Online video sharing site GUBA has been trying to shed its bad-boy image as a haven for pirated video, raw media trawled off Usenet (GUBA used to stand for Gigantic Usenet Binaries Archive), and material the FCC would almost certainly classify as obscene. The company’s aspirations towards legitimacy just got a big shot in the arm from Warner Brothers, which has announced it will rent and sell movies and television episodes via GUBA. The move marks Warner’s second major recent move in the online arena, having announced an initiative last month to distribute legal, protected copies of movies via BitTorrent. Warner also has similar online distribution arrangements with AOL’s In2TV service.
More than 200 Warner Brothers films are currently available via GUBA, including recent releases like Syriana,Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Everything is Illuminated. WB television shows available via GUBA include the cult sci-fi favorite Babylon 5, along with shows like The Dukes of Hazzard and animated classics like The Flintstones and The Jetsons. A 24-hour movie rental costs $1.99; additional days can be purchased at reduced rates without needing to download the movie a second time. Users can buy catalog films for $9.99, with nw releases selling for $19.99. Television episodes start at $1.79 per episode. Users can keep permanent copies of purchased titles, and transfer or stream purchased titles onto portable devices and on their home network using Windows Media technology (Macs, iPods, and Linux need not apply); however, videos may not be burned to standard DVD.
GUBA and Warner Brothers are pretty clearly aiming at the computers-are-for-entertainment generation, hoping to make it easy for TV-free students and mobile users to rent or purchase legitimate copies of video titles rather than downloading pirated versions. It remains to be seen whether sites like GUBA and bandwidth-consumer YouTube, which tend toward amateur, user-contributed video, are viable distribution platforms for major studios.
