Report: Apple inks online film-rental deal with News Corp’s 20th Century Fox "Apple has signed News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio to a new online video-on-demand service in a deal that could change the way people pay for online film content," Matthew Garrahan and Kevin Allison report for The Financial Times.

"The agreement will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple’s iTunes platform for a limited time, according to a person familiar with the situation," Garrahan and Allison report.

"The Apple-Fox deal, likely to be announced at the Macworld show on January 14, has the potential to transform film distribution. Apart from letting people rent online, Apple will also for the first time extend its FairPlay digital rights management system beyond its own products," Garrahan and Allison report. "A digital file protected by FairPlay will be included in new Fox DVD releases, enabling film content to be transferred or 'ripped' from the disc to a computer and video iPod."

"Apple, whose shares hit $200 for the first time yesterday in intra-day trade, is understood to have been in talks with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros about making their new releases available on iTunes to buy and rent," Garrahan and Allison report."

Labels: apple, itunes

  ¶ posted by Jimmie Geddes, Editor @ 12/27/2007 07:18:00 AM