[bboyan]

You can download this as a DRM-free file with a simple curl command. Most people probably wouldn't bother, however, because Stripe makes it so easy to just watch directly your browser, no need to go through the hassle of downloading anything or needing the hard drive space.

This is a great example of content providers finally beating piracy by providing a simpler method of content distribution. I hope more movies come out like this.

[thirdsun]

I'd like to agree with you, but the easier than pirating part of your comment only seems to apply if you're from the US (correct me, if it's available in other countries). I'd really like to pay, but it seems I have to resort to other sources.

Besides other, admittedly far from mainstream movies did this a lot better - "Sleepwalk with me" or last years highly praised "Computer Chess" offered a DRM-free, 1080p download and a streaming option, both without region-lock and for a reasonable price. Still an exception unfortunately.

[azakai]

I totally agree with you that this is far from perfect. It's just in one market, and could be more convenient even there. But, the impressive thing is they scrambled to do this in just a few days - it's amazing anything has been launched at all!

I suspect they really wanted as much of a launch as possible by Christmas, for symbolic reasons. (I think that was the original intended release date?). Kudos to them for managing to achieve a fairly significant launch.

[tombrossman]

I don't see how providing this to a tiny minority on a global network is 'beating piracy' at all. I'm outside the US and happy to pay to watch. I even have a US credit card ready. What are my options now?