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Steve Jobs fighting for $9.99 iTunes movie downloads?

He could be just trying for smoother ad copy for all we know, but Stevie J has been quite the staunch defender of the flat 99 cents per song, $9.99 an album, and $1.99 a TV episode price points we've come to associate with the iTunes experience. Now, according to Forbes, Steve Jobs is supposedly bumping heads with movie studio execs, trying to set a flat $9.99 price for digital movie downloads -- a feature that Apple purportedly will launch by the end of the year. The offer, which pays studios a 70 percent wholesale rate -- the same offered for TV shows -- has been "flatly rejected" by studio execs, who want the ability to price their popular movies higher than other titles. "Insiders" are saying that Apple is showing some signs of weakness, and might succumb to a $9.99-$19.99 range, but we can't think consumers would quite jump at that "deal" with QVGA versions of pics that were once purposed for the big screen. That is supposing that Apple will stick with QVGA, but it still seems a little silly to pit even a VGA $20 download against a $25-$30 HD DVD or Blu-ray disc. Call us old fashioned.