DVD streaming ‘rental’ service Zediva just shut down to comply with US court order; see the attached email.  While it was clear from the beginning (to me) that their approach to licensing the rights wouldn’t work for very long, it is a pity to, once again, see innovative ideas fail because the rights-holders aren’t ready for it - or shall we say, aren’t ready to give these options to consumers.

Why would we even need something like Zediva if everyone could have access to a huge movie / TV library ‘in the cloud’ at very low prices and at very high quality, based on bundling / freemium / upselling scenarios? Why isn’t Netflix available on a global scale, based on a variety of cloud-centric business models? Would anyone bother to download a bit-torrent file if the movie would cost 50 cents (or other local equivalents) to legally obtain, at high quality?