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Speaking to the issue at hand here, a while back, I 'rented' a clip from a website. I had to download a certificate with it that expired thirty days after I 'rented' the download. Sure enough, 30 days later, poof, I couldn't access it. The price of the rental was $9.95 and they had some fairly intense restrictions on the clip to prevent me from copying it.



Sounds like DRM (Digital Rights Management), or some variation thereof...by and large, this system is fairly unpopular with a lot of surfers for obvious reasons.

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I agree wholeheartedly with this kind of porn sale. The producer gets paid, the license is respected, the price was reasonable and the clip actually worked.



As it should be...personally, I'm not a fan of rentals per se. If you buy a DVD or magazine, it's always there, and if you don't like it you can sell it on and recoup some of your outlay. The other drawback with rentals is that you might have a burning desire to see that one particular clip again after the rental has expired...so now you're paying for it again. Using the same scenario with a DVD (or even Download-to-own clips), if you watch the same scene 3-4 times, then the DVD has effectively paid for itself.

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Why aren't more people doing this? Is the licensing software expensive?



My guess would be outright apathy coupled with sheer bone-idleness. Look at the amount of studios that would rather take a pittance of a highly unfavourable percentage from a VOD site rather than go through the (largely non-existent) hassle of setting up their own VOD service.