news.com is reporting

a "high impact" development in the world of movie swapping.

personally, i don't see this making much of a difference. after all, if i'm buying a dvd, i'm buying it for its picture quality; all of the extras are just a side-benefit, if a benefit at all. of course, i'm a poor proxy of the average american consumer, given my avowed anti-materialism and bias against consuming mainstream media. still, i have to wonder how many people actually buy dvds, just for the extras. in evc parlance, i would think these features have little differentiation value.

accordingly, i don't see how this development is going to alter the growth of movie file-sharing on the darknet. the question here to ask is: would having extras built into a file make a swapper more likely to download a movie? i don't think so. if i'm a fileswapper and i want to download a movie for viewing, i'm doing it because i want to see the movie, not because i want to see the extras. hell, i don't even watch the extras on my dvds now - most annoy me, in fact.