Seagate teams with Paramount pictures, pre-loads DRM-laced movies onto FreeAgent Go portable hard drives
This is what you see when you plug in the drive, two folders — one with the movies, one with some Seagate software — along with a Seagate registration program. The movies folder contains 20 movies along with their cover art. These files are protected by some sort of DRM and while VLC plays them, the picture is scrambled. Users are supposed to login to a website to actually buy the rights to them, therefore descrambling the content.
Okay, so let’s say the user gets past this first step. They still have to create a profile on a Windows and Internet Explorer 8-only website to purchase the movies — of which there are only 21 to choose from so far.
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- GI Joe
- Shooter
- The Hunt for Red October
- The Italian Job (2003)
- Ghost
- Patriot Games
- Beowulf
- Enemy at the Gates
- The Spiderwick Chronicles
- The Love Guru
- Coach Carter
- The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
- Nacho Libre
- Jackass 2.5
- A Plumm Summer
- Carriers
- Dance Flick
- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
The drive is supposed to come with a promo code to unlock the new Star Trek movie. I can’t figure out how to use it. The code doesn’t seem to do anything and I’m not spending $20 on the 720p movie just for this post. Sorry, I’m a starving blogger. The press release however states that “The films will be licensed for multiple devices to allow for portability and enjoyment of them on a desktop computer, laptop computer, or widescreen television, using the FreeAgent Theater+
It’s clear that both companies involved are at least trying to provide consumers with a legitimate storefront for digital media. That’s great. A good amount of consumers want to follow the rules and not download illegal content. But at least this implementation doesn’t work. It’s clunky requiring consumers to bypass needless hurdles while only offers a tiny amount of content at a high premium. Back to brainstorming, boys. Let’s try again.