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Film Studios May Block DVD Rentals For One Month
Ponca City, We love you writes "The LA Times reports that in an effort to push consumers toward buying more movies, some major film studios are considering a new policy that would block DVDs from being offered for rental until several weeks after going on sale. Under the plan, new DVD releases would be available on a purchase-only basis for a few weeks, after which time companies such as Blockbuster and Netflix would be allowed to rent the DVDs to their customers. 'The studios are wrestling with declines in DVD sales while the DVD rental market has been modestly growing,' says Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix. 'If we can agree on low-enough pricing, delayed rental could potentially increase profits for everyone.' Three studios have already tried to impose a no-rental period of about a month on Redbox, the operator of kiosks that rent movies for $1 per night, believing that Redbox's steeply discounted price undercuts DVD sales. Redbox has responded by suing the studios, seeking to force them to sell it DVDs simultaneously with competitors. Meanwhile, the company is stocking its kiosks with DVDs it can't otherwise obtain by buying them from retailers."
Wasn't this settled in the 1980's Betamax Supreme Court judgment? I thought that movie rental shops had the right of first sale and don't need approval from studios to rent movies, or am I missing something here?
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How this is possible? I don't understand the whole rental world. How does the studio have any control over it? Sure, they own the copyright on the material on the disk but I own the disk. I can sell it, why can't I rent it out to someone?
What legal principle prevents me from loaning out, selling, or renting any (physical) CD/DVD/Book that I have purchased? Do these companies seriously have to buy special versions that they rent out? They have copyright which let's them dictate copying or performance, giving out the physical item I bought doesn't seem to fall in that category.
>>>Delay in distribution means more people pushed to torrents.
No because they are cracking-down on that avenue. I just received my 3rd copyright notice this past week (1 and 2 date back to Christmas 2008), and I've been told #4 will result in termination of my Verizon account. So bottom line: People will soon be faced with having to wait for the delayed DVD rental, or purchase it now.
Also:
This isn't the first time movie studios have pulled stunts like this. Back in the early 90s when VHS was king, my local video store told me I could buy Disney's Aladdin but it would cost $90. I asked why the outrageous price, and they explained the price is kept high for one month to encourage rentals..... and then dropped to a more-reasonable $25.
Movie studios are always trying to control the free market. Record companies too. They forced Walmart, Kmart, and other retailers to stop selling CDs at budget prices of $8 or $9, raise the minimum price to $13, or else the record companies would stop shipments. This continued from circa 1990 to 2000 when the U.S. DOJ stepped-in and sued the record companies for forming an illegal Cartel. (My family, collectively, received five checks of $19 each as settlements.)
You can't trust corporations. They are filled with avarice, love of money, and will do what is necessary to increase it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Most Blockbusters will deduct the rental fee if you purchase the rental; the additional price is on the receipt. I'm not sure if they do this with games, although I believe it would be a good idea.
Whats ironic is that back then they jacked up the purchase price to encourage rentals and now they want to block rentals to encourage purchase.
Whats changed?
It goes far beyond the green light. I know a guy who's actually sold some scripts to Hollywood studios. The way it works is you start off with a great script (they have a lot to choose from). Then it goes through, literally, five or six rewrites by other writers who've been hired to add profitable elements. No love story? We need that to bring in the high school girls - we'll just shoe-horn one it. Are there enough character elements (aliens, robots, cars, etc) we can use to make cheaply manufactured merchandise? No? Well, we'll change the sidekick from a human to a robot with a simple enough form we can make Happy Meal toys for under $0.50. Are there any elements that might offend anyone in the world (international distribution is key)? We'll just cut those out, or we'll localize them in certain scenes so we can recut for different markets - sex for the Europeans, violence for the Americans. The Japanese get everything.
It's a production line. They're producing a product that's close enough to everything else that's successful they stand a really good chance of making money. The problem is if all the studios are working from the same play book the movies are so similar they won't do very well. And that's exactly what has happened - the production line works so well the market is swamped with product that's only different in the most superficial ways.