Coming Soon: Download to Own Movies

CNN is reporting that Universal Pictures will soon launch a service whereby films can be downloaded legally to own. These downloads will be non time-limited digital downloads. Currently most legally downloaded movies are time limited. Buyers will also receive a DVD version via snail-mail.

There are still a lot of questions surrounding this. What format will they be downloadable in? Will the quality of a DVD be kept? Is the movie industry finally listening?

I think the bigger question is: how will this curb or help piracy? I'm sure there will be an Itunes like encryption on the movies where only a registered device will be able to play the movies it downloads, but like Itunes has seen, that encryption will easily be cracked . This obviously hasn't really effected Apple's business, as Itunes just recently sold its 1 billionth tune, but I can see this movies appearing on Bit Torrent sites pretty quickly.

Do you think this is a good move by the movie industry?