Slashdot Mirror
Disney Loses in Redbox Copyright Row (bbc.com)
Disney has lost a bid to stop movie rental company Redbox from reselling download codes for its films. From a report: Redbox bought Disney movies on DVD to offer for rental in its kiosks. The DVDs were often bundled with a code to download a copy of the film. Disney requested an injunction to stop the practice, saying that Redbox had no business arrangement with it. A California federal judge accused Disney of "copyright misuse." Redbox rents and sells movies via tens of thousands of automated kiosks that dispense DVD and Blu-ray discs.
No, when they bought the DVD they bought two copies, a downloadable one and a physical one.
There's no other way to interpret it. Once you use the code, you can't give it to someone else when you give them the DVD. It's a separate copy.
No. Unlike what the title implies, Disney did not lose the case. Disney lost its motion for a preliminary injunction to stop Redbox from selling the codes. Next, the court has to address Redbox's motion to dismiss. If Disney loses that one, then they are closer to losing the case setting some precedent. If Disney wins, then there is still a court case to go through.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No. What Redbox is doing is selling a slip of paper with a code on it. They own the piece of paper, it came with the DVD's and Blu-rays they purchased. It's arguably no different than reselling anything else that you don't plan on using, and is ACTUALLY protected by first sale doctrine.
What vidAngel was doing was editing movies to remove objectionable content, without the copyright holder's permission, and then streaming those edited videos. They were also circumventing copy protection (in violation of the DMCA) to obtain the streams in the first place. They even tried to use first sale doctrine to claim that they were legal to sell streams because they had actually purchased the DVDs.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the copyright holder's right to not have their artistic vision mucked about with by unqualified hacks. If they wanted their works to be viewed by kids and the overly sensitive, they would have produced G-rated versions on their own.
Aside from the fact that VidAngel tried to claim first sale doctrine protection, These two cases are not even remotely close and the actual difference is that VidAngel did something illegal and Redbox didn't.