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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."
trying to sell people what they want or how they want it~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'll do what I already do, save it in my Netflix Q, and wait for the rental. I already waited for the rental rather than going to the theater. Hope it works out for them.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
With BluRay here, but more expensive, many people may have decided to wait a bit on buying until the BD version gets a bit cheaper. I wonder if these people have even considered that.
Until very recently, most Hollywood heavyweights were loath to speak too openly about the promise of digital entertainment — the downloading and streaming of movies and television shows on computers, Internet-enabled televisions and mobile devices. Nobody wanted to anger retail partners like Wal-Mart or do anything that might slow the DVD gravy train.
followed up with
A variety of factors have influenced Hollywood’s new aggression on the digital front. This year, Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers started cutting the amount of shelf space they devote to DVDs, and some other retail partners, like Circuit City, have gone out of business. So movie studios now worry less about angering them by pulling digital levers.
The article actually highlights some moves that Disney (I know, I was shocked as well) has made to improve digital ownership for the consumer. And there are going to be a lot of failures (Disney already tried Moviebeam) but it's probably pretty clear that this is the future past Blu-ray.
The film studios' reasons for falling sales? First it was piracy. Now that that's been reigned in it must be rentals, Netflix and Redbox. And once that tapers off and the DVD gravy train doesn't kick back up it'll be some other bullshit. Never will it be the fact that 99% of movie trailers I see today I don't care for and 99% of the ones I watch have little to no replay value. Never will it be the declining quality of the product. Never will it be the fact that I have bought this movie in three other formats goddammit--why do I need to pay for blu-ray? Never will it be the fact that buying it on blu-ray allows me to play it on only one device in my house when I have many more capable of playing movies.
Go ahead, pin the blame on someone else. I don't care. But you won't fix the problem until you look at all the contributing factors. It is ignorance to think it is just one of these. Die a slow painful death, I just hope my children don't have to put with you acting like children.
My work here is dung.
...that they provide services that the market wants. (I mean, who ever made a profit pleasing customers?) I hope that anti-trust law isn't too eviscerated to go after them for this BS.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Just set up special places where they would show the DVDs on large screens before they tried to sell them.
I have heard of modern film making described as a form of investment banking where somehow magically a movie comes out the other end of the process. Taste, aesthetics, or common sense seem to be no part of this process. I can see why the studios would view the public as the same witless drug addled types as they star in these movies and therefore think them incapable of making the simple choice of not buying a poor product.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
My brother in law works for redbox, and sure enough, every time a new major film is released to DVD, he goes to every walmart in his area (and we're not talking just one county here) and purchases anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand copies, starting at midnight. He then takes them home and one by one puts them into non studio-branded cases, then goes out and stocks the redbox machines he manages.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Actually, this is so stupid I don't even feel like making a snarky comment.
All I really have to say is the obvious: Screwing people only drives them towards piracy. People rent a movie because they don't want to pay $20-30 for something they will only watch once. Doing this won't change that, so if the option goes from "pirate it or rent it for $5" to "pirate it or buy it for $20", do you really think that's gonna help the studios?
So fucking stupid.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
The three major players of an industry getting together in an attempt to shut out a perceived competitor? I don't see anything shady there...
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
So, instead of spending $4 to watch the latest movie on DVD, studios want you to spend a minimum $20. How many of those people will just go the other way, and download a BitTorrent?
I'll have gotten impatient and found it on BT.
oh ya, that's going to help sales....
brilliant. simply brilliant.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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?
This space left intentionally blank.
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.
I've already waited the delay from the theater to the movie rental stores. What's another month?
I go by the "What's coming out and when" whiteboard in my favorite little movie rental shop anyway. From this perspective, nothing changes.
Maybe people aren't buying DVDs cause there isn't much worth owning anymore, or they have found, in a recession, it's just more cost-effective to rent it rather than buy it. How many DVDs do you really watch 15+ times that makes buying it worthwhile?
So if this is the case, which seems most likely, their "plan" is going to flop. You can't force people to buy something they don't want. They'll just wait the extra month till the DVD hits the rental market, watching other rentals in the meantime.
I mean seriously, do these idiots really get paid for their "brilliance"? Who are the morons that come up with these ideas, not to mention those that hop on the bandwagon and think it's the best thing since sliced bread? How do they manage to stay employed?
It seems that they too believe that their media isn't worth seeing more than once. Otherwise, it would be worth buying rather than renting for a night or two and leaving it at that.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
delayed rental could potentially increase profits for everyone."
Hmm... wait a minute. This sounds familiar.
Oh, yeah, "anti-competitive collusion"
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It may just be me, but don't the retail DVDs have a disclaimer exclusively stating that rental is prohibited? In fact I thought the rental DVDs had a different disclaimer altogether?
I either saw it at the theater or I saw it on TV later. This is, of course, before I got into foreign films.
Redbox was the first time I actually really started watching things on DVD regularly. I hated Blockbuster, and DVDs cost more than the movie theater for one person, so that was often the cheaper option as well as the instant gratification that netflix didn't have at the time. It's also due to the low cost and convenience. I don't think there is anything that would make me want to own DVDs, like CDs, it's yet another clunky medium that I don't need collecting dust somewhere (I like being mobile in my living situation and that means desiring less shit to move) and the extras I don't ever watch.
If Hollywood wanted more of my money, perhaps they should just offer downloads in an AVI file or something standard. DRM-less. Please don't abuse me with mandatory ads/previews like you did your DVD customers. I'm okay with variable pricing, will pay $5-9. That should reflect the lack of physical media to ship and produce, less middlemen, and be competitive with a movie theater.
However, Redbox still would beat it with price, and honestly, most movies are only worth watching once, if that.
Does anyone actually "line up" to see a movie when it's first released anymore? Especially these days, Hollywood is putting out utter drivel, so does it really matter if you see it today or in four weeks' time?
I think this might backfire on them. People who might be influenced by marketing buzz to see a movie right away, might forget about it by the time it reaches rental. But if they rent it during the new-release period, they might actually decide to buy it later.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Wouldn't delaying the renting or for-pay downloading of movies after the DVD release result in a huge increase in downloaded torrents by people who would be willing to pay a few bucks for the convenience of watching the movie, but don't feel like shelling out $18.99 for something they will only watch once? Alternatively, if I can't rent a movie, what stops me from forming a private club wherein members buy one of each new movie and share it with all other members? What percentage of DVD profits come from discs purchased by DVD rental companies; is the industry sure they want to screw over these companies and force them out of business?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Then don't buy their products. They can not profit from you at that point without some type of socialism.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
They've almost got it pegged, I've stopped buying DVDs because I can rent them from RedBox. I watch most movies about once and then they sit on my shelf for a very long time before I watch them again, if ever. So, I now only buy movies I think I'll watch multiple times. RedBox has saved me from many bad purchases. RedBox is different than Hollywood Video in that I pay a buck versus 5 bucks. If I rent a movie for $1, if I decide that I later want to buy it, I don't feel like I've overpaid for my watching experience. That is to say, 16/15 is not a bad ratio of overpayment. If I rent a move for $5 and later decide to buy it, I feel like I over spent (20/15 somehow crosses my threshold). So, they have it right that RedBox is cutting into their sales, but only of crappy movies which covers 2/3's (depending on who you are, this number fluctuates wildly).
What they don't understand is that if it takes a month longer to get to RedBox, I'm just going to wait another month before I "preview" the movie. Before RedBox, I would often wait for a film of suspect quality to reach the $5 bin before watching it. Now with RedBox, most movies will reach the $5 bin before I buy it making the ratios more like 6/5.
So the executives at the Film Studios can think a month delay will help their sales, but it's more likely to drive people to torrents. I think in the long run, nothing is going to make them happy. Consumers want the feeling of value, and RedBox offers that. I can rent from them all I want for a buck a pop and not feel guilty about copyright infringement. If they do stupid things to take away my feeling of value, then I'm just going to sense greed and have no compunctions against "piracy".
there is no "profit" for the consumer. there is a product that consumer can choose to purchase/rent/whatever.
and you can thank "capitalism" that Redbox even exists and provides a great service for a minimal fee.
Yes, Let's piss off the people who are keeping us in business by denying them the right to rent a movie at launch. Sounds like they're looking to shoot themselves in the foot on this one.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Just like it did for the mom and pop rental business, right? Is it me or does it seems that they are making it harder and more painful all the time to legitimately buy/rent content? Rental gets crippled/forbidden/goes out of business. Everything get price increases and more DRM. Are they trying to get more people to pirate, so the RIAA becomes more profitable?
I used to buy lots and lots of DVDs. I still have a pretty decent collection after selling some and trading others. Then one day I was watching a new DVD ("Se7en", or "Seven") when it skipped. I watched it jostle and jiggle for a few minutes, ejected it, wiped it, same effect. Tried the upstairs DVD player. It was even worse.
The store I bought it from looked at the open shrink wrap and said "Sorry". They wouldn't even let me exchange it because, according to the manager, they'd have to eat the cost of it.
So having some free time I wrote to New Line Cinema, finding an address online for consumer feedback. I asked them if I could obtain another disc from them and I would gladly ship back the old one and pay to ship a new one to me. The canned response I received back basically told me I was SOL and to go buy another DVD at full cost. Have a nice day.
Instead, I now spend the equivalent to one DVD a month on Netflix, my fiance and I can each rent our own movies and return them whenever, and if it skips I have a new one in a day or two. I won't buy a DVD anymore unless I have a very compelling reason to, such as a gift for someone or if it is a movie I will enjoy over and over, such as "The Shawshank Redemption".
Like many, I am tired of paying $19.99 or higher for new DVDs and getting rebuked when the time came to get a replacement disc when another disc became unreadable. So I'll Netflix it, stream it if I am unsure about it, and rip it if I want a copy and it costs too much. I feel a little guilt, but then I remember how the store and New Line screwed me and then I feel OK with it. Bottom line: If you make it difficult for a customer to get something legally that he or she paid for, you better believe that customer will find ways to get around that (and keep getting around it). No one likes to be screwed. I just can't afford to be screwed as much as the studios, distributor, producers, etc. can.
"This food is problematic."
Once you have a DVD in your hands you can rent or resell it as much as you want (first sale doctrine). However, the studios refuse to sell DVDs directly to rental companies, and the studios get their wholesale distributors to sign contracts refusing to sell to rental companies. Then the rental companies have to buy DVDs at retail price at Wal-Mart, which increases their costs.
How could they prohibit rental? There's nothing illegal about renting out movies.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
What are they going to do about all the little independent video stores? Those places often do good business b/c they have a pretty good inventory and cost way less than blockbuster.
If I owned a little store I would tell the studios to kiss my ass after I was able to stop laughing at them.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Redbox is already being sued by and suing all the major studios, so I think they don't really care too much. But then again I'm certainly no expert on this. What little knowledge I have here is secondhand.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Hey you could always try communism. Oh wait, no you can't it already failed.
Perhaps socialism? No that's not really an economics system. Oh well, stuck with capitalism i guess. You're boned dude.
Why bother
If all the studios are considering this at that same time, then it sounds like they discussed it amongst each other? If so, isn't that collusion? That is is illegal in the United States, and probably elsewhere.
Any time I hear a business model where depriving customers of something increases sales, I start looking for the anti-competitive practices are happening.
For the movie to go from the big screen to DVD so I can see it on netflix. Another month of waiting is not going to kill me
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...our shelves were starting to get full, and we weren't re-watching them. There's no structural change the motion picture industry can change that will help with that. Instead of trying to figure out how to screw your customers, guys, maybe you should try serving our needs. Why can't I get stuff right away on iTunes? This is like the book industry and their hardcover/paperback model. Basically, they're getting a big hit upfront in hardcover sales at the cost of making people who would have bought the paperback go to the library instead.
When are these guys going to get that the way you make money is by serving your customers?
that in an effort to push their business model further towards irrelevancy, some major film studios are considering a new policy that would harvest ill will in increasing amounts from consumers for several weeks. Under the plan, new DVD releases would be available on a purchase-only basis for a few hours, after which time filesharing such as Bittorrent and eMule would offer the DVDs for free. 'The studios are wrestling with declines in DVD sales while the rest of the world adapts superior distribution technology,' says PHBasterd, the CEO of Clueless Inc. 'If we can agree on annoying enough artificial tollbooths, $0 could potentially seem far more attractive to consumers.' Three studios have already tried to impose arbitrary attempts to control what they can't control anymore on any forward looking company with a better idea, believing they can stop progress and return to some nostalgic time period when Sonny sang with Cher. Consumers have responded by not caring and doing whatever the hell they want, since IP law was never meant to be used as a club on the general consumer. Meanwhile, media execs snorting coke off hookers' asses have been complaining that there is less coke and less hookers and why don't people understand how vital and important they are to the flow of media and culture."
it doesn't reflect well on you when you've already lost and you won't admit it
game over dude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm going to second that. I really liked the idea of Redbox until I looked at the selection of movies that it carried. Sorry, but no thank you. For less than a dollar a day I can get better quality entertainment from Youtube.
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
Barter always works.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The LA Times reports that in an effort to push consumers toward pirating 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.
Fix'd that for you.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
What legal principle prevents me from loaning out, selling, or renting any (physical) CD/DVD/Book that I have purchased?
17 USC 109. Granted, that only prohibits the rental of software and sound recordings, however, people should be aware that "first sale" does not apply to all copyrighted materials equally. Special exemptions like these make it illegal for you to rent out copies of software or CDs, even if you own them (unless you get authorization from the copyright holder).
Do these companies seriously have to buy special versions that they rent out?
I forget how this works exactly, but IIRC rental stores typically buy special "rental" copies that are much more expensive than retail copies.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Barter is a mild form of capitalism where you hope you get a bit more than you bargain for. It just takes the money part out. It's still capitalism.
Why bother
First of all, there's right of first sale. Once you own it, it's yours and you can rent it, or sell it to someone else. I don't know how the studios think they can keep it out of Red Box or NetFlix's hands. The studios can refuse to sell it to Red Box or NetFlix, but unless they're really stupid they have to sell it to someone, and the miracle of the marketplace takes over and some of those owners will be happy to divert them to a willing buyer.
And it's not as if it were going to force people to buy the DVD. It's just going to result in a delay before most people see it. During that time, there won't be an opportunity for word-of-mouth, which is what really sells products, to build. There won't be a chance for people who aren't already sure they love the movie to rent it, then decide to buy it. There will be several more weeks for them to forget about the review they read when it was in the theatre. Several more weeks for them to be at the supermarket standing in front of the Red Box vending machine because they just feel like a movie tonight, and choosing some other movie.
And just that much incentive for people to tune out of the whole "legal" DVD marketplace, as the stuff that's available cheaply for rent becomes older and less interesting.
If they want to help their business, they should be trying to figure out how to get more product into the hands of consumers, not less.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So What ? If I really need to see the movie I go to the theater. There, you have no choice but to put up with 15 minutes of excessively loud-fast action commercials which bombard and oversaturate your senses before a movie some folks worked very hard to make. Watching at home on Blu Ray on the widescreen is a better call than that for most films. I'll wait.
At the moment you can get most DVDs for the cost or near cost of renting it and you get to keep it. I honestly don't know why you'd want to throw your money away on what is essentially borrowing movie.
Afaict they can in the US (I don't think they can here in the UK but i'm not positive) and from what i've read here it sounds like one rental only providers is already doing just that.
The problem with playing hardball like that though is that many rental providers also sell DVDs so they need to keep on good terms with the movie studios or have the entire sales side and possibly a big chunk of the profitability of the rental side wiped out.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Netflix and Blockbuster have special contract arrangements with the movie studios. Redbox doesn't, so they aren't hindered by any such contracts and can use First Sale Doctrine. Redbox are also taking studios to task and accusing them of Antitrust violations, for their attempts at market fixing and excluding Redbox illegally. How the RIAA and MPAA have gone this long without anyone taking them to court over being organizations built on intentional Antitrust collusion I'll never know -- it's about darn time!
Insurance, media, and telcos all deserve much more face time with the DOJ.
What makes you think that has any kind of legal weight? There's the doctrine of first sale here in the US, and believe it or not, it is mostly still valid.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I think the word you're looking for is fascism. But hey, it's all the same thing, right?
Well, it's a federal crime to distribute movies without authorization.
People who want to buy will buy, people who don't will just wait. Ineffective policy is ineffective.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
They are the same except often the consumer one states you can't rent it or use it for public viewings. While there is no button to signal whether you disagree or not, I doubt Blockbuster would get away with it.
In the uk public libraries already have to wait before renting out music cd's and dvd's. It's six weeks after release for cd's.
Acid House saves Souls
As the parent suggests, they can choose to not sell to rental businesses until a month after sales started.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
distribute copyright, not physical media.
once you own the media, it's yours.
sig?
They show up on Torrents or Us(*&$(* weeks before you can buy it.
You're just going to push more people towards that. People are going to see that the movie is actually released to Walmart but they can't rent it like they used to, so they're going to start searching for it elsewhere.
There are already a half dozen or so sites that have absolutely shitty Cams uploaded to flash format that I know some people watch. These are people that don't know anything about computers, but they know there's a "Youtube like site where you can watch the latest movies".
All the movies I've rented since the last six months or so have been from iTunes' "99 cents movies of the week" selections. They have three movies every week for the U.S.A. and Canada, and one every week for the U.K. (used to be a single movie for Canada too, so there's hope for the U.K.)
Available in the U.S.A., the U.K. and Canada.
So if the studios think their little delay of a few weeks will affect everyone, they better think again. Watching movies is way, WAY down on the list of things we need to do to live.
You'll put the rental industry out of business, get all their client-base, and still make huge profits :)
There are so many reasons to pirate movies. They just gave us another.
Help fight spam
A large part of profiteering in (modern?) capitalism involves "capitalizing" upon the weaknesses of others, in this case addictive behaviors and poor impulse control (ADD?). This news is just further proof that it's true: what they're talking about is withholding gratification and making it artificially more expensive in order to increase profit (profit = degree to which others are disadvantaged). It's certainly legal to do this, but is it ethical?
We certainly don't seem to think it's ethical when it's drug pushers who are doing it, but when movie producers do this or companies offer "free" limited-time incentives to get people hooked and dependent before they lower the boom, they get a free ethical pass. Why the hypocrisy? If the behavior - the means - is unethical, does it matter what the goal - the end - is?
It seems like Machiavelli needs to pull a Lazarus and write another book. Oh, wait... maybe he should do a remake as a movie?
Then don't buy their products. They can not profit from you at that point without some type of socialism.
Yeah, MGM is *really* going to find they've gotten themselves into a pickle when *I* personally decide not to buy a movie...
"Voting with your dollars" is a load of bullshit, used in order to get people to act *against* their own best interests.
Here are three reasons why it doesn't work.
1. Most people will never know about this scheme. The informed "voters" will be overwhelmed by the ignorance of the masses.
2. Even informed users will work against their long-term benefit in order to attain short-term gains. In this case, some will buy the movie now, instead of waiting a month to rent it.
3. (granted, this doesn't apply here, but it is still a prevalent aspect in the "vote with your dollars" dynamic) Individual purchasers are often vastly outweighed by corporate purchasers.
So, yeah, I can "vote with my dollar", not that it'll do any good. So why put myself through the trouble? Why deny myself a movie (if I really do want it) just to show some corporation a lesson? It'll amount to nothing *and* I'll have missed out on a film. That puts me worse off than where I started!
Perhaps movies should be priced according to critical (5 star) rating- $3 a star. Maybe Hollywood would get the message if much of their product was deemed worthless.
Really? Because I'm the type of guy, when someone tries to push me around, I will do the opposite of what they want just to show them they shouldn't try to push people around.
Screw these bozos, I'll put off buying any new movies until they quite this greedy behavior.
But the real problem for them is, that you do not have to put off watching them...
Delay in distribution means more people pushed to torrents.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have just started to see adds for London Business School on CNN again, let me say that these idiots have NO idea, The MBA will be the death of the American Dream, and business as all these DUMBKOFS can see is a zero sum game. Like almost all non (Mathematician, Scientist) academics they are all whores and circulate the university spread thought disease, usually for the highest bidder, just like the Congress.
Staring for the hardest:
Faster than Lightspeed (10^6-10^12 times) Drive
Free Energy (clean Fusion)
cure for Virus diseases
cure for Cancer, and self immune diseases
These are the real challenges for the race, get off this rock, make energy free, live much longer without illness and incapacity.
And all these idiots can do is think up ways of gouging the public for a Star Wars or Harry Potter episode, while Banks are trying to pay Legislators to block efficient Regulation and the HealthCare debate descends into venality as the simple fact that US healthcare is third-world quality at premium prices.
And effectively, while committing a very insideous for of treason, they continue to make money.
there is no "profit" for the consumer
Worse than that, there's a net *loss* to the consumer. Initially, they were content to rent the movie. Now, they may have to either wait, or make a more expensive purchase. Did you think those increased profits were going to materialize out of thin air?
there is a product that consumer can choose to purchase/rent/whatever.
Close. There's a product that the consumer can choose to purchase/*not* rent/whatever(pirate, I assume), only after a month can you then choose to rent it, under this scheme.
and you can thank "capitalism" that Redbox even exists and provides a great service for a minimal fee.
Some people are so simpleminded that they cannot cope with the notion of both criticizing and praising something. I *praise* capitalism for RedBox, and even for the existence of the movie studios themselves. But I also criticize capitalism for encouraging such blatantly anti-consumer schemes such as the one in question.
If sales are falling heavily, and rentals volume is just slightly up - the explanation is not that rentals are suddenly more popular. It is that you have less movies people want to watch under any conditions.
I can go months now before anything in New Releases on Netflix goes into my queue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
communism, fascism, socialism, girljism.
Okay, I will admit that antitrust law is not an area which I have studied, so I'd like you to walk me through where this doesn't apply since you claim superior expertise.
We have a cartel which represents a controlling segment of the film industry, proposing to use their market dominance to "refuse to deal" with rental companies unless they agree not to rent movies at the same time as DVDs initially go on sale. (i.e. During the peak period for DVD rentals.) The action seems to me to be an anti-competitive "restraint of trade" because it prevents rental companies from competing with the studios' own retail sales.
Now, since I have only superficial knowledge of antitrust law, I would like you to explain to me how this scheme and the refusal of companies to sell to Redbox both fail to state a colorable Sherman Act claim.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Socialism is a system where the means of production are owned by the workers collectively or the state. Fascism at least in a historical sense, has also been a form of socialism where the means of production are controlled by the state for its own ends.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
straw men are used by the irrelevant to stop people from demanding what they are due
Aside from the fact that your sig, taken on the whole, is rather nonsensical, it's somewhat ironic that you bring up the straw men of communism and socialism.
All I did was criticize capitalism for having encouraged such a blatantly anti-consumer scheme. That doesn't mean I want to do away with capitalism, or move to communism or socialism (and, a clue, socialism *is* an economics system, or more accurately, the three -isms you've mentioned have both political and economic aspects to them).
But your main mistake is in thinking those systems are somehow mutually exclusive and can actually exist. Our military is communism (the military economy is highly centralized), our roads, schools, police forces, etc, are socialism (paid for by the taxpayers, and overseen by local authorities (although there's a trend towards fascism in this are, which is moving the execution of such services over to corporations).
As for capitalism, it's *always* tempered by regulation, centralization and socialization.
No state on the planet has been run exclusively under any of those three systems, and nowhere on the planet *will* there ever be such a state, because such a thing is impossible.
I'll just start "renting" all my movies from .torrent sites, or megaupload. They normally get the movies a week or more before DVD sales anyway.
Few people seem to question the implicit goal that companies seem to hold, that profits must always continue to increase forever. Any deviation from this path is seen as a failure. Thus, even though they are raking in enormous profits from theatres and DVD rentals, movie companies must find a way to increase those profits by putting the screws on already profitable business practices such as renting DVD's.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
This may make the studios even less money in the long run. I see less people buying the movie or renting the movie. How you ask? Well, there is always going to be the guy that buys a movie. He's going to buy it, he's going to watch it, then he'll want to talk to his friends about it. But they haven't seen it because they haven't bought it and they can't rent it. So, the person that bought the movie will loan it to his friends to watch. Now they can all talk about how badass/crappy/sad that movie was. The studios make one sell, yeah, but that's probably the type of person that always buys movies anyway. What they've lost is that extra few rentals they could have had from the movie. No extra copies sold, and rental activity also goes down. Once that happens, they'll just blame it on piracy though. Maybe this is what they are after.
Everybody who isn't some sort of weirdo fanboi follows pretty much this process:
1) Establish desire to "get a movie"
2) Go to Video rental place or kiosk
3) Stare at selections, perhaps argue about what to watch, finally give up and just grab one.
4) Watch movie.
What is released when to the rental vs store does not enter into the equation. People that want to BUY movies want them for different reasons than those that RENT.
So, people won't notice, and also, it will not increase the number of people buying one bit. NOBODY goes to rent a movie and then buys it instead, they just rent whatever else happens to be there. The people that BUY will still get the movie for the same reasons they always did, on the same schedule they always did. Same for the renters. The Venn diagram of renter fulfillment vs buyer fulfillment has two non intersecting circles.
All they're doing is giving yet another justification for people who'll simply download them from torrent sites.
"Hey, while you're waiting for that rental, I watched it last week! On my phone! And my PS3! And my laptop!"
Voting with your dollars does work - it's just that like many elections, your vote isn't always in the majority. You can't bitch about the results when you have an unpopular opinion.
However, witness the demise of Sega. The failure of New Coke. Circuit City closing it's doors. You know what that was? People voting with their dollars and companies seeing the results.
If you don't like something then don't buy it. If you don't like a store then don't shop there. If enough other people agree with you and don't buy the crap either than you'll see results. Otherwise you're just bitching about losing an election. You have my sympathy there (hell the guy I vote for at the polls rarely wins either), but it's simply the way the system works.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
No it's not, or any economy is capitalism, including communism.
Just as a minor correction, when I say the "demise of Sega" I mean of their hardware division, not the entire company. Same point though.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Because it, like many other things, can give you peace of mind. Sure, it may not be your cup of tea, and reading your response makes that pretty clear. But for some of us, the out of pocket cost of seeing a movie, plus the hassle of it all (be it in the theaters, or now waiting longer to rent), isn't a high enough value for me to want to pay for. I have better things to do with my time and my money. No doubt whatever movie it is will be released sooner or later on basic cable or I can borrow / watch it with a friend if any of them found the movie too good not to share (most of the better movies even end up in my local library to borrow). Regardless of any of this, I do not see how not seeing a movie somehow makes your life worse than it was without it (maybe from a cultural standpoint, but come on, it is only a movie). I guess we all have our own fix, and for you, movies must be one of them.
What planet do they live on? I haven't used anything of those for years. When I buy them, I buy them digitally. If they are not available digitally, I don't buy them, but get them elsewhere. Simple as that.
Film studios: Welcome to the 21st century!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It may just be me, but don't the retail DVDs have a disclaimer exclusively stating that rental is prohibited?
Probably, but why would anyone care? That's just wishful thinking on the part of the studios
Copyright law explicitly says that it is not a violation of copyright for the owner of a copy of certain copyrighted works to rent them out. Most DVDs fall under that. It's called the "first sale doctrine", if you'd like to Google for more information.
This is America. If we don't buy Disney products, the taxpayers will have to bail them out because they're too big to fail. :-P
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
It is not in your own best interests to spend money wastefully. You'd be better off ignoring the garbage Hollywood puts out and spend your money on something useful. These companies can do this because there are more people like you that believe that it isn't worth doing anything about than there are people like me who completely reject such a notion.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Two days after the movie is released I'll head over to the local Cash Converters (pawn shop) and buy the brand new just released DVD for $5 I save $15 and circumvent the rental shop and tv studios.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It was pretty clear in his post that it didn't matter if it worked or not, he's not going to lift a finger to make it happen either way.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I though the only place to get new movies was through The Pirate Bay.
One of the universal rules of happiness is always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual
Perhaps this is a reaction to people "voting with their dollars" - i.e. dvd sales are down because rentals (Netflix, Redbox, ...), video on demand (Comcast was offering video on demand the same day as the dvd goes on sale, not sure if they are anymore), and piracy. Basically it is preferred to spend a couple of bucks, watch the movie and then not buy the dvd (why own it, will only watch a couple of times ever).
I switched to Netflix perhaps six months ago, and before that was using On Demand from Comcast. I struggle to remember the last dvd purchased, it was at least a couple of years back. I don't think my experience is unusual, On Demand and Netflix are fully taking care of all my video needs (including child that wishes to watch the same video 80 times). I have voted with my wallet - dvds have too high a cost for too little benefit, in fact, the cost of dvds actively interferes with other entertainment.
I am not a script!
However, they cannot stop the rental companies from buying the things at retail.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Thank you for the links and the well-written post. This is exactly the kind of info I asked for elsewhere in the discussion.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
As an Australian all I can suggest is :
Rent and sell early.
A no extras version with other movie trailers for rent and a DTS seller with 1 h making of doco.
Bring it out as fast as you can after the release.
Get staff in your t shirts, soundtracks and have posters ect.
Be nice to the people buying your movie.
Give us quality sound, a clear picture on dvd, blu ray and itunes.
We will enjoy your work, review it, blog it, love it and buy more and more. Dont make us wait months and month and months.
We see the buzz in real time on the web and would so like to enjoy your work with our US friends.
6 months later in the digital era is just an epic fail.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I started to use Netflix to watch movies because I decided that it was much more convenient to rent a movie I wanted to watch instead of dealing with the hassle of BitTorrent and running the risks that includes. So now they want to clamp down on that, presumably because it's cutting into their profits. How many more times are we going to see this song and dance from these spoiled brats? First Hulu, now this.
If they were smart they would realize that 1) we're in a recession, 2) people are effectively telling them movies cost too much to own. If people are jumping on board rental services (which have existed for years, and rental stores predate them since the 70's or earlier) after they scared everyone from pirating, wouldn't that be a very clear indication that the price of a DVD is too high?
Next thing you know they're going to get rentals classified as illegal.
Insert Sig Here
Yup glad you at least you can acknowledge those facts now talk to the "tea baggers". And yes you are right I was wrong about socialism. Sorry going for the quick laugh and blew it.
Why bother
So basically, what this means is that Redbox will get a window when they can rent their retail-purchased copies without competition form Blockbuster! Which will probably drive Redbox's profits up enough to make up for the higher cost they'll have to pay for the disks.
Blockbuster is probably doomed, though...
Redbox can afford to pay retail, because red boxes are a lot cheaper than bricks and mortar. Blockbuster cannot, so they lose either way.
Maybe a win for Netflix, though. They don't have Blockbuster's costs, and since most subscribers have a long queue, they aren't so concerned about the release date of particular movies, so they can afford to observe the lockout. And they aren't really in competition with Redbox, because Redbox can't match Netflix's inventory of older movies, or their ability to deliver content directly to your TV/PS3/XBox360/Bluray player.
For the film studios, the net result will be the loss of Blockbuster, a big disk purchaser. It's very unlikely that individual DVD sales will make up for that. So a big lose for the studios, too.
That is until they lobby congress to pass a law inregards to comercial rental of movies.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
There is a vast difference between socialism and corporatism, but either could be used to hand your hard-earned dollars over to a corporation.
Socialism: Government decides to subsidize entertainment for the masses.
Corporatism: Government acts on the entertainment industry's complaints about piracy by levying a fee on DVDs and high-capacity hard drives, and sending the money to studios.
The difference sometimes is less about the specific action the government is performing, and more about who requested it and who is benefiting from it.
So yes, they could profit from him without socialism. I think what you meant to say was that they couldn't profit from him without government action. Even that isn't entirely true, but hey, close enough for government work.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
My Netflix queue is already 200+ movies long. I'm watching movies for the first time that came out 20+ years ago. So I don't really care if it takes another month for the DVD release because I have plenty of other movies to watch. I can't think of many situations where I absolutely need to watch a certain movie and I will be in that one-month, money-suck period. I'm sure the great majority of netflix and other movie renters fall into the same category.
I say we let the studio's try this and let the market decide. If it doesn't bother too many people and they make a little more money then fine. If no one likes it and they see a continued decline in sales then they will get the message and drop the idea. The one big fear is that they see a decline in sales and don't get the message and then go whining all the way up the hill to the congressmen that they own.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
Unless it's a computer program or an audio recording, in which case you're still prohibited from renting them. I've never understood how hollywood didn't get movies written into that part of the law.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That entirely misses the point. The things you cite as market failures didn't fail when people stopped buying the products for moral reasons. They simply weren't things people wanted, or they were squeezed out by better alternatives.
Functioning markets often weed out low-quality products, but I can't think of a single product which failed or was significantly altered because those who had ethical objections simply and quietly stopped buying it. The rare successful boycotts have always been loud, embarrassing affairs for the companies involved, and were accompanied by equally loud (if sometimes insincere) apologies.
That's why we cannot rely on "voting with dollars" to keep the products on the market safe and ethical. No matter how dangerous a product is, or how much human misery or environmental harm is generated in creating it, somebody will always be there to market it, and someone will always be unaware of or indifferent to the damage or the dangers, and will buy it. Government intervention is the only alternative.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
...on Redbox, the operator of kiosks that rent movies for $1 per night, believing that Redbox's steeply discounted price undercuts DVD sales.
Stupid is as stupid does. If I am renting a movie, it's because I don't think its worth the paltry $12 it costs to purchase a DVD these days. You would think that a studio would know its market segments better than this. Actually, they do, because they know enough to price crappy movies at $4.99 and good ones at $20, so they aren't totally oblivious.
This is just a stupid stunt that won't have much effect on anything.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Voting with your dollars does work - it's just that like many elections, your vote isn't always in the majority. You can't bitch about the results when you have an unpopular opinion.
How does that counter:
1. Uninformed consumers.
2. Informed consumers who sacrifice long-term goals for short-term gains
3. Large consumers (like corporations) who get many thousands of votes (dollars) for each one of yours?
Yeah, no shit sometimes I lose the "election", but *that was never my point*.
If you don't like something then don't buy it.
It's not as simple as that. I like (for example) the new Star Trek movie. When it comes out, I might prefer to rent it. Hell, I might even *buy* it. But I don't like the studios' plans to force me to buy it, or wait a month to rent it. So what do I choose?
Do I chose to buy it? Even if I would have done anyway? What if I want to "send a message" or "vote with my dollars"? So then I do *without* to make a point that will get overwhelmed anyway? Or do I give in, and send the signal that I *like* their decision?
Your mistake, and be sure, you've made a significant one, is comparing shopping choices with political elections. When you vote in an election, you vote for where *you want the country (state, city, etc.) to go*. When you "vote with your dollars", you're not "voting" for anything, you're just buying something. Sometimes you buy the thing you really *believe* in (as much as such a thing can be said for a product or company), but sometimes you buy what's cheapest, or what's not out of stock today, or what the store that *isn't* 20 miles away decides to offer.
Now, for "voting with your dollars" to work, in the current example of the film rental issue, you would have to have the film available from *multiple* sources, for *multiple* prices, and under *multiple* options. Some would sell a deluxe pack, some would just sell the bare film, some would rent it, some would stream it, etc. In a situation like *that*, is there any sort of voting.
As it stands right now, the consumer *has already voted*, and they elected "I wanna rent" to office. The studios are looking to take that choice *away*.
It was pretty clear in his post that it didn't matter if it worked or not, he's not going to lift a finger to make it happen either way.
What do you think I'm doing right now?
This has nothing to do with whether voting with your dollars works. All you've really said is akin to, "I don't care if the elections in Afghanistan are fixed, because I don't live there anyway".
Lifting your finger to complain yet do nothing constructive to rectify the situation. Increasing your odds of reducing your Karma. Take your pick.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
It is not in your own best interests to spend money wastefully.
Wastefully would be buying a movie you'd rather rent.
You'd be better off ignoring the garbage Hollywood puts out and spend your money on something useful.
That's not your call to make. Further, Hollywood puts out a *lot* of good movies. Just because they also put out a lot of crap doesn't mean I should therefore not buy movies that I enjoyed.
These companies can do this because there are more people like you that believe that it isn't worth doing anything about than there are people like me who completely reject such a notion.
And if I decide to boycott an industry, even when that industry creates products that I enjoy, they've simply lost *one* customer. For the intended goal, a boycott, or "voting with your dollar" is not an effective activity.
On the other hand, if your goal is to engender a sense of having done something for the betterment of mankind, even if the effect is not likely to amount to anything, then sure, boycott away. Bonus points if it also gives you a chance to act like a cultural snob "Hollywood? Pshaw!".
Well you could just infringe their copyright like your sig suggests. Admit it. Your decision has nothing to do with the effectiveness of voting with your dollars. You've made it plenty clear in your posts that you have absolutely no intention of doing anything about it regardless. You want their garbage and there is no amount of reason that will dissuade you from buying it like everyone else.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I agree, except that it was due to any sort of "voting". It's just market forces. Market forces are more like herd dynamics. Herds don't "vote". They don't stop and deliberate for a year, then tally a vote and move on. They run wherever the majority is headed.
If a single wildebeest runs off in some other direction, he's not casting a vote, he's just running somewhere in the hopes that the rest will follow. If he's a wildebeest of significance (i.e., a corporation, a celebrity, or a politician), the herd may very well follow him. If he's just some random wildebeest (i.e., any of us here on Slashdot), there is virtually *zero* chance the herd is going to follow him, no matter how superior his choice.
Market forces have shown that people prefer to rent movies. It was never put up for a vote, and many people may have bought a movie they'd have rather rented due to availability issues. If a purchase is the equivalent of a vote, then why would someone promote an election system which often tells people to cast their vote for the *opposite* of what they actually *prefer*?
The studios tried that. They lost in court.
This is why you can go to walmart and buy their entire stock and open a DVD rental store. you USED to have to buy the $250.00 a copy VHS tapes for rental, but the movie industry lost a lawsuit and now you dont have to pay for special rental movies.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hope I don't get moderated off-topic for replying, but the Singularity will solve most of our problems--except perhaps the lightspeed issue. There is no free energy, but it would be plentiful to a singularitarian. Moving away from biology takes care of viruses, cancer, and self-immune diseases.
However, they cannot stop the rental companies from buying the things at retail.
There are a couple of significant ways they can put pressure on rental companies, however. First, make them pay full retail for disks instead of wholesale as they do now. Secondly, the law allows them to rent physical disks only, so those that offer streaming rentals must have an agreement with the studio. So, one pressure tactic might be to cut off all streaming rental agreements, if a rental company rents out physical disks from their studio before their supposed to.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
When I hear about a new movie, I immediately (before I forget!!!) go to Netflix and add it to my queue. Then, I know, just like planting tulip bulbs in the fall, that some day in the future I will have a pleasant surprise when the movie shows up as available. Add a month, take away a month ... who cares ... only if the movie were really exceptional would I actually buy tickets and go see it in a theater. Not that it is impossible, I went to a movie in the past year ... but it better be really good and it better benefit from the big screen, big speakers, and big popcorn .... or I will wait patiently for Netflix.
That is until they lobby congress to pass a law inregards to comercial rental of movies.
And that would probably be easier than you think. In fact, as was mentioned by someone above, the law has already been changed to prohibit rental of software and music, but the law didn't cover movies. The reason? At the time, it was very easy to copy software and audio CDs, but it was not possible to copy movies without serious degradation of quality (this was in the days of VHS-->VHS). Obviously that has changed, and copying DVDs is fairly simple. It wouldn't take much effort to lobby for a change in law which prohibits rental of movies without authorization from the copyright holders. The rental chains would complain bitterly, and a compromise would be reached allowing, say, a one month window from retail availability to rental availability.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Only the large chain rental stores will be effected. The small "hole in the wall" ones will go out and purchase some copies from wherever they have to, then offer them for rent on DVD Release day. So they will get loads of $$$ from rentals until the large chains have it for rent.
It always amazes me. The studios blow ungodly sums to hype up a new movie. They buy ads, the stars do interviews, etc. ad nauseum. And then the movie is out! But only in theaters! And if you love it, and just can't wait to own a copy, well, actually, you have to wait. Up to a year. By which time, you've completely forgotten the movie, and your initial enthusiasm is gone, and all the hype is dust.
What a waste.
This is just more of the same. Movie's out! You'll love it! But you can't see it! HAHAHAHAHA!
Please god, let them die.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
Doesn't this mean that overall, fewer people are watching DVDs? This couldn't have to do with the quality of the content?
When people ask me why shouldn't they torrent movies, I say Netflix is cheap enough, convenient enough, and timely enough to be a reasonable substitution for torrenting. Now the studios think crippling rentals will increase sales? I'd say "what are they smoking?" but this is Hollywood, after all...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I ould say that fascism (or totalitarian communism, little difference) is simply socialism corrupted. Socialism is what is promised. Fascism is the result. Give a government that kind of power and you may be able to hold off fascism for some time, but that's a matter of speed, not direction. How often do governments become less corrupt over time?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
...I mean, who ever made a profit pleasing customers?....
(Hugh Hefner stands up)...."Ahem, perhaps you better take a harder look at those callouses on your dominant hand before asking such silly questions."
How quickly people forget the industry driving this technology...good old porn.
Is it any wonder why people can steal, deny profits, violate copyrights, or whatever else you want to call it: and people just don't care?
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
No. You have a very distorted view of what "wasteful" means. Using your financial resources for something that you do not *need* is wasteful.
Clearly it never mattered to you whether a boycott works or not. It wasn't part of your decision making process anyway. Voting with your money is the same as voting for a cannidate; many peopel believe their vote doesn't matter either way on its own but there's millions of those same people who collectively do matter.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
How many DVDs do you really watch 15+ times that makes buying it worthwhile?
Does this include single-digit-year-olds who watch Disney's Cinderella or preteens who watch High School Musical for the umpteenth time? How about grown-ups who watch things like Rocky Horror Picture Show?
Some years ago I watched a movie at the cinema and liked it so much, that right the next day, I went to a shop and asked when the DVD will come out. In Germany, the delay seems to be some month, but when it finally came out I already lost my crazy enthusiasm for it and did not bother to buy it. So the delay really cost them one sale here.
I understand that the motivation behind this is to make me watch it at the cinema first, but I did that and then I wanted to buy the DVD, not just watch it again at the cinema. Similarly, if I'm not interested in buying it, but want to rent it and can't, I can easily picture myself having already lost interest, when it finally gets available for rent.
Am I the exception, or are there a lot of people who won't buy a product/service, when they have to wait too long for it?
(Also, there once was a movie that was simultaneously released at the cinema, DVD sale and DVD rent. I don't know if that made them any money, but it sure was customer friendly)
But the point is RedBox DOESN'T HAVE a contract and doesn't need one. They buy their rental licensed DVDs from distributors the same way any other video store does for fairly set prices by the studios. The studios singled them out and interfered with the free sales of the distributors by telling distributors to withhold shipments from RedBox unilaterally. Now to get their scheduled purchases, the studios want RedBox to sign special agreements... when lots of other little video stores from the same distributors don't have to.
Or it implies that people are changing their habits. Netflix means not just renting movies, but being able to get it on ... well, not a moment's notice, but a few days' notice.
If people are just shifting from buying to renting, you would see a matching increase in rentals to the decline in purchases - but the purchasing decline is much greater. That's why I say the data agrees with his thought that people are simply not liking the movies being produced as much.
Not that I totally disagree about people changing habits... there's so much other media to watch perhaps people are a little burnt out on movies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Won't this just push more people to bit-torrent? I'm not one to promote torrenting movies, but this seems pretty obvious - the only legal copies will be more expensive, and there will be DVD rips on the torrent sites because the movie is out for sale...
Maybe not
The pirates will get the torrent a week before it is played in theaters yay!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
If you want to watch the movie a month or so before it goes on DVD, PB or nntp is the way to go. I usually download what I think might be interesting, and if it is we pick it up on disc when it goes on sale. I suppose I could use netflix, but aside from the occasional German version, nntp is faster.
Now, if I could d/l a regular digital version for, say $5, I'd have a lot more movies in my collection. Why $5? It's about the difference between the price I usually pay and the price I can resell them for on eBay or Amazon after I'm through with them. Of course, that doesn't really count the one's I like and keep - but then again, about 2/3 of my collection came from Columbia House at a net price of ~$7 a piece before counting the one's I sold on eBay for a profit.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Unless it's a computer program or an audio recording, in which case you're still prohibited from renting them.
You should tell that to every public library I've visited in the last 20 years, all of which have an audio section filled with rock/pop/etc. CDs.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Barter is a mild form of capitalism where you hope you get a bit more than you bargain for.
The way I understand what you write here, you think that one person will lose and one person will win in barter. It's better than that: Both people can win. The theory behind this is called "comparative advantage"; if you don't know it and are generally curious, I think you'll be happy if you look it up :) I know I found it extremely intriguing the first time I learned about it.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
'If we can agree on low-enough pricing, delayed rental could potentially increase profits for everyone.'
1. Assuming we want to buy your craptastic movies in the first place. 2. We, the consumers, don't owe you a nickel. Try earning it.
I work for a local movie rental store, and we buy our movies from the local retailer and put them up for rent. All the movie studios are going to succeed in doing is hurting the large corporations they can monitor which is fine by me. The more corporations battle each other, the better the local businessman can succeed without getting stomped by a mega corp.
why can't we get moives on VOD / PPV before DVD?
The studios are cutting off their own cash supply.
Right now, at least in the US, the scales are tipping. The folks that were raised with the VHS/DVD mentality are slipping under the "majority". The new majority doesn't want the DVDs. They realize they don't need to have the physical media, and don't care to "build a library" of movies they'll only watch once.
These people are *dying* to give the studios their money but are limited to options they do not care for.
These people are paying $20+ a month now for movies and TV shows that have been out for ages already on Netflix. These people would be giving that money directly to a studio-run group that offered new releases and "in season" TV programming. In a heartbeat. It's a no-brainer.
But no such group, no such site, no such service exists...much to our dismay.
We don't buy DVD's. We don't get "captured" by ratings. We wait. We wait for them to come out @ RedBox, or on Netflix, or Hulu... We wait to spend our money, and we end up spending less because we forget some of the movies we saw previews for that we would have watched, and we forget about shows that we don't have time to follow on TV....and when the radio stations stop playing the songs we liked...we've moved on as well.
The studios and labels could be getting this money and then some...NOW.
If they'd only pull their heads out of their asses long enough to watch us spend it elsewhere.
I subscribe to Netflix.
I subscribe to Pandora. ...and I am wondering when the studios and labels will decide *my* money is good enough for *them*. Until then, they'll see only a small percentage of what they *could* be getting from me.
You should tell that to every public library I've visited in the last 20 years, all of which have an audio section filled with rock/pop/etc. CDs.
The Record Rental Amendment of 1984 only applies to the lending of phonorecords for direct or indirect commercial purposes.
Public libraries are therefore exempt.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is why you can go to walmart and buy their entire stock and open a DVD rental store. you USED to have to buy the $250.00 a copy VHS tapes for rental, but the movie industry lost a lawsuit and now you dont have to pay for special rental movies.
Yes and no. You used to have pay "rental pricing" for VHS because that was the only price tapes were sold at for the first month or two of sales.
Eliminating rental pricing was a deliberate strategy by the studios to increase sales to end users (and cut out those pesky video rental stores), especially Paramount who dragged the other studios kicking-and-screaming into the new era.
There have been a few lawsuits regarding rental pricing and what-not, but they had very little to do with the lack of rental pricing for DVDs.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Um dude go back to high school... Facism has very little to do with socialism.. Do you know what they did to actual socialists in Nazi germany? They murdered them.
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
If you're so impatient to get a movie, then pay full price for it.
It's not ideal but if this makes them happier then so be it, I can't imagine anyone with any patience whatsoever actually being frustrated by this.
Those that want to 'steal' it still can, everyone is happy.
I would not buy a dvd of a movie without seeing it first in a theatre, or renting it, and saying that, there are few movies that I would actually want to own.
Actually I'm quite content waiting for most movies to come on TV movie channels
Not for the reasons you state. Well, maybe also for those.
But, the biggest issue is this:
1) 10% of consumers decide to outright boycott the purchase of dvds, and even refuse to rent or download the movies.
2) Movie companies complain to the politicians that now movie piracy is such a big problem, that they can show a 10% decline in purchases despite a much improving economy
3) Movie companies are given government bail out
4) Copyright laws are screwed up even more in favour of the content producers.
Boycotting digital products from large producers has no useful effect for the consumers. Compare to what happens if this was done to a store like Walmart. They'd respond really really quickly to right whatever was causing them to lose 10% of their customers, as they can't pull out some boogyman that'll make the politicians mandate "Buy Walmart".
Does anyone know how much Netflix has to pay to stream a movie or TV show?
Is it less than what is made from advertising on OTA TV and Hulu? If not, why isn't more content on Netflix?
I'm paying right now, but I'm probably going to cancel as I just don't use it enough. I'm not a big movie person in general. I might reconsider if there were more television content on the service. For example, I watched the first two seasons of Dexter, but some reason they don't have the third season. They apparently had the first episode, but it was taken down after a week or two.
Um dude go back to high school... Facism has very little to do with socialism.. Do you know what they did to actual socialists in Nazi germany? They murdered them.
I think you should go back to high school together with GP - since Nazi Germany politics had very little to do with fascism, aside from being allies to a few fascist states, such as Italy, Hungary and Romania, and both regimes being totalitarian (which is by no means a unique trait).
In fact, do you know what the brownshirts did to actual fascists in Nazi Germany? Guess...
I'm not a business person, but it seems slightly (actually totally) insane to try and kill off the part of your market which is actually growing. "What? We are making more money out of rentals than we used to? We have to put a stop to this." Bizarre.
None of it will matter unless the 1 month waiting period applies to p2p networks as well.
The real motive is the studios want to shut out the "competition", given that "buying is the new renting".
Next on agenda: Studios begin charging customers late fees for DVD's they've already bought and have not yet responsibly incinerated.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
I can wait longer than you can. In fact, why not use the time to make some films I might actually want to watch? It's been a long time since Pleasantville.
All I really have to say is the obvious: Screwing people only drives them towards piracy. People rent a movie because they don't want to pay $20-30 for something they will only watch once. Doing this won't change that, so if the option goes from "pirate it or rent it for $5" to "pirate it or buy it for $20", do you really think that's gonna help the studios?
Amen to that! Here's my very recent example:
I didn't see Land of the Lost when it came out in theatres, but decided I'd wait for it to come out on DVD, then rent it. But I don't rent on physical disc anymore - I rent through PSN and iTunes.
Guess what? Neither of those outlets will rent you the movie. It's purchase only, for like $14 or $15. I know I will only watch this movie one time (the reviews weren't stellar, but I'll watch it anyway) so don't really feel like shelling out $15 for a one-time, 2-hour event. But I'll happily pay $5 (typical) for an online rental.
I figure some studio dude worked out that the movie sucked so badly, no one will want to buy it. They'll only want to rent it. And maybe they estimate not enough people will rent it. So it's purchase-only.
I briefly considered grabbing a BT client just to download this movie. Just because I couldn't rent it. But I decided to wait 6 months ... either they'll put out a late rental option, or the desire to see this movie will go away.
Because the whole industry sucks and is geared towards making certain people as much money as possible rather that towards providing a good, usable service.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
So, why don't the studios include a CD partition on every DVD with at least one song on it. Suddenly, that DVD is a "phonorecord", and can't be rented.
If they really want to appease the anal lawyers, they could include a grooved topside that could play in a record player.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Three studios have already tried to impose a no-rental period of about a month on Redbox [...] Meanwhile, the company is stocking its kiosks with DVDs it can't otherwise obtain by buying them from retailers.
"Fuck you, bitches! Let's see you stop selling to Best Buy!" -- Gregg Kaplan, Redbox CEO
Support my political activism on Patreon.
...Slow down my torrents in any way?
And if not, why exactly should I care?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I have other things to do and a limited amount of time to do them. Let's see, when I get home from work, I can watch TV, surf the Net, listen to music, read a book, get started on that programming book I've been meaning to work on, spend time with my wife, sit out on my porch, go to the park, go to the gym (I _really_ need to do that), play with our cats, cook, call up some friends on the phone, go visit friends, go out to eat, and many other things.
It's not like I have all this free time to fill. In fact, it's just the opposite, and, the thing is, many of my alternative activities are free. So try and gouge me for more money. You aren't going to sell me a movie I wasn't planning on buying anyway, and I have plenty of other things I can do, many of which are more rewarding in the long run than watching some piece of shit movie.
So, to all those greedy studio execs: You need me far more than I need you. If you try to screw me, I'll just find another thing to do, but if I disappear as a customer, then your profits decline, and without those, you're bankrupt.
Most people start a family at that time when "their life is over"
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Nope. Nobody is going to mod you anything. Nobody cares. This story is old news nobody is reading. I only saw your post because I've got messages turned on. Nobody cares about your angry little rant. You are pissing in the wind. You are jerking it into your own eyes, no one else's. It doesn't even matter if you 'speak the truth' or not, but you're too retarded to understand that, aren't you?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Steam has movies?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Most movie renters aren't likely interested in BUYING the movie at 10x the cost. Might make a bunch of people who would otherwise rent the movie go download it though.
There are a bunch of things they can do.
For one, they could raise the initial price. Back in the VHS days, media companies released a rental video some weeks before the consumer edition. The rental version usually cost around $80-$100. Video stores could refuse to stock them, but they risk losing out to their competition.
The major video stores all entered into deals with the studios. They get DVDs cheap, but pay some negotiated pre-rental fees... thus, the studios share in the risk but also the profits. This removed the point of having separate rental and consumer release days... also, consumer purchases got way more profitable than rentals, so they don't want too many things getting in the way of that.
Still, major rental companies have to fall in line. They don't have to get low cost DVDs to stock their chain stores, but without that deal with the studios, they'll be paying more per video and they'll have supply problems. RedBox might have some breathing room, but most of the major chains are renting videos for about the consumer limit... if they upped the price, they'd lose customers even faster than they are now.
Online, it's worse. Netflix needs direct delivery of new titles, and they'd be in trouble if the prices shot up. Plus, they depend on good relations with the studios for video distribution... the studios could shut that down overnight if they wanted to. Or make them wait a few weeks. Tiered releases are the rule rather than the exception, anyway. Most of the time, the film hits the theaters, often released at a strategic time to maximize viewers (eg, you probably don't want your new film going out the same weekend as the next "Batman" or "Harry Potter"). The it's on to video, often with a similar strategy (eg, get those discs into stores when the sequel is hitting theaters, or during Christmas shopping season, etc). From there, you got wait, pay-per-view, wait, HBO/Starz/Showtime, wait, ad-driven-TV, wait, Wal-Mart $5 or $10 discount bin.
So from the distribution point of view, it makes perfect sense that rentals would follow DVD sales after a wait, there's just no easy way to enforce this. But there are ways. And they could certainly treat network-based rental as just another kind of PPV, rather than treating it as a physical rental. It's their product, after all... no one's making anyone watch these things. Well, other than Dr. Forrester or Dr. Erhardt.
-Dave Haynie
So, why don't the studios include a CD partition on every DVD with at least one song on it. Suddenly, that DVD is a "phonorecord", and can't be rented.
Because they would be immediately sued and since it would be pretty obvious that the only reason they did that was to affect video rentals, they would probably lose. The law is not software that is blindly executed by the legal system, intent is usually taken into account.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
...in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it... does it make a sound?
If a movie is released in whatever format, and nobody is willing to buy it, does it make any difference?
The 'entertainment industry' is not standing on the edge of the cliff anymore. They made like a lemming and jumped off, in full expectation to suddenly grow wings and take to the sky. Unfortunately for them that plan did not work out and now they are in the hands of gravity, on their way down to the pointy cliffs of obsolescence.
If the industry crashes and burns, and nobody cares, does it make any difference?
No, it doesn't. Have fun on the way down.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Doh! Didn't mean for that to be anon... not sure what happened.