Martyn Drake's Blog

We all know that Universal Pictures (UK) are not selling any new titles to LOVEFiLM, Britain’s biggest online rental company, due to a dispute involving rental fees paid to Universal. So therefore I was almightily tickled by the following when I noticed the following whilst checking Awstats.

From the logs of this very blog:

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:14:58:35 +0100] “GET /2010/02/12/universal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 21940 “http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBS_enGB339&ei=3PxGTOr7K9W6jAe5zpH1Bg&q=kick-ass+not+available+on+lovefilm&start=10&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; GTB6.5)”

Let’s confirm where that IP originates from by querying RIPE’s database:

oot@host1 [~]# whois 213.219.37.67
[Querying whois.ripe.net]
[whois.ripe.net]
% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf

% Note: This output has been filtered.
% To receive output for a database update, use the “-B” flag.

% Information related to ’213.219.37.0 – 213.219.37.255′

inetnum: 213.219.37.0 – 213.219.37.255
netname: TCUNIVERSALP
descr: TeleCity Group Customer – Universal Pictures
country: GB
remarks: In case of abuse please email; nic.admin@ge.com
admin-c: TA515-RIPE
tech-c: TT556-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: TELECITY-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered

Are Universal Pictures looking to re-evaluate their relationship with LOVEFiLM? I’ve also noticed these two other queries coming from the same IP:

root@host1 [~]# grep 213.219.37.67 /usr/local/apache/domlogs/drake.org.uk | grep -i “google”

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:12:59:36 +0100] “GET /2010/02/12/universal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 21940 “http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CCMQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drake.org.uk%2F2010%2F02%2F12%2Funiversal-pictures-bullying-the-market-yet-again%2F&rct=j&q=lovefilm%20universal%20kick%20ass&ei=GOFGTObqJMOOjAfl1YC3Bw&usg=AFQjCNFf7NDe2bBMA1464YZ1qzTbiim_EA” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.99 Safari/533.4″

Translation: “lovefilm universal kick-ass”

213.219.37.67 – - [21/Jul/2010:14:44:52 +0100] “GET /2010/03/03/glorious-inglourious-basterds-universal-lovefilm/ HTTP/1.1″ 200 19927 “http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBS_enGB339&q=kick+ass+on+lovefilm%3F&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; GTB6.5)”

Translation: “kick-ass on lovefilm”

So .. just which people (different user-agents you’ll note) doing the searching and what of LOVEFiLM? Right now, if you want Universal’s latest releases via the rental market your choices are (to the best of my knowledge): Blockbuster, iTunes and Blinkbox.

I’ll admit it right now that I switched from LOVEFiLM to Blockbuster because there were titles that I want to see. I’d rather be a hypocrite than a pirate and resort to downloading them from BitTorrent or similar – and Universal do make and distribute some fantastic films – but I still say they are still too aggressive when it comes to distribution. Unfortunately I can’t afford two rental services, so Blockbuster won out this time. If Universal were to start offering titles on LOVEFiLM again, I’d be happy to return.