Nintendo is bringing Netflix’s online streaming video service to its Wii gaming console, the most popular in the industry, the companies plan to announce Wednesday. The service lets subscribers choose from a catalog of generally older movies and television shows and watch them instantly.

Mr. Hastings says the size of the streaming catalog correlates to the size of the checks it can write to Hollywood studios. So as Netflix adds customers — and cuts costs — it can gradually expand the catalog. Analysts say they believe it costs Netflix about 5 cents to stream a movie online, versus 60 cents to mail a disc to and from a customer.

More at NYTimes

Poor Chris Gorog. He’s the guy who predicted he could
make a hit out of a legal version of Napster, the renegade Internet
music file-sharing service that attracted 26 million monthly users until
it was driven into bankruptcy by record industry lawsuits.

That was back in 2002 when Gorog was CEO of Roxio, a CD-burning
software firm. He’d just struck a deal to acquire the insolvent Napster’s
assets – including its name and iconic kitty logo – for $5 million. Gorog
renamed his company Napster and launched a paid music subscription
service, insisting the brand alone would draw millions of customers.

Well, that didn’t happen.

More at Fortune

DRM encompasses multiple technologies that control the use of software, music, movies or any other piece of digital content. A year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter urging the music industry to drop DRM. Although Apple’s iTunes still sells a lot of content protected with Apple’s “FairPlay” DRM software, songs from EMI Music’s entire catalog are now available DRM-free through iTunes. Amid declining sales, the major music labels are experimenting with new business models, including dropping their previous requirement to protect their music through DRM software.

More at Knowledge@Wharton