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.

Comments

Re:First Sale

[seeken]

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.

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