Sony Pictures Launches Movie Clip Download Service

Sony Pictures Entertainment is launching a movie-clip download service on Grouper, a video-sharing website it bought in August for $65 million.

Grouper’s ScreenBites channel will let movie fans watch clips and embed them on blogs, as well as personal MySpace profile pages.

Several blockbuster movies feature in the clip service, such as Taxi Driver, Jerry Maguire and On the Waterfront. More films and TV shows are expected to be added soon.

The service is free, but designed to promote the sale of DVDs and digital downloads from which the clips are taken.

The use of copyright-protected material on video websites like YouTube and subsequent legal difficulties has hit the Grouper website. Universal Music has begun legal proceedings against the website for letting users upload videos of the record label’s artists.