Wal-Mart Announces Plan to Assist Consumers with UltraViolet

  • Wal-Mart plans to help customers set up their UltraViolet accounts and register the DVDs they own for a small fee.
  • UltraViolet, which has been available for a year, currently has some one million users.
  • “The industry’s hope is that, with UltraViolet, it can encourage consumers to pay for content they might be tempted to download illegally from the Web,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
  • The service has been slow to get off the ground due to service glitches, a limited catalog of titles, the need for multiple accounts, and the lack of Disney titles and iTunes compatibility, indicates the article.
  • “The potential Wal-Mart deal is part of a broader effort by the industry to hold on to revenue it is losing to both illegal and legitimate competition, such as some online storage lockers that play fast and loose with copyright law,” adds WSJ. “At the same time, technology companies, including Google Inc. and Apple Inc., have moved into the market for streaming entertainment with their popular YouTube and iTunes services, taking a cut of the revenue from each movie or TV show streamed.”

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