You’re walking through the entertainment department at your local shopping center and pick up a DVD that you’d like to see. You scan the bar code on the back of the DVD with your cell phones camera. By the time you get home, the movie you looked at while shopping has already been downloaded to your PC. Check this video out to see how it works:
It goes without saying that downloading a movie illegally via bittorrent is probably going to piss the MPAA off. But if they’re smart about this, they could actually take the concept of scan-to-download idea and turn it into a big money maker. There’s probably plenty of people who would purchase a digital download of a movie if it were offered to them at a reasonable price. Just take a look at iTunes or Amazon offering DRM-free MP3 merchandise. You might even take a look at what Valve Software did with Steam recently: They cut the price of Left 4 Dead by 50% and noticed a 3000% increase in sales. Ultimately it just goes to show that there is an ever increasing number of people who want to purchase digital merchandise and they’re willing to pay for it as long as it’s not overpriced. I could even see movies being offered up for free with commercials inserted in a hulu.com style.
Anyway, cool app for a cell phone to say the least. Thought for pirates, it would be kind of like saying, “Hey. As if my IP address weren’t enough information, here’s my phone number too.”