Airport Kiosks to Offer Movie Downloads

"Air travellers will be able to download feature films and computer games to a handheld computer using a service to be launched first at US airports this summer.

Customers will be able to insert their computer's removable memory card or chip into slots in the kiosks, to download films, music, games, electronic books and newspapers....

The service will be available for handheld computers running Microsoft Pocket PC or Palm operating systems. A range of memory cards and chips, including Flash memory cards, Sony's Memory Stick and IBM's Microdrive, could be used in the kiosks....

A typical feature film will take less than three minutes to download, and one megabyte of memory will store a minute of film, says Pocket PC Films, the company that will supply the movies in a compressed format. Games and books will have a much quicker download time.

Pocket PC Films currently sells feature films and other video content on CD-ROMs. These cost between $9.99 and $49.99, but movies will cost slightly less through the new kiosks, nREACH says. Similar kiosks will also be installed in shopping malls and other retail outlets." [New Scientist]

My first thought was to ask who on earth would want to watch a movie on a screen that small. Then I realized what a godsend this would be at the doctor's office with the kids, when I'm stuck at the airport, or even just in meetings.  ;-)

So I guess I'm geeky enough to look forward to this. I wonder if libraries can use something similar to circulate digital videos from within the building (over the net or via wireless would be a whole other ballgame).

Larry Lessig on Copy-protecting Aristotle:

" 'I have bought a number of eBooks, including Aristotle’s Politics. Aristotle’s Politics, of course, was never copyrighted, but the Adobe eBook reader forbids me from printing any pages of the book because the permissions have been set to disable any printing. If I try to interfere with those permissions .. if I write a bit of code to disable the limitations that forbid me from printing Aristotle’s Politics from my Adobe eBook .. that would be circumventing an access technology, which under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a crime.' - Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, as quoted in the Reason (found via Pocket PC eBooks Watch)." [TeleRead]

Combined with the ridiculous case of the license for the ebook Alice in Wonderland that makes it a crime for parents to read the text out loud to their children, and you can see why librarians are worried about being able to circulate digital files in the future.

Here's an example of the dilemna in which we find ourselves right now. I heard back from Salon that libraries can indeed purchase John Dean's ebook Unmasking Deep Throat and circulate it to their patrons as long as they take reasonable steps to prevent it from being copied.

I was thrilled by this news, but now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how a library would circulate it without paying $5000 for the Adobe Content Server. How is a library supposed to check the title in and out, get it to the person, get it back, and make sure the person doesn't keep a copy. I haven't been able to think of a way yet because Rocketbooks and Franklin eBookmans don't handle PDF files. There's no way to load it onto a patron's PDA, and we certainly wouldn't email it to or burn it on a CD for someone.

Does anybody have a solution to this problem?