Peerflix Launches P2P DVD Sharing Service

Dotnaught writes "Peerflix has offically launched, ending a 12 month beta test. The company manages the peer-to-peer trading of physical DVDs (with CDs and videogames coming soon) by mail. As the article in InformationWeek suggests, while such trades may be legal under the first-sale doctrine of U.S. Copyright Act, content owners won't be pleased -- discs are easy to copy and there's ample precedent to suggest users will dupe discs before trading them."

Comments

Asks about piracy

[sdaug]

I've been using Peerflix through the beta test. Every time I receive a disc, it asks me if it appears to be pirated. I assume they would then take action against the sender if this is the case, but I don't know for sure.

RTFA

[magicchex]

"A 99-cent transaction fee is charged for each DVD acquired, and there's a $4.95 signup fee that includes five free trades. To each trade, add the cost of 37 cents for postage; there's also the cost of ink and a piece of paper that will become the self-printed disc mailer."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

My own Peerflix experience...

[Rageon]

I've been using Peerflix for a couple months and have been relatively satisfied with it. It's proven to be a good way to get rid of all those old DVDs that would have either gathered dust for years or fetched me 3 bucks at a pawn shop. I've gotten plenty of movies as gifts or free throw-ins with things that I never wanted in the first place, or others that I bought but later realized I never watched. Frankly, the $1 it costs to upgrade a crappy movie to something else is well worth it.

I've only had 1 problem so far. I got a copy of Night of the Living Dead that was scrathed to hell. When it arrived, it played, so I confirmed it. Of course, when I played it, I found that a couple minutes would not play. But because I had let a week or so pass between receipt and claim, I was out of luck. I wrote about 5 emails to their CS about this, and got 1 response, which really had nothing to do with my complaint. But otherwise nearly all the movies I've gotten are in very good condition.

The bad part is that a lot of movies are technically "available", but might only be in the hands of 1 or 2 other users, neither of which actually intends to share their copy, but has it listed for one reason or another. So it sometimes takes a few weeks (or more) to get some movies. Also, maybe half the movies I listed have been requested by others. But then again, I didn't expect the demand to be extremely high for that copy of The Mask someone gave me. Generally, good movies get requested fairly quickly.

If you have a specific movie in mind that you want right away, Peerflix isn't the best solution. But if you have a list of 20 or so movies you would like to get eventually, it's a nice service.

My only other complaint would be that when your "Peerbux" goes to zero, it automatically charges another $5 worth to you, rather than waiting until you actually want to buy something. This is obviously a nice way for the company to get a few bucks extra from everyone in the end, but it strikes me as shadey.

As far a Piracy goes, well, it's really no different than renting movies or using Netflix, so I think it's a non-issue as it pertains to Peerflix specifically.

Re:Lying, cheating bastards

[E8086]

Can't forget the FBI anti-piracy warning now being printed ON the disks, yes they ruin the woderful disk art are by printing the anti-piracy seal on the disk itself. "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning: Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law" yes, I know that and since I paid for it and own it I'm only going to make the authorized copy for my iPod. When are they going to realize that when someone buys something they're not going to turn around and give it away? The "pirates" who distribute it are the ones who got it from industry insiders before the please don't copy parts were added.

Re:bah... we already have a trading medium

[great throwdini]

you get the full purchase price minus a $1 service fee and the Amazon seller fee.

Uh, you get the sale price less the Amazon seller fee and a $1 service charge. It's not based off the original purchase price, as resold DVDs typically don't sell for anywhere near original cost to you. And who gets the extra amount Amazon reimburses for shipping (which is treated separately from its fees)?

Whomever is behind replaylink.com is basically printing out the mailer and charging you for that nicety. Why not sell it yourself and not pay the fee? It's pretty easy to list items for sale on Amazon, with no need to share information with another third-party.

It also seems a bit shady vis-a-vis Amazon's resale policy, what with a seller listing items for trade that aren't in its direct possession ... neat idea, but it basically introduces a second middle-man (in addition to Amazon) to the transaction between true buyer and true seller.

Re:Lying, cheating bastards

[Eq 7-2521]

In my experience this does usually work, but it does depend on both the player and how stringently the DVD was authored. I have had some DVDs that are extremely locked down where I cannot skip past certain things no matter what buttons I push (on my Panasonic DVD-R30). Even when one of the buttons does work (menu, next chapter, FF (4 times to get it to 16x and then still some waiting), title), it's still irritating to have to have tried all those combinations just to skip some stupid screen or advertisement. Thankfully, many cheap DVD players (like the jWin something or other I have upstairs) generally ignore the Prohibited User Options on the disc.

Re:RIAA files suit against Peerflix

[AstroDrabb]

It would be the MPAA and not the RIAA. However, I don't see how the MPAA could win. PeerFlix is the same exact thing as EBay. Peerflix is just the middle-man handling the LEGAL transaction between two citizens exercising their right of First-sale.

The only option the MPAA would have would seem to be to bribe the corrupted politicians to pass a new law banning First-sale doctrine.

I just signed up for the service to give it a try. I have some DVD's that I just don't watch anymore. There is no legal reason why I should not be able to sell/trade them for different movies that were also legally purchased.

The Peerflix system makes you put in the UPC code on the back of the DVD box to be able to list it for potential trade. You can't just type in a name of a DVD and say "hey, lets trade". I think the system is actually pretty cool. You cannot trade copied movies. If you do, you get banned. So all of the DVD's were legally purchased and the MPAA made their money off of them.

I personally think it is pretty sad that the reaction to this type of service would be that "people are bad and will just copy and send". I am tired of the MPAA/RIAA assuming that I am a criminal. I will be happy to never give them another penny of my money again.

Been there, done that...

[NetDanzr]

Back in the days, I used to swap computer games on UGTZ.com. Later they added books and movies swaps, and I participated in both. By the time I completed my collection and left the site, I haven't heard of anybody suing them for anything.

Re:Has any company tried mailing audio-cds before?

[cpt kangarooski]

There would be greater difficulty in doing so. There is an exception in the statutory first sale doctrine, which prohibits renting sound recordings and computer software (other than console games).

While you can just go out and rent DVDs as you like, you'd have to argue that you were actually selling the CDs and that it wasn't a convoluted rental scheme.

Libraries have an exception, but not just anyone is a library.

Re:I don't see the advantage

[AstroDrabb]

What you are suggesting won't work. You don't get CREDIT for your trade-ins until they are received by the person(s) you sent them to and they rate if the DVD(s) were working. Once you have CREDIT or peerbux you can then request a DVD be sent to you.

Re:What is this easy DVD copying method that they

[evilviper]

(I'm assuming that we don't want further compression because it degrades the image which looks like shit on a big screen TV)

Don't blame the problems you've had with some particular crappy codec on "compression" as a whole.

Using libavcodec, I can re-encode a DVD to MPEG-2 at 1/2 the size or sometimes less. With MPEG-4, halve that again (1/4 the size) but won't play on most DVD players. And that's all without artifacts, without quality degredation of any kind (even on a "big screen"). In fact, the copies usually look better than the original, thanks to very good noise reduction.

I must admit I find it both funny and sad that Hollywood will spend hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie, then use cheap-crap encoders to churn out a DVD that looks like badly scratched-up film with compression artifacts. Everything from "Gettysburg" to Terminator 2: Ultra Super Duper Mega Edition (For Real This Time)".

Re:First Sale

[Mr2001]

They argue that the First Sale Doctrine does not apply to them because the software was never sold, only licensed.

District courts in California and Texas have disagreed

Specifically, the ruling decreed that software purchases be treated as sales transactions, rather than explicit license agreements. In other words, the court ruling argued that Californian consumers should have the same rights they would enjoy under existing copyright legislation when buying a CD or a book.

If you're in Missouri, though.. watch out.

Re:What is this easy DVD copying method that they

[Dare nMc]

your post is valid, I am not debating that for the average person you are 100% correct.

However, I have a 42" plasma HDTV connected to the buffalo linktheater. I have been ripping all my DVD's to divx format and placing them on my hard disk (which is streamed to the linktheater, when it requests.)
when I rip to divx format, I do 2 pass encoding, to a VBR of 2kbps, this makes a 2 hour DVD about 2 Gig. for everything, put blue sky shots, it is impossible to tell on this TV the difference from the 2 gig divx file, and the original DVD (you can see a few artifects in the blending of almost solid colors like the sky when it covers the entire screen, I am told their is a mencoder option to fix this also.) My comparison is a upsambling DVD to 1080i vs the Divx rip upsampled the same, both through this same player.

exactly the same as mp3's this is so much more convient, than the DVD's. I have a 300 Gig USB hard disk ($120), so it easily holds about 150hours of DVD quality Videos. At home, I don't have to look through drawers of DVD's for something I feal like watching, and carefully handle them... I simply sit on the couch with a menu of all my movies, click and go (and no more waiting to see the FBI warning for the 150th time.) Also the Civial war movie I just watched was 2 sided dvd, no fliping, the linktheater with play all, just jumped to the second disk. Also I killed the DVD player on my work laptop, so when I went to Chile for work for a week, I just grabbed that USB hard disk, with all my movies, dropped a movie on my laptop for the flight down, different one for the flight back, have my entire collection to choose from while their, and the battery lasts longer loading from Hard drive than DVD, and my DVD's are safe at home.