Just like Napster which turns into a legit music download service, BT announced that they will also start offer movie rental and TV downloads for a fee.  Movie can be viewed within a 24-hour period while TV programs can be purchased and owned.

There are more than 5,000 titles including movies, TV shows, music and games content from partners like MGM, 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, and Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group.

This is definitely good news for 24 fans like me.  No longer do I need to wait for local TV station to carry the series or wait till DVD becomes available.  I could actually pay for the latest episodes once they become available in the US.

However, when I go check out the site, the service is only available in the US.  Just like iTunes, those executives in the entertainment industry still has a very traditional mindset depsite they start to make use of the internet to sell their content.  Why don’t they open up the market and make the content available to the worldwide audience?  Afterall, the advantage of the internet is its boarderless characteristics.  They could reach out to a massive number of customers in a very cost effective way.  Payment can be easily made by credit card or Paypal so why do they have to limit the service to the US?

Of course one of the considerations is to protect the local TV station as they have paid large sums to get the rights to broadcast the programs.  But with the internet, the studios or labels could reach the end customers directly.

The site claims that they have 135 million users and believe that may be one third of them will pay for the downloads or rental.  But by blocking international users to pay for the service, they just give them an excuse to continue the practice of illegal downloads.