SPEEDCINE.COM BECOMES FIRST WEBSITE
TO TRACK LEGAL ONLINE MOVIES INTERNATIONALLY
January 11th, 2010 – New York: CEO Reid Rosefelt announced today that SpeedCine.com, a comprehensive database of legal feature films available for streaming or downloading on US computers, will expand to the international market today, serving every computer user worldwide with an internet connection.
Previously, SpeedCine exclusively tracked US-only sites like iTunes, Amazon VOD, Netflix, Hulu and Crackle, among others. Starting today the site will offer access to UK sites like iTunes UK, Blinkbox, JoiningtTheDocs and Indie Movies Online. In addition, SpeedCine has already made deals with all six iTunes stores that handle video, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. Many of the sites partially or fully indexed by SpeedCine, including The Auteurs, SnagFilms, IndiePix, AMC B-Movies, NFB, YouTube, Babelgum, Joost, Jaman, and EZTakes, hold international rights to many of their films. The Stockholm-based Ameibo has committed to working with SpeedCine, and Rosefelt has deals in the works with numerous world sites, and will further extend the global reach of the site throughout the coming year.
SpeedCine only displays online movies that are viewable in the user’s country, by determining location through the user’s IP address. SpeedCine’s films can also be sorted by language, making the site beneficial for all of its international customers and content providers.
SpeedCine hosts no actual content itself, and only provides links to legal content providers, sorted into the categories of Free-With-Ads, Rental, Purchase and Subscription. One of the most popular features on the beta site is its ability to easily display either “Free” or “All Movies.” There are currently 23,000 unique films in the database and over 80,000 different links to content providers. Rosefelt expects to index over 50,000 films by the fall.
While there are hundreds of sites that can direct online movie-watchers to free films--even the most recent releases—Rosefelt believes that “free” is a misnomer for such sites. “A computer virus is like a vampire,” he says. “You have to invite it in. We all know better than to click to suspicious links in our email, but file-sharers recklessly open up their computers to the entire world. ‘Free’ streaming sites are likewise very detrimental to the health of a computer, as every repairman knows. As a database and not a search engine, SpeedCine directs people only to secure sites where free and paid films pose no harm and can be watched within moments, as opposed to the “click-and-wait interminably” experience provided by illegal downloads.”
Rosefelt believes that the studios and the independents need to open up their thinking about the way the web works internationally. “Most American movie websites are limited contractually to U.S rights,” says Rosefelt, “but the internet doesn’t care about borders. Despite a site like Hulu’s diligence in blocking access, it is still extremely popular in places like the UK and Canada. Locally-targeted ads could be sold in all the countries where there are eyeballs watching the movies, but these potential profits are never realized. By not exploring ways to coordinate online distribution internationally--every rights-holder in the world loses.”
As a 30-year veteran film publicist who recently handled production publicity on ‘Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire,’ Rosefelt sees great marketing potential in taking an international approach. “Shortly after I quietly opened a beta version of the site in August, I ended up on the front page of the MSN site in Japan,” he says. “Why not take advantage of extraordinary opportunities like that? Now that people everywhere can use it, SpeedCine is finally set up to benefit from the global nature of the web.”
