You may have seen this summer’s blockbuster hit, Iron Man.  More recently, you may have purchased the brand new Blu-Ray disc for HD enjoyment in your home theater.  This title has been touted as a technological breakthrough, as it’s one of the first to employ “BD-Live” content, or active content that allows internet-connected Blu-Ray players to play your movie alongside active, Internet-based information.  Think of a web site that provides content coordinated with the movie itself.  You can chat with others who are viewing the same disc at the same time, or, in the case of Iron Man, a quiz game that would see how closely you were paying attention to the movie.

Upon launch, Paramount, the distributor of the title, severely underestimated the number of fans who would buy the disc on day one and run home to enjoy it as soon as the popcorn was ready.  Though the number of viewers remains unknown, the onslaught was far too much for Paramount to handle.  Fans were subjected to download times of up to an hour before they could even play the movie.  Making matters worse, most players are pre-configured to automatically download BD-Live content before even playing the movie.

Paramount, to its credit, owned up to its shortfall and corrected the problem pretty quickly.  The company’s honest explanation was also nice to see.  However, this poses a bigger question – what happens if Paramount decides someday that keeping the Iron Man server online is not a good business decision?  Of course, we don’t know yet, but there’s certainly a risk that you could have some delay in watching a movie at home, if not (ominous tone here) lose access to that disc altogether.

Time will certainly tell.  I would hope that the multibillion-dollar movie studios would consider such scenarios in their planning.  However, as our content becomes more Internet-dependent, even content that you think you “own” after paying to purchase a physical piece of media could degrade or become inaccessible in the future if the creator has built in a reliance on its own servers.

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