Film88

June 7, 2002 5:08 AM

Film88 Dear Valuable Users, Our site is READY now, but we got to wait for few hours for our new lines to take place. However, you can enter from HERE. Please take note that the lines are extremely SLOW. We feel sorry for our contractor whose proxy/caching was blocked because of somebody's reaction. (Without Court Order AGAIN!!) Seems like the Terrorist is identified!! Regards, Film88 More Backround
posted by Niahmas (3 comments total)

Piracy? No court order? Wheren't these the guys who offered to pay 25% of their revenue to copyright holders? Why would the Dutch bow?
posted by magullo at 5:23 AM on June 7, 2002

Film88.com seemed suspicious to me. First, its based out of Iran. Iran isn't necessarily the first place I'd think of for hosting Hollywood movies. There's that whole Islamic fundamentalist thing going on that could make dealing in western goods, morals or movies a painful experience. Second, at a buck per movie for three days I'm not sure that you could make a sustainable business. Even with the relatively low bandwidth they provided the aggregate bandwidth used would be huge. Not having a sustainable business model isn't damning in itself, the domain registry is littered with businesses that failed because of this. Third, unless they were hoping to make a killing in the burgeoning internet industry in third world countries how would they expect to deliver content to people in the U.S., U.K. or any other country that respects copyrights or will at least bend over for American interests? Online games can be hard to play, even when text based if you're on the wrong side of the ocean.

I wouldn't be at all suprised if this wasn't an effort to prove that the motion picture industry is under attack to help their lobbying efforts. A con like this would be cheap compared to the money that traditionally changes hands for lobbying.
posted by substrate at 6:17 AM on June 7, 2002

That was fast; they're shutting down already.
posted by waxpancake at 10:01 PM on June 9, 2002