Disney aims to scare off pirates and profit from technology

Hollywood needs to provide consumers with new ways to buy what
they want, and the studios must find digital locks on entertainment
content to bar people who don't pay, said Disney Chief Operating Officer
Bob Iger in a Webcast at the launch of a new ride, Mission: Space, at Walt
Disney World in Florida.

The comments come as investors grow increasingly
concerned that digital pirates will swap movies online for free, thereby
hurting profits the way the pirates have weakened music
sales.

Digital video recorders are challenging old business
models that rely on advertising, and video-on-demand, which lets viewers
watch a program whenever they like, is upsetting the way movies and TV
shows are distributed to paying customers.

In particular, Disney executives are talking among
themselves and approaching advertising agencies about how to deal with
digital video recorders that store programs on a computer hard drive and
let viewers speed through or skip commercials, Iger said.

Disney recently launched a service, MovieBeam, that
offers home viewers a self-updating cache of 100 movies for rental and
self destructing DVDs that only work for 48 hours. Disney, too, has
expanded its Internet movie offerings.

Critics have said some of Disney's efforts may fail to
catch fire, but Disney generally believes they cost little to try and
offer an array of choices that could hit big with consumers.

"We are going to try a lot of new technologies ... and
not just make the product available in one window (of time) in one form,"
Iger said.

But he also said that studios needed to standardize
digital rights management to keep control of their movies, educate
consumers on the illegality of copyright infringement, and strip anonymity
from Internet file sharing.