[Richard Kimball]

I buy music and books from the iTunes Store because you can rip it and play it on any device. I won't buy their movies because you can't rip or burn them, and that means you can only play them on the five machines you choose to authorize and your iPod.

Up until now, the movie companies haven't had near the problems that music people have because they've been much better at setting a price on their content. If you go into a music store, a collection of thirty year old songs is still $12-$15. OTOH, I picked up Animal House for $5 at Walmart.

They're also saying that you can rent the movies, which means the DRM will turn them off after so many plays.

I think there's a cash cow out there in movie downloads once the DRM is thrown out.

[ShadowAce]

I think there's a cash cow out there in movie downloads once the DRM is thrown out.

EMI to Apple, Microsoft: Ditching DRM is going to cost you

[aft_lizard]

I dont think DRM is the issue. I think its the fact that you dont have a physical medium so to your minds eye the value isnt quite what they say it is.

[zeugma]

I think there's a cash cow out there in movie downloads once the DRM is thrown out

Yup. Despite the fact that disk space is cheap and getting cheaper, most folk aren't going to be hanging onto these multi-gigabyte downloads permanently.

I'm also interested in if there are any allowances made using this tech for disk/system crashes. They are, after all, releasing it for windows users.

I won't be playing as I consider ms-windows too big a security risk to allow in my household.