I’m not sure about you but I when I was a student I didn’t just have $3000.00 lying around. The Recording Industry Association of America is asking some USF (University Of South Florida) students to pay that much to avoid being sued in court for downloading music. Yes, this is for real and I even know the family of one of the students. What’s sad here is that most of the students I know can’t afford to pay fines like that. They just don’t have it. The message is clear. The RIAA has taken on anyone and everyone that opposes them.  Here’s an article on the USF situation : USF KEEPS WATCH ON STUDENTS’ MUSIC
On college campuses it is a bad idea to download movies or music. Thankfully there are options to a lot of the same material legally at a low cost of less than 20 or 30 a month out of your pocket.

As far as movies go you cannot legally get movies that are in theaters. Yeah, I know. But for regular movies there is at least one option if not more. Vongo.com can be found at http://www.vongo.com and offers several newer and older movies for download by subscription. The current price is about 10 dollars a month. I have never used nor reviewed this site. There are at least a couple of sites that allow you to pay to download movies like pay per view but hey—if you could afford that you wouldn’t be reading this now would you? But there are also DVD rental subscriptions. Netflex and Blockbuster are the 2 biggest with the most comparable options. I would look at BOTH before deciding. I have been a netflix customer for years and have had no problems (in fact the movies get to your house extremely fast these days) but Blockbuster offers some availability of movies in retail stores. Some public libraries offer free DVDs to check out but in my experience 3 times out of 5 the DVDs need cleaning before they can be played IF they are not too badly scratched.

There are currently 2 big sites involved in music subscriptions (maybe even more that I am missing). Rhapsody (from real.com) began by offering subscription ability to PLAY music (not download) and to buy music to burn directly to a CD (but not download as protected). They now offer Rhapsody to go which offers the ability to download music to your portable devices (just not ipod because Apple sucks like that). While Napster also offers Streaming (which might be really good for your parties) their post impressive service is Napster To Go which offers many many titles that you can put on your portable device as well as play from your computer. Just “save” them to your computer and you can play them from any player that supports protected files such as WinAmp and Windows Media Player. I use it myself and at less than $15 a month it beats getting sued. Now unless you purchase those titles forever (which usually costs about 99 cents a song) you can only play them as long as your Napster service is current. The irony of Napster is that they WERE the first illegal music sharing site and had to change or perish after being sued by the RIAA.

I’m not saying to you what to do here. I’m just saying there are options out there that you won’t get sued for.

In a perfect world we would be able to pay a small fee and get all the free music and movies we want legally in any way we choose. But we don’t live in a perfect world. And I only wish there were a book subscription service like this. I mean we can get most books free at the library but not in a legal computer format? Oh well.

Justin

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 5:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.