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Disney Loses in Redbox Copyright Row (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the bad-fights dept.

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.

7 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright misuse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A judge ruled against Disney on a copyright case?

    Please send him gifts, chocolates, etc!

  2. Re:I wonder if this ruling creates precedent by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He also sided with Redbox's argument that Disney was misusing its copyrights by trying to restrict the reselling of copies of its movies after they had already been sold.

    Yes, the First Sale doctrine is still valid, despite many copyright holders thinking it doesn't apply to them.

  3. Doctrine of First Sale by Khyber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, Disney. Redbox actually buys retail copies. If you didn't want them reselling what's legally theirs, you should've actually fucking cooperated and given them license to distribute instead of forcing them to go this route, which has obviously bitten you in the ass.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:Doctrine of First Sale by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Disney would be fine if they resold the disk and the download code. But reselling the download code and keeping the disk is akin to making a copy.

      The Judge, it appears, basically says, "Your contract doesn't say that, so you lose."

      Not quite. The judge actually said, "just writing something down doesn't make it true." Your ability to buy a legal copy and then resale it trumps the notion that Disney can choose how or if their sold works are re-sold.

      The notion of one piece of work bundled in two formats is only interesting in this case because one of the formats is purely digital. If we had been two different physical media being bundled together -- say, those Blu-Ray/DVD dual-disc packs -- that Disney had sued to keep off the secondary market, then it would have similarly lost and no one would bat an eye.

      Now, if Disney could prove that they sold the same code multiple times, then you'd have an argument for copyright infringement.

  4. Re:Surprising from a legal perspective by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The minds did meet: Redbox bought a box containing two things a set price. If Disney didn't intend to sell two things for one price, they wouldn't have put both in the box.

  5. Re:redbox has the funds to go to court you small s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    redbox has the funds to go to court you small shop does not.

    So Redbox can buy their equal Justice they want but the small shop can't afford their equal justice. So Redbox is a little more equal than the small shop.

  6. Re:How is this different than vidAngel by MidSpeck · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Editing moves is perfectly legal in the US (Family Movie Act of 2005).

    So, as you know, the lawsuit focused on the technical side. In order to create a streaming copy, they had to break the encryption on the discs (DMCA). And then, even though they owned enough physical copies, they still streamed from that one master copy (obviously).

    So I guess they would have needed a big warehouse with some massive disc changers so that you were actually watching the copy that you owned.