Apple is reportedly planning to get into the movie rental business and license its digital rights management technology, and it could announce a deal within the next few weeks.
Both the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are reporting that Twentieth Century Fox Film has signed a deal with Apple to let iTunes users download new movies and keep them for an unspecified (but likely short) period of time.
Both reports say Apple CEO Steve Jobs will make this news part of his Macworld keynote on January 14.
The reports also says that as part of the deal, Fox is also going to use Apple"s FairPlay digital rights management technology on its DVD releases, which would allow DVD buyers to rip their movies onto their computers using iTunes and also move those store-bought movies to iPods and iPhones.