Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave. The free? A new web service in the US offering thousands of films and TV shows to watch online for nothing. The brave? Anyone still selling or renting movies in a country where spending on videos and DVDs is falling faster than the value of investment bank shares.

The latest development comes from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), an offshoot of Amazon that over the past two decades has accumulated cast and plot details for virtually every film and TV programme ever made. Now it is moving from writing about movies to screening them. IMDb recently made available over 6,000 film and TV episodes to view at the click of a mouse – and has announced its intention to eventually offer its American users every movie and TV programme ever made, without charging a dime. A service to British customers may not be too far behind.

You need a decent broadband internet connection to watch the streamed movies and, of course, there are adverts sprinkled throughout. Video and sound quality are far below DVD, with the soft, blocky images looking about as good as an old VHS recording. The films on offer are hardly box office dynamite either, comprising mostly ageing classics, such as Raising Arizona, and B-movies.

So why is the new IMDb service such a big deal? Because when the price drops to nothing, the popularity of these sites explodes: according to ComScore, an internet research company, Americans watch 10 billion online videos at free websites such as YouTube every month. If anything, the UK is even more fanatical about film, viewing more online videos per capita (118 monthly) than any other country in the world.

Hollywood has been slow to recognise these new digital realities. Studios are busy pushing their own high-tech solutions – expensive HD Blu-ray discs and copy-protected digital downloads – that leave little room for giving away films for nothing abroad. For now, it seems UK film fans are stuck in the dearest seats.