Sunday, August 24, 2008

What happens when geeks enter a movie rental store

Scene: BigFlicks, a movie rental store in Punjabi Bagh, Delhi
Three geeky people enter a partially crowded store. First person is wearing kurta, jeans and flip-flops; second is wearing t-shirt and baggy pants; third is wearing creased shirt and jeans. The store starts getting empty - it is hard to say whether it is because of these three people, they looked quite normal.
Geek 1 (to the salesman): Sir, are these movies for sale?
Salesman smells business and whips out a pamphlet and starts walking towards them with a widest grin he could manage.
Salesman (while walking towards them): No sir, I'm afraid not, but we have plans which are impossible to refuse, if you will have a look at... (geek 2 cuts him in between)
Geek 2: Hey do you have a movie 'Gunda'?
Salesman: Ummm...
Geek 2: Hero of the film was Mithun da aka Prabhuji?
Salesman: No, sir
Geek 2: Loha?
Salesman: No sir
Geek 2: Cheetah?
Salesman (desperately wiping his brows): No sir, but we have more titles than any other rental store across India, now if you could look here... (geek 3's turn to speak)
Geek 3: Actually we don't want to look at this, we have a 2 Mbps connection at our house, we download all the movies we need. There is a website from where you can buy the movies cheap for downloading
Geek 2: Of course you understand that they are DRM encrypted, you can't watch it on any other computer
Salesman smiles.
Geek 1: Moreover, I think this is going to be the future of movie rentals, I wonder why you aren't switching over to that mode yourself.
Geek 3: My these two friends are actively working on DRM technologies, soon movie rental is going to become an online game without any threat of piracy.
Salesman: Right sir!
Geek 1: OK see you then
The three gentlemen walk out and the crowd starts trickling back in.