5 ms·
There's the downside to litigation like this. Loads of people who've never heard of RedBox (like me), now do and have a cheap alternative for Disney movies.
by NKCSS 9y ago
There's the downside to litigation like this. Loads of people who've never heard of RedBox (like me), now do and have a cheap alternative for Disney movies.
- Libturd 9y agonever heard of redbox? did you just wake from a 15 year coma?
- taspeotis 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- whoisjuan 9y agoWow I'm surprised that you didn't know about RedBox. I have seen their kiosks in almost every major supermarket for years.
- NKCSS 9y agoI'm not from the states :) (.nl here)
- whoisjuan 9y agoOhh! Gotcha. That makes sense.
- Buge 9y agoI've heard of Redbox, but didn't hear about these codes.
- adventured 9y agoSame here. I occasionally rent movies from Redbox and I wasn't aware of the codes. They're typically far cheaper than renting from Amazon. Sometimes I'll find a relatively newly released movie that I want to watch, and Amazon will want $5.99 to rent it (eg Blade Runner), versus ~$2.12 for the blu ray from Redbox. Amazon's digital rental prices are semi obnoxious at times; Alien Covenant is an ok movie that has been out on disc for a while, Amazon still wants $5.99 to rent it, you can buy the used blu ray from Redbox for $4.23 or rent it for half that. I have a box not far from my house, so I'll just grab the disc while out doing something else.
- aidenn0 9y agoAlso it's very common that getting the CD from amazon is cheaper than the $9.99 that they charge for albums. This is double crazy when you realize that buying many (most?) CDs on amazon cause the MP3s to be added to your amazon account as well.
- edpazu 9y agoYour local library might have those for free.
- sib 9y agoAs a note, it's not Amazon deciding to make the rental price "obnoxious" to take high margins - it's driven by the wholesale prices that they are charged by content licensors for digital rentals. (I know, this fact doesn't make the digital rental any cheaper...)
- mcguire 9y agoDo you have a source? Either RedBox is losing money on each rental, or....
- jonmb 9y agoRedbox is a physical rental, not a digital.
- sib 9y agoI used to work at Amazon (in a different area, but collaborated with people in the video business) and I now work for a company that competes with Amazon's transactional video service. The world of physical rental - at least in the US, not commenting globally - can rely on the First Sale Doctrine, which dramatically alters the economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoUntil Disney decides to take their ball and go home.
- oddevan 9y agoThat's kinda the point of the lawsuit: they can't. Redbox is buying Disney movies at retail. The only way for Disney to stop Redbox from doing what they're doing is to stop selling physical copies of movies.
- lotsofpulp 9y agoI can see that happening in the next few decades. Once sufficient amount of people have reliable access to internet, the physical option can be dropped completely.
- gshubert17 9y agoAt least, physical copies with codes.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoThey are working on their own streaming service so they could stop selling retail copies. I'll admit this won't happen in the next 5 years (depending on the success of their streaming service). They can stop selling the retail copies with the code included. That would pinch off Redbox, but upset customers. They could stop offering download codes and instead allow people to register their retail copy to the streaming service with a copy of their receipt. Again, not very consumer friendly, but Disney is big enough to possibly get away with it.
- Sargos 9y agoWhich ends up hurting us (the consumers) in the end. I will be sad to see digital download codes go the way of the dodo so some corporate fat cat at Redbox can double dip into their profits.
- throwaway2048 9y ago