(Excerpted from The New York Times Technology Section)

After years of avoiding it, Hollywood studios are preparing to let people download and buy electronic copies of movies over the Internet, much as record labels now sell songs for 99 cents through Apple Computer's iTunes music store and other online services.

The studios have been working to confront the business challenges of digital sales. Those initiatives gained new urgency on June 27 when the Supreme Court ruled that companies distributing software that allows users to trade pirated copies of audio and video files are liable for copyright infringement only if they induce users to break the law.

Sony is converting 500 movie titles to a digital format that can be downloaded and sold. Universal Pictures ... is preparing nearly 200 titles for digital online sale. And Warner Brothers ... says it has already digitized most of its library of 5,000 films and will start selling some of them online later this year.

The studios have strong incentive to make sure they offer consumers legal options: the rapid adoption of high-speed Internet connections is making the trading of pirated copies online easier and more widespread.

Not surprisingly, the videos that people most want to download are those that Hollywood is most shy about making available online.

Studios do not want to undercut box office receipts and DVD sales for hit movies, and TV networks do not want to put popular shows online, which might allow more viewers to skip the commercials. CNN just moved most of its online video content from a paid service to its free Web site, with a commercial in front of each clip.

And even lengthier programming is gaining appeal. About 700,000 people watched the season premier episode of WB's "Jack and Bobby" through video streaming when it was on AOL last fall.