These are ridiculous examples, except for the escort.
Says who? Renting gives you usage for a limited time, it doesn’t mean what you rent has to conform to some arbitrary standard of quality.
I do agree with that part. But there’s probably some fine print somewhere that covers these things already.
I guess the real issue for the OP would be whether it means you will rent fewer movies, because I don’t see how the studios doing this is preventing you from buying movies your were just renting in the first place.
I’m curious how this is being implemented? I thought rental shops just bought movies retail and then rented them out. How then is there a “rental version”? Are rental stores being offered some special price to offer the lesser version by the studios?
Yes. First, video rental stores aren’t supposed to be buying regular retail copies. They’re supposed to be buying higher-priced copies that reimburse the studios for the larger audience that will supposedly view them.
Second, Blockbuster signs deals with the studios. They help finance movies in exchange for getting discounts on future pruchases of rental copies and in some cases, exclusive rental rights for a period ahead of other venues. Part of these deals are they have special “rental” copies that don’t include the same features as retail copies.
Do you have a cite? I could easily be wrong, but I thought the copyright laws were such that once you had bought a retail copy of a disk, there wasn’t anything preventing you from renting it out for a fee, irregardless of the potential sizes of the audience that might take advantage.
Maybe I’m just stupid, but “Bonus” pretty much implies “Premium” to me.
This was last true in 1998. Since then, movie studios have sold rental shops the same retail disc (for the same price) that you can get on Amazon or Best Buy or what have you. “Rental Copies” also regularly carry the same price as their retail counterparts. If there is a price difference, it’s typically in a range of $3-$5.
Interestingly, the first cite I saw to support this was an earlier SDBM thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-402985.html
I do know that when I play a DVD or blu-ray at home, the first thing I see is that it may not be exhibited in public or for pay. That would seem to suggest that I can’t rent it out either, though it’s hard to imagine how they’d enforce that.
When in some cases “content” means “ability for people with disabilities to use the product”? Well, yes.
Yeah, my example wasn’t a good one. Enderw24 and Eyebrows of Doom make better arguments.
I think most of the posters in that thread are supporting what I said, that there isn’t any way for studios to charge extra for a DVD if the purchaser intends to rent it. Some have apparently explored exclusivity schemes with rental companies, but in general, it looks like if I want to start a video rental store, I can just go buy a bunch of retail copies from Walmart and charge people to borrow them.
My cites are personal. I knew two people who ran rental stores and they both told me they had to pay more for their rental copies than I paid for my home viewing copies. I also used to rent movies for a prison. We had to pay a special higher rental rate because we were considered an institution. Most videos that were sold for rental were only legal for “regular” rental viewing not institutional viewing where dozens or even hundreds of people might watch them.
That said, two caveats. The first is that the studios are pretty limited in their ability to enforce these rules. If Joe’s Video Shack goes out and buy his DVD’s at the local Best Buy, he’s probably never going to be caught. And my personal knowledge of this dates back to the nineties - Justin_Bailey may be correct that the laws have changed since then.
The First Sale Doctrine, which is codified in the Copyright Act of 1976 as 17 U.S.C. § 109, says that if you legally buy “a particular copy or phonorecord,” you have the right to “sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.”
However, Section 109(b) explains that “sell or otherwise dispose of” does not mean “disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending” if you are doing it for profit.
So renting out a DVD for profit is infringing if you don’t get the copyright owner’s permission. And many of them will only give you permission if you pay a premium for it.
The movie theatres are the ones selling the ads in the theatre. Heck the studios are paying them to put up ads.
I’ve never seen an ad on a dvd except for trailers for other movies and PSAs about how piracy is bad, m’kay?
Isn’t it Blockbuster and not the studio that is greedy in this scenario. After all, nothing is preventing Blockbuster from just buying the regular DVDs and then renting them out.
But no, they said to the studios “we want you to sell us DVDs for less than you sell them to other people.” And the studios said “hmm…, that doesn’t make much sense. How about we’ll give you DVDs with less on them for less money? And we’re not going to do more than the bare minimum to create these different versions so the user experience will be full of suck. Do you really want to do that to your customers?”
And Blockbuster said “yeah, ok, that’ll let us keep charging the same amount for the rentals and yet make more profit. Sounds good to me and I’m sure the customers won’t notice.”
So the anger seems misplaced to me.
It is not. This exception has never been extended to VHS/DVD.
This is why video rental stores were all over the place and album rental stores were not. See NEBG v. Weinstein where this was litigated in favor of rental companies for DVDs specifically.
Ah, I forgot that phonorecords are audio only.
I suspect having special “rental” discs with limited functionality is also an anti-piracy measure. After all, it’d be easy to just rent a DVD, rip all the data from it, and then return the original disc once you have your own copy made. If the rental copies are different from the retail copies, at least somebody will be paying full price for discs they own.
Of course, it’s all pretty much moot since everyone’s moving away from movie rentals and toward on-demand video streaming.
I don’t think this is correct. AFAIK, rental places like Blockbuster, Redbox, Netflix, etc. pay a fee to the studio for every DVD rental.
[
](Blockbuster (retailer) - Wikipedia)
I looked for concrete up-to-date info, but obviously companies are gonna want to keep that info from their competitors, so I had no luck. (I didn’t try hard tho; I got no real dog in this fight.)
I never laugh at work, so now everyone knows I’m goofing off. Well played. I’m just going to put my head on my desk for a minute or two until I can get my work face back on.
They do, but they are not required to. They do so because they have agreements with the studios that makes it financially beneficial to do so, not because they are required by law to get a license.
That particular provision applies only to musical recordings and software.
The incredibly convoluted sentence you’re quoting starts with
(emphasis mine)
You really can go into Walmart, buy some DVDs, and rent them to people. No special license or legal agreements required.