Movie Anywhere's Screen Pass lets you lend your friends your digital movie purchases

Are you one of those people who still purchases movies digitally and keeps a carefully curated collection? Well, if so, we've got some good news for you. Starting today, Movie Anywhere's Screen Pass service enters open beta, enabling you to start sharing access to your collection with friends and family.

You still need an invite to begin using Screen Pass, but you can request one here.

Some caveats — The service is pretty simple, but comes with some minor restrictions baked in. For one, Movie Anywhere says "over 6,000 titles" are compatible with Screen Pass, and you can only lend out up to three movies per month. The recipient has 14 days to stream the film (and it's streaming only, no downloads), and 72 hours to finish once they've started watching. Movies from both digital retailers like Amazon, and physical Blu-ray and DVDs are compatible — though with the latter you need to have the digital redemption code included in the box. You can only redeem the code from a physical copy once every six months, presumably to prevent them showing up in places they shouldn't.

No war of the stars — Furthermore, there's one really big omission in the Screen Pass catalog: No Disney, Marvel Studios, or Star Wars films can be shared via the service. Studios get to decide which films are available for sharing, and apparently Disney said nah. That's not really a surprise given the company is pushing its own Disney+ streaming service that's not even a year old. Disney is also in the process of slowly clawing back all of its content — like Netflix did — so that it can eventually offer it exclusively through its own platform.

Exceptions notwithstanding, Screen Pass could prove a pretty cool way to bum off that one friend you have who still buys lots of movies.