Free Movies On 'Net Just Got Easier
"Hollywood, your nightmare is here," the newspaper commented in reporting on the technology, dubbed DivX -- but not related to the coded DVDs of the same name that were marketed a few years ago.
The WSJ said that the technology is based on software developed by Microsoft last year and distributed only to software developers.
It reportedly significantly reduces the size of a file for an average-length movie from five gigabytes to 650 megabytes, which can be easily stored on a conventional CD.
Some of the sites mentioned in the WSJ article include: www.mydivx.com (an "introductory site"), go.to/doom9/, www.fm4.org/, www.digital-digest.com/divx/, windows.divx.st.
The newspaper also said that people in several Internet chat rooms are offering pirated DivX movies of virtually every popular movie currently available on DVD.
However, it warned, creating the master DivX movie from a DVD is currently a complex process that may take six to eight hours.
Meanwhile, the movie industry's civil case against Eric Corley, whose hacker site www.2600.org posted a software program that decodes the software-protection program used to prevent movies from being copied, is due to open in New York Monday.
