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.
Darth Mouse Strikes Back!
A judge ruled against Disney on a copyright case?
Please send him gifts, chocolates, etc!
for instance in the proprietary software and licensing business, or if this was a straightforward case.
Any experts?
Let me help with that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Sorry, this was just too good of news not to...
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.
Back many years ago a local store used to rent software. You could come in and rent just about anything from a set of OS disks to MS word or the latest game. If you liked the title you could keep renting it or just pay the cost of the title.
They also bought the software that they rented/sold.
They were sued for copyright infringement and put out of business. Fast forward 25 years and the court is going the other way.
good.
so I should have the right to get out restore disks with old computers and not some BS from MS saying that you need to buy an new windows key to be able to sell that system.
redbox has the funds to go to court you small shop does not.
um... Star wars was not owned by Disney when I was a child... Disney bought Lucasfilm in Oct 2012 So for Star wars to be part of your "Disney childhood", you'd have to be less than 6 years old...
In which case there would be no contract, no agreement to sell. Without a contract of sale, Redbox would have no license at all.
Where is it written that you need a contract to sell something? Do I need a contract to buy a gallon of milk? No. I give the store money, and I walk out of the store with the milk to use as I see fit. Redbox gave Disney money, and Disney gave Redbox a DVD with a digital download code. Transaction is finished.
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.
But there was a sale. Redbox paid for the item it purchased. The meeting of the minds is between the seller, say Walmart, and the purchaser, Redbox. Walmart said "I have this box and I'll sell it to you for $14.99", an offer Redbox accepted.
The judge appears to have found that Disney's language was insufficient to create a binding shrinkwrap contract.
Deadline has this by way of explanation:
So absent a shrinkwrap agreement with Disney, you're left with regular copyright law in its place. Alongside that, the purchaser, Redbox, has all the rights that go with the First Sale Doctrine.
so I should have the right to get out restore disks with old computers
If you legally purchased physical copies of each of the restore disks you give out then maybe... but if you took it upon yourself to make thousands of unauthorised copies (complete with copies of the official label) and set out to sell them then no, sorry (I assume that's the case you are referring to).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
double plus good
Ha Ha.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
In which case there would be no contract, no agreement to sell. Without a contract of sale, Redbox would have no license at all.
Where is it written that you need a contract to sell something? Do I need a contract to buy a gallon of milk? No. I give the store money, and I walk out of the store with the milk to use as I see fit. Redbox gave Disney money, and Disney gave Redbox a DVD with a digital download code. Transaction is finished.
In law, you make a contract whenever you buy anything. It doesn't have to be on paper, and it can be implicit.
Offering something for sale is called "invitation to treat".
When you buy it, and offer "consideration" (usually money) you have accepted and completed the contract.
I'm constantly expected to "admit" I'm wrong when the facts show that I'm not. Is everyone who argued with me when news of this lawsuit first broke and insisted that I admit to being "wrong" about how this would turn out (and why it would turn out that way) going to show up here and admit that they were, in fact, wrong? After all, it turned out exactly as I said it would; and for the very reasons I stated.
Somehow, though, the whole lot of trolls who like to try to pick me apart here will still insist that I was wrong, I'm sure.
And the judge was absolutely correct in this case: the wording on the package did not imply a contract; and the codes, being facts, are not protected by copyright.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
Problem solved. They don't need a license. Why would they want one?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Disney is the very definition of copyright abuse.
um... Star wars was not owned by Disney when I was a child... Disney bought Lucasfilm in Oct 2012 So for Star wars to be part of your "Disney childhood", you'd have to be less than 6 years old...
<sarcasm>But Disney could now re-write history by taking the old, beloved films, drastically re-editing them to remove moral ambiguity, add unnecessary flashy effects and retcon characters, then try to ensure the classic versions were no longer available. Lucasfilm would never have done that.</sarcasm>
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
A contract is an agreement to exchange one thing for another. So yes, if you buy a gallon of milk, there is a contract which grants you ownership of the milk.
The requirements of a contract are:
- Agreement (meeting of the minds). Both parties intend the same.
- Offer (I'll sell you this milk for $2.50)
- Acceptance (picks up milk, carry to register)
- Intention. Both parties must intend or expect the agreement to be binding
- Consideration (payment, exchange of some thing)
- Legal purpose (a hit man contract is not enforceable)
- Capacity (Legal age, sound mind)
- Formalities as required by law. (Certain types of contracts, such as the sale of land, may have additional requirements under law)
Yes. Disney (via its various retail partners: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc.) sold little plastic boxes that included, inside the box, plastic coasters AND pieces of paper. Two separate items in one package. No wording on the package to imply the two are connected together, whatsoever. Disney can INTEND that to have been selling a "package deal" where the two were inseparable, but they never actually STATED that intent on the package. So they can pound sand. Same thing applies when they sell a "Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack". I'm buying two copies of the movie, in different formats. Three if there's also a download code. Even if Disney had included such language, first sale doctrine would have applied. Disney failed to enforce more restrictive terms as part of the sales contract, and they no longer own, or has any control over the physical object, once they've sold it.
A sale is a contract, perhaps the most basic kind of contract.
No, it isn't.
So let's look at how contract law applies.
Contracts are not laws. Laws are laws. Contracts are agreements which may or may not be legally enforceable.
And that intent is a critical component of a contract, in this case a sale contract. The term of art used by lawyers is "meeting of the minds". It means you can't accidentally sell something you didn't mean to sell. Either the seller and buyer agreed on what was being sold, or there was no sale at all.
A "meeting of the minds" is required for a contract. No TOS/EULA/clickwrap I've ever seen meets that description. Most gym membership agreements and other one-sided "contracts" don't even satisfy that requirement. If there's no feasible means to negotiate the terms, there's no meeting of the minds. So don't be surprised when a judge with a brain decides that your draconian terms or contract as a whole weren't really a contract. Case in point - this fucking case with Disney and Redbox.
No such "meeting of the minds" is required to purchase something as trivial as a movie on a disc, regardless of the wording you put on the package. I don't fill out and sign a long form when buying a movie, but I sure as fuck do when buying a car. Further, a typical sale would be an agreement between the seller and the buyer, not the manufacturer / publisher / copyright holder and the buyer. Disney doesn't have any hint of a contract in place until someone interacts with Disney to redeem that download code.
Disney wants to tie each code to the physical disc it was packaged with, but they're simply not in a position to do so. They're selling items to distributors who sell them to retailers who sell them to people who use/resell/gift/whatever them. They are far too removed from a legal standpoint and a practical standpoint to exert any control over what someone does with that product.
In a 26-page order, Judge Pregerson said that the wording on the packaging did not create an enforceable contract.
That's huge, because so far judges have been willing to enforce shrink-wrap licenses as contracts. Does anyone have a link to the order, because I want to understand when such licenses are valid and when they are not.
Somewhat related, what is the legal status of renting out retail-purchased DVDs? I thought that was illegal. A quick internet search results in multiple seemingly-authoritative answers, all in complete conflict.
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.
Considering the fact that party A handed over some goods to party B, and
that party B handed over some money to party A, there most certainly was a trade and a 'contract'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Disney's top political candidate contribution recipients for the 2016 election:
President Clinton, Hillary (D) $404,381
Senate Sanders, Bernie (D-VT) $41,027
Senate Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) $38,485
Senate Kander, Jason (D-MO) $19,838
House Nadler, Jerrold (D-NY) $19,250
Senate Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $18,500
House Murphy, Patrick (D-FL) $14,197
Their total contributions to congressional candidates:
Dems: Dems: $489,499 $489,499
Repubs: Repubs: $181,178 $181,178
If their intent was to "give fabulous sums to Republican lawmakers", then they weren't doing a very good job of it...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The last video express in my home town finally closed down a few years ago. It was the last place you could go to actually rent a movie in a store. Then outside the corpse of the old store the dropped a redbox.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
You can't sell what isn't yours to sell. The store can't sell two licenses unless they first buy two licenses. The only way they can buy two licenses is if Disney sells two licenses.
Personally, I disagree strongly, but by all means, feel free to limit your exposure to these things you find offensive or distasteful. Just don't expect the rest of us to care.
Nice to see the house of mouse loosing at least one copyright battle
A simpler solution would have been to print the code on the physical DVD/Bluray rather than a piece of paper.
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.
Contracts by minors are generally voidable - they can undo them. Which means if you sell something to a minor, they can return the item to the store and get there money back. That doesn't mean the contract doesn't exist, and there is a difference between voidable and void. It's a perfectly valid, enforceable contract unless and until the minor voids it. Specifically, that means the minor can enforce the contract against the adult.
There are certain exceptions. One of the most important is a contract for necessities (food etc). This clause is so that people aren't afraid to sell necessities to minors who need them. Another "exception" is that a minor can petition the court to make a contract non-voidable. This can be used with high-dollar contracts such as Selena Gomez's first record contract. The court looks at the contract to ensure it's fair, then endorses the contract to make it binding.
> If there's no feasible means to negotiate the terms, there's no meeting of the minds.
A soda machine advertises "20 oz bottle, $1" and has a button labeled "Coca-Cola". Clearly the machine owner is offering to sell you a 20oz Coke for $1. You put in your dollar and press the Coca-Cola button. You've accepted the offer. If the Coke isn't delivered, the seller has breached the contract of sale because the meeting of the minds, the agreement, is a Coke for a dollar. They can't just keep your money and say "he put the money in of his own free will, there was no agreement". Agreements can happen without extended discussion, and very often do.
I can't just decide that I own your computer. I can buy it only if you agree to sell it to me. I also can't unilaterally decide that you have bought my old junked car, and you owe me $500 for it. Both buyer and seller must agree in order for a sale to occur. An agreement, followed by an exchange (of goods, money, and/or services) has a special term in law. Agreements backed by an exchange are called "contracts".
If what was purchased was just a piece of paper, it's worthless. Disney would have no obligation to trade a ransom piece of paper for a movie. I'm pretty sure that piece of paper is a key used to identify and retrieve the purchase, which is the right to legally download and watch the movie.
Anyone can download the movie, of course, but it's illegal to do so unless you have the license. The paper holds a code which identifies a license. If it DOESN'T represent a license, it's worthless.
This is just a ruling concerning the preliminary injunction that Disney sought. The judge didn't make a ruling against the case and this will now continue to trial while Redbox can continue their practice of selling the download codes that came with the boxes.
This same practice I see all the time with Amazon CD + MP3 service. People buy the CD with instant rip and download the MP3's while putting the physical disc up for sale.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
The FMA does not allow selling edited copies of movies, it allows the development and sale of technology to censor movies "on-the-fly" during playback. IOTW, vidAngel could have made a DVD player and sold time-stamped scripts that instructed the DVD player to either blank the screen or jump forward x number of seconds to censor a scene, but they had no legal right to cut content out of a movie then attempt to sell the edited movie.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
True, so that's how the web player functioned. The end user would pick and choose what they did or did not want to see/hear and then as it would stream it would skip or mute automatically according to that. The master copy of the stream was obviously the full movie from the disc.
Which means if you sell something to a minor, they can return the item to the store and get there money back.
Stores are required to give your money back if you return something? I've been to PLENTY of stores where they explicitly state that all sales are final.
Yes, in general, if the purchaser is a minor, and the sale isn't necessities (food, clothes, etc), the minor has the right to void it (dissaffirm) and return the item.
You might also see signs on trucks full of gravel saying "not responsible for broken windshields". Those signs have no legal effect. If the truck driver doesn't properly secure their load, they are liable - a sign doesn't eliminate liability or change legal rights unless there is a law specifically addressing notice in a particular situation.