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Can I Lend DVDs?
tramm asks: "I just -purchased- a DVD from Hastings that has some rather
ominous wording on the license 'agreement': ANY UNATHORIZED COPYING, HIRING, LENDING OR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE OF THIS DVD IS ILLEGAL AND SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION. What happened to the right of first sale? Can I no longer lend my movies to friends without fearing the MPAA's wrath? Or is this another overstepping of consumers' rights that will become more routine once UCITA becomes 'the law'?" And people wonder why I don't have a DVD player. Now I can point to a reason why, although I'm excited about the technology, I just can't get too thrilled about my rights to use it.
This is lending in the legal sense as in "rent or lease" ... it doesn't mean giving it to a buddy to watch on Saturday night. If you charge a fee for people to view or borrow the movie, you will be required to pay royaltys to the film's studio. Things are a bit fuzzy here as well because you also owe royaltys if you want to do a public or large-party showing of a film. You must rent a special copy for public showing that usually costs between 50 and 1000 dollars each time you show it.
Right of first sale that people are talking about is your right to resell the copy; however whoever you sell it to is still bound by the restrictions on public showing and lending.
~GoRK
I've seen similar statements, without the disclaimer for the USA, in other books published in the UK. As I understand it, there is no "First Sale Doctrine" in the UK.
I'm not quite sure what the legal meaning of the statement is supposed to be. Lending libraries in Europe appear to be treated differently by copyright law.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The Orem (Utah) Public Library lends DVDs to anyone with a card -- free. A few of the local video stores rent them. Obviously, lending is OK under some circumstances.
Weston
Tweet, tweet.
It seems to be restricting unauthorized lending. I'm not sure exactly that means ANY lending at all. I could lend the DVD out to people for $20 and that would indeed probably be illegal. However I'm not sure this restricts just lending it to a friend for free for a night or something. From the short lines of the text that we have here this doesn't sound much different than the rules that have been applied to VHS for ages.
Currently, DVD is primarily priced at sell-through prices--MSRP goes from $14.99 to about $34.99 at most. When Blockbuster or your local video chain buys dozens of copies in bulk and rents them to consumers, the studios are losing out on getting a cut of that profit. This is why we can expect rental pricing for DVDs to come into effect some time in the future.
As far as what does make it legal for you to buy a title and then rent it out, I am not sure. However, it is more than just the initial pricing from the studio. You can buy a copy of The Sixth Sense on VHS from 800.com, but it's going to cost you $89.95. And while that's the same price Blockbuster pays for the same tape, paying the premium price still won't give you the right to rent it out for a fee. It doesn't matter whether you're paying the rental price or the $21.95 sell-through for the DVD.
Does anyone have an idea of what makes it legal for a rental outlet to charge you for the right to borrow a tape?
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What I should have said was nothing.
The first rule of dvd club is ...
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The VCR tapes that you rent at the local video store often cost the store much more than the ones that they can sell to customers. Typically, the studios initially make tapes available to rental shops at a much higher price per copy and then later sell them to consumers at a lower rate.
There are exceptions where the studios want to get a whole lot of copies of a popular movie out, so all the copies are sold cheaply, but for limited interest releases (I had to wait 6 weeks after _The Truth About Cats and Dogs_ came out for rental before I could actually buy a copy as a present for my wife who, inexplicably, really liked the movie), the two stage release schedule is common.
The bottom line is, you can loan it to your friends and family, but you can't rent it for a fee. You would have to contract with the distributor and pay the higher for rent cost if you had the intention of renting them out.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Of course you can lend the DVD, because the MPAA is not going to go after the grass-roots level consumer. Legality, whatever it actually is, gives way to reality. They know where their bread is buttered, and they certainly do not want to injure the guy who does buy the actual DVD.
Of course your friend who borrows it will be sued mercilessly, and will have a special "Region Code" tatooed on his ass as a punishment.
-L
If you buy a book, you can sell that book to a used book store and they can sell it again. when you bought the book, that was the first sale, and the publishers rights to place restrictions on the sale of that book ended at tht point. Note that this does not mean that you can legally pirate it, only that the publisher can't forbid reselling, etc.
Incidentally the guy asking the question can certianly lend a DVD to his friend. The unauthorized lending would be if blockbuster was renting them, without paying the royalty fees or whatever they use to screw the rental places.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
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