Glickman, unscripted

After this morning's panel at the NAB Futures Summit, I had a quick hallway conversation with MPAA chief Dan Glickman. I'm paraphrasing here, since I wasn't taking notes:

Me: When do you think studios are going to start selling digital versions of movies that people can download and own?

Glickman: I think they're looking at it seriously, but there's still some reluctance. It will happen, because I think the movie industry doesn't want to have the same thing happen to it that happened to the music industry.

Me: You mean what RIAA head Mitch Bainwol was just talking about, with the industry's revenues dropping by a third?

Glickman: Yes.

Me: But the interesting thing is, while the studios are offering rentals on services like Movielink, they're still not selling digital movies that people can own, like the music industry is doing with iTunes. I mean, there's no legal way to buy a digital copy of a movie that doesn't disappear or deactivate after a certain period of time.

Glickman: Well, for anti-trust reasons, they can't talk about those kinds of business issues at the MPAA, but I would watch Disney and Fox. I think they'll be the first to move on that.