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I'm surprised it's not higher. The implicit promise -- actually, occasionally made EXPLICITLY in marketing -- of high-speed broadband was that everything would

I'm surprised it's not higher. The implicit promise -- actually, occasionally made EXPLICITLY in marketing -- of high-speed broadband was that everything would be available, but the reverse has proven true. A person living in an urban area had a larger selection of movies available for rent in 1999 than they do today because the first sale doctrine protected the video rental business, but streaming is governed by different agreements -- which leads to ridiculous "availability windows." We mostly use Apple's movie rental system, because the quality is better than Netflix, but you still get the availability shifts. Sometimes something won't be available for rental anymore, but remains in the list as a purchasable (ha) item. This is just straight-up rent-seeking bullshit, and it didn't (and couldn't) happen when movies were tied to a physical object. If you want a deep library of rentals, DVD/BR by mail is still better. If you want better quality, DVD/BR by mail is the best option. And obviously if you live somewhere with shitty connectivity (basically the entire rural US), then by-mail might be your ONLY real option.

dontbenebby 8y ago
I'm mostly surprised because for free you can request the same titles (including Blu ray) from the local library. In my county you can search for a title and have it shipped from any library to the one closest to you (and conversely return it at any county library location). Why pay 10ish a month for something that has the same selection and speed as Netflix?
- Stunting 8y ago
  I wish that were so for all over. My library does indeed offer dvds, but the selection is no where as robust as Netflix.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    I can hope that one day libraries will stop siloing themselves from each other and implement an efficient inter-library loan system that sends direct to customer. It’s like they see themselves as competitors.
    - khuey 8y ago
      Here in San Francisco we have a pretty robust inter-library loan program (Link+) but unfortunately it's limited to books only.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      ILL exists, but as far as I can tell, it's limited to books. I've ordered books from libraries thousands of miles away. It takes a few weeks for the books to arrive, possibly because they go 4th Class mail. But they get there eventually.
      - pmoriarty 8y ago
        This depends on your library system. In parts of New York, ILL will send you DVDs as well.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Some libraries used to do that but media mail replaced the USPS service that they used. In my area, about 40 regional libraries are linked and will ship most stuff to the library of your choice. They also accept returns anywhere. It’s fabulous except for new bestsellers.
    - __jal 8y ago
      Assuming you're talking public libraries, it depends on the state. Some states do ILL much better than others, including lending through multistate compacts. Having both a family member and a couple friends who are/have been librarians, I seriously doubt it is a competitive instinct. I'm sure there are exceptions, but most librarians are genuinely dedicated to information freedom. (They certainly aren't getting MLS degrees for the money...) I doubt they'll ever mail it direct to your home, though.
    - meej 8y ago
      It has nothing to do with competition. The biggest barrier is cost. ILL is one of the most expensive services libraries provide.
- asark 8y ago
  There's also Kanopy, which is a free limited-views-per-month streaming service you can sign up for with some library cards. My boring Midwestern city's main library has it—the library network in the outer 'burbs didn't, but most people in the area can get a free card in the main system anyway—so I assume it's pretty widely available. Signing up was kinda clunky but now I can watch 12 things a month on it. Selection skews "art" and documentary but there are quite a few mainstream movies on there. Lots of Criterion Collection, too, if you're into that. No idea if you can inflate your views-per-month by having others in your house sign up for it too, and juggling logins.
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    Criterion also is launching it's own platform next week. I've been missing having the full collection absolute since filmstruck died because it was too good for this world.
    - brownbat 8y ago
      I loved FilmStruck and am glad criterion grabbed it. They are small, so super responsive. I had gotten halfway through a film and was interrupted, came back the next day and it was off catalog, so I gave some feedback about wishing for more transparency. They sent out a schedule of movies leaving to all subscribes like the next day.
      - ajmurmann 8y ago
        If you liked filmstruck you might want to take a look at mubi as well. They have 30 movies at a time and ever day one movie gets added and another one leaves. It's very well curated and you get introduced to some real gems that you otherwise might never hear of or end up on your watchlist forever. About half the time I watch a movie there because I'm interested and it's leaving soon. It's a great forcing function. Many of the most memorable movies I've seen the last years were through mubi.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  In my experience new releases have long waiting lists at libraries. Might be less true now that everyone streams most things, but this is how it was when I was in college. I used to go to the college library and get videos pretty often. I'd usually rip them to my laptop and return them in the same day, letting me get way more movies than I could watch.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    It's still true. Earlier this week I returned a new release that my wife ordered from the library. She waited several months for it to become available. Part of the problem is that the library allows online pre-orders, so even when the movie is still in theaters, it has a waiting list several hundred deep. The other problem is that the library system holds back a number of copies for people who walk in, which I totally understand. Doesn't help my wife, though.
    - dontbenebby 8y ago
      >Part of the problem is that the library allows online pre-orders, so even when the movie is still in theaters, it has a waiting list several hundred deep. Also IIRC there's no limit on DVD preorders. Conversely the Overdrive kindle lending service maxes you out at 20 and usually has reasonable (well, sometimes 3-6 week) wait times.
  - dontbenebby 8y ago
    >In my experience new releases have long waiting lists at libraries. True, but libraries are more my goto for things that aren't on streaming. For example I wanted to watch "Reanimator" and none of my steaming services had it but the local library had a DVD. For new stuff I'm willing to pay a dollar or two on Amazon. (Especially since you can earn that easily by picking a slowing shipping speed on nonessential items... so order a dvd the library doesn't have, get a credit for a current release, and rent an old favorite to tide you over.) It's not perfect, but in my experience you're often paying for convenience, and being willing to be slightly inconvenienced pays dividends.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  I loved Netflix DVD, but this is the primary reason I canceled. I wasn't watching them as often, and I told myself that once I exhaust the library's selection of all the movies I want to see, I would resume the Netflix subscription.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  Libraries vary tremendously in their selections of DVDs. Some libraries have pretty good selections (though still not nearly as extensive as Netflix). Other libraries have absolutely awful selections. Also, from my experience, many library DVDs tend to be scratched up (especially popular DVDs), while Netflix DVDs tend to be better (though some still don't play on my DVD player, for some reason).
- bdowling 8y ago
  > Why pay 10ish a month for something that has the same selection and speed as Netflix? Possibly because you don’t trust the government.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    What is there to trust the government with? And I'm sure anything they could get from the library they could get from Netflix, if they found it interesting/useful.
- Endy 8y ago
  Are you in Bergen county, NJ? Because I'll be honest, BCCLS is probably one of the best library consortia in the world - 70+ libraries and massive collections. PALSPlus, the Passaic county system, is comparatively pretty awful - in part because of the priorities of the library boards and directors.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
There is certainly the case to be made that physical DVD/Blu-Ray rental is still a viable business due to the stagnation of internet improvement in the US. With that said, I'd think that Redbox basically does Netflix-by-mail more efficiently, no? It seems like the speed of the mail service guarantees that it will take at least a few days between you sending your finished movies back before new ones arrive, as opposed to driving to your nearest grocery store or gas station to pick something else.
- ddingus 8y ago
  If you like / want what is in the Redbox, sure. Not much there at any given time though.
- Klonoar 8y ago
  History has shown that this isn't the case... otherwise people would've kept Blockbuster in business in the face of Netflix DVD rentals. People value the convenience, it's only recently that people wax nostalgic over the whole "going to the video store to rent on a Friday night". They generally forget the long lines, employees who were rude and didn't care because it was a minimum wage job, often messy as hell store where the availability was mixed... the list goes on.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    Blockbuster wasn't good at video rental. They were the big, inefficient bully, and the last choice of anyone with any sense. The selection was tiny compared to the independents they mostly priced out of existence, then became the most expensive place to rent once that was done. They had major films sooner for about as much as going to the cinema. That's it. Their only selling point. They got shot of old stuff far too soon so you could never actually find old stuff in Blockbuster unless it was 2001 or Wizard of Oz. The corner shop near us that rented, and next door but 2 to Blockbuster, kept going years after Blockbuster closed. Having experienced Blockbuster in 3 or 4 places I've lived, I gave a little cheer when they went.
    - 8y ago
sandworm101 8y ago
>>> today because the first sale doctrine protected the video rental business. First sale only applies if the video rental business purchases physical copies. It is/was not unusual for a large rental business to, rather than buy copies, to license the work for distribution during a particular time/area. That allowed them to burn/build DVDs to meet demand and replaced broken disks as needed. When the license was over, the DVDs were destroyed per the licensing contract.
- bnjms 8y ago
  The threat of first sale was still enough to protect the video stores during negotiations so the threat mattered. As an example, I recall hearing Netflix had some early negotiations fail and went to buy disks in stores as an end run.
- skywhopper 8y ago
  Sure, but they only needed that surge in inventory when the rental was in high demand. But a few copies could be purchased outright to remain on the shelves, available to rent for market rates, loyalty discounts, etc, for the lifetime of the media itself. The status quo today is far worse.
jshaqaw 8y ago
Absolutely! In NYC I miss the great video stores of yesteryear like Kims. The streaming services don’t have depth and the problem is getting worse as they devote more spend towards building internal proprietary content and less towards renewing older third party content.
imglorp 8y ago
> somewhere with shitty connectivity (basically the entire rural US) So infuriating. We were surcharged and paid billions into fixing this. The universal service fund went into CEO compensation and not much else.
cfmcdonald 8y ago
I agree. The wake-up call for me that the streaming promise was hollow was when PBS Video went on line. I imagined it steadily growing to cover the entire back catalog of PBS. What a fabulous public resource that would be. Alas, no, it's a tiny slice of stuff with limited availability windows. We supplement streaming Netflix with our local library system, which has a fairly deep collection.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Same here, once wanted to view some old Frontline from the 80's. Nope.
  - philg_jr 8y ago
    Ugh, the catalog of Frontline is insanely huge. What, am I supposed to pay $24.99 per DVD of previous episodes? uh, no, I will not. Please PBS, give us real access to your catalog.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      Agreed. Went back to watch the "US of secrets" on Netflix last year, gone. It was on Kanopy last I checked at least. WTF does public television think its doing with this strategy? Makes me want to pull funding.
- delinka 8y ago
  It costs lots of money to digitize and host the old stuff. And the non-profit organization doesn't lend itself well to selling access - it takes time and effort (read "money") to research with the lawyers whether "selling" or "membership fees" or whatever other business model is legally acceptable under the organization's structure. But since new content is shot in digital, and edited digitally, it's a minor step to convert for streaming and also broadcast so they just stick to that.
  - briandear 8y ago
    It’s a bit annoying though when people complain about cutting federal funding for PBS under the guise of “saving Big Bird,” yet the taxpayer doesn’t have access to the fruits of those tax dollars. Similar to publicly funded research being hidden behind paywalls. If PBS has the money (some from taxes) to make the programming, they should have enough to provide the content for free either via their own streaming services or via commercial services.
ikeboy 8y ago
>Sometimes something won't be available for rental anymore, but remains in the list as a purchasable (ha) item. This is just straight-up rent-seeking bullshit Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of rent-seeking? They explicitly don't want rent. (Yes, I know the economic definition, I'm just punning)
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  I guess it really depends whether you consider a DRM-protected digital asset to be something which is possible to own vs rent. The button might say "purchase", but it's really still a rental. (Yes, I say this from the point of view of someone who has "purchased" dozens of videogames on PSN and Steam, fully aware that any of them could have the plug pulled on them at any time...)
- spartas 8y ago
  That depends on who the "they" is. Movie distribution companies want to maximize the value of their product, and that means marketing and advertising, exclusivity periods, product tie-ins and collaborations with different streaming providers. They know that they can get the audience numbers from anywhere, but the question is how much a particular streaming provider will pay over a competitor. So movie distribution companies are certainly engaging in rent-seeking behavior–only you're not the customer. The streaming providers are. (Reasonably good pun though)
ohazi 8y ago
What should an equivalent of the first sale doctrine for digital content look like? It seems like we need something new here to cover things like streaming content, ebooks, digital delivery, drm, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one annoyed by how the world has moved from selling to renting, especially when services and the companies providing them seem more ephemeral than ever.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Something like movies anywhere crosses with iTunes Match, with a token that is owned by the consumer and available anywhere. There is no reason why a license should be locked to a platform. IMO it’s a great area to regulate.
  - zanny 8y ago
    Cross-platform compatibility hurts exclusivity and revenue protection. Its why Disney et al are trying to claw back ground against the Internet with their own subscription based viewing platforms. Trying to get media companies to agree to almost anything that hurts their bottom line is antithetical to their corporate charters, they know lock in, exclusivity, and rent seeking done right is the maximal revenue model they can manage under modern cultural constraints, and they are optimizing for it - some will fail to implement it successfully, but those that do will probably reap the most possible revenue for their given library of IP.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      The same argument was made against VHS. In short, I say too bad, copyright exists to promote the useful arts and benefit society. IMO making Amazon, Netflix, etc even more of a commodity is in the interests of the producers and consumers of content.
stcredzero 8y ago
The implicit promise -- actually, occasionally made EXPLICITLY in marketing -- of high-speed broadband was that everything would be available, but the reverse has proven true. A person living in an urban area had a larger selection of movies available for rent in 1999 than they do today The last DVD I rented from Netflix was "Iron Monkey." This movie is very hard to get your hands on otherwise. (If you search for the torrent, there's a good chance you won't get any viable results!)
- ukyrgf 8y ago
  My Netflix DVD queue was 100% movies I couldn't torrent / find available to buy. They would be at the top of my list for years, presumably one copy getting slowly making it's way around the country. Netflix even had a production company called Red Envelope Entertainment that did some really great alt comedy movies (an early Zach Galifianakis special with the Netflix exec sitting front row with his Netflix hat on like a nerd, for example).
ghaff 8y ago
Most people don't actually care all that much what they watch. If one thing isn't available they watch something else. The (urban) people I know who have Netflix DVD subscriptions are movie buffs (ADDED: like myself). Others I know who have good Internet consider renting DVDs as something a bit weird.
- zippergz 8y ago
  This rings true to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't care. But there is so much more content than I actually have time to watch that I can easily fill my watching time with something I enjoy even out of the fairly limited streaming catalogs available. The limitations absolutely do bother me in principle, and on occasion I get frustrated about not being able to find something specific (then I have to decide if I care enough to go try to find it from another source). But in general I do not find myself suffering from a shortage of video content to watch at any given time.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    It's true to me to a degree as well. There are streaming TV shows I'd like to take a look at but there is also a limit to how many services I'll subscribe to. At some point, I just say I can do without.
cwyers 8y ago
Most of the video rental business for new releases wasn't carried out under the first sale doctrine, because video stores worked out a deal where they could purchase videos before they were available for sale, at inflated prices.
hinkley 8y ago
I complain about how long it takes my guests to pick a movie on Netflix + Hulu + Apple + whatever else I have this week, but if I'm being perfectly honest we used to spend more time at Blockbuster. Especially if you included transit time. Because Blockbuster had a lot more movies than Netflix streaming ever has. And you can scan a rack of movies faster than you can scan in Netflix.
- gtirloni 8y ago
  Really? Here in Brazil I remember Blockbuster having a fairly limited number of options, mostly the new releases. The old pop and mom video store usually had way more options (because they didn't throw anything away most of the time). There are still days I can't find anything I want to watch on Netflix but it seems way better than the DVD/Blueray situation we had here.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "Here in Brazil I remember Blockbuster having a fairly limited number of options, mostly the new releases." This was exactly what Blockbuster was like in New York. They focused on mainstream, mostly blockbuster movies (hence the name, maybe). For a really good selection, you had to go to independent video rental stores, like Kim's Video in Manhattan, which had way, way, waaaay more movies available than any Blockbuster store I've ever been in could dream of. There were some other independent video rental stores scattered across NYC and Long Island with similarly good selections. Also, Blockbuster movies were often cut or censored, so you had to go to an independent video rental store to find uncut films. I've heard some people dispute that Blockbuster ever carried such films, but I'm far from the only one who remembers this happening. Search around on the web, and you'll see others reporting the same thing.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      Was it a limited space store or something? The blockbusters down here in Texas, where property was cheap were huge.
babyslothzoo 8y ago
I am also surprised it's not quite a bit higher. There are many, many parts of the USA where the 'high speed' internet service is somewhere between 1mbps to 3mbps maximum, or slower, assuming there's any broadband at all. Internet speeds plummet when you're in most rural areas, often even semi-rural smaller towns that are 30-45 minutes outside of major cities have comically slow internet.
xfitm3 8y ago
Just another reason why file sharing is popular.
TheGRS 8y ago
Blockbuster had exclusive rental agreements where they could rent movies for weeks before Redbox. I'm not sure where the first-sale doctrine came into play there, but this was a reality of the time when Redbox began to make a big splash in the physical rental scene. I think the fact that renters had more choices in 1999 is because Blockbuster was a near monopoly and nobody was really challenging their status quo outside of some regional shops. All of the price changes happened as Redbox entered the scene, not Netflix streaming (though Netflix mailers were a challenge as well). So even without these streaming services you'd be seeing the same BS with only being able to buy a film for several weeks before it would be available to rent.
- tzs 8y ago
  > Blockbuster had exclusive rental agreements where they could rent movies for weeks before Redbox. I'm not sure where the first-sale doctrine came into play there, but this was a reality of the time when Redbox began to make a big splash in the physical rental scene. First sale only works effectively once the studio starts selling copies at retail. After that, when anyone could go down to Target, or Walmart, or Best Buy and buy retail copies, then so could Redbox, and there was nothing the studios could do to stop them. I believe that the way things like the Blockbuster exclusive deals worked is that the studios would make a deal with Blockbuster to sell copies to Blockbuster weeks before they released them for purchase at retail.
takeda 8y ago
As usual publishers make everything they can to make experience shitty. Before streaming became a thing, you could download movies and music through P2P networks. Streaming became a huge success, piracy became less of an issue, because many people didn't have problem with throwing $7 a month to use Netflix. Now once again you get much better experience if you pirate. That's the only real competitor, can you imagine how bad it would be if there was no piracy?
- krrrh 8y ago
  It is getting bad though. Less piracy means it’s much harder to find long tail films. The number of seedless torrents on private trackers is much higher now than it used to be.
  - petra 8y ago
    Long tail is a failure point of the torrent system. And it feels it's possible to solve, by someone with good programming skills , and some cooperation from a popular bittorent software.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      How is it a programming issue? The content needs to be hosted (in a decentralized way). And, as a given title becomes less less popular--because it's older or people are just generally not torrenting as much--the odds that someone will have it available for downloading decreases. Essentially torrenting depends on people randomly making content available as sort of a quid pro quo and and streaming makes using torrents generally less interesting for a lot of people.
      - petra 8y ago
        You're right. But: The basic idea is this: Let's say i once downloaded long-tail file X. Me sharing it for years and years isn't the default. But what if it was ? what if this was built into one of the popular torrent clients , and i would have to opt-out to change it ?
mcguire 8y ago
I currently have a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes laying here in front of me.
derefr 8y ago
I would pay for a service where a company gives me a PO Box-like address, and I can have other DVD/BR-by-mail services target that address, and anything that gets sent to that address gets ripped to a server for private one-time streaming. ("one time" meaning you start a watch-session and can pause/rewind at will, but once you've passed through all the frames once and hit the-credits-minus-a-minute-or-so, you can't rewind any more—so you can't start watching from the beginning any more—and the movie will get deleted a few days later.) Would that be legal? It's a lot closer to Pay Per View than to traditional streaming.
- osrec 8y ago
  Why would you pay for this? What problem does it solve for you better than existing content delivery methods?
  - ghshephard 8y ago
    You would get high quality, online access to the entirety of the world's movie collection for a reasonably low rate.
    - osrec 8y ago
      I understand, but it seems like an incredibly inefficient method of achieving that goal, no?
  - derefr 8y ago
    Presuming this company existed in many countries instead of just my own, and that I could get something sent to any of their receiving centers in order to stream it... this would enable me to watch stuff that Netflix only has available (on DVD) in countries that are not my own. It's a physical-media VPN. If such a service also provided a more general permanent digitization service for media you actually own (where you would send them your own discs, or forward them any random CD/DVD/BR you buy off the Internet, and they would rip the disc out of the packaging it comes in, digitize it, put it on a server for you, and then destroy the original), then—in combination with the multiple-countries thing—I could use this to consume content that doesn't have a streaming version, only a physical edition; and where that physical edition isn't sold for export, but only in its country of origin. (Think: limited-release pressings of albums from indie bands; movies from film festivals that never ended up seeing general release; etc.) Essentially, it's like getting some physical media sent to Archive.org for expert digitization+preservation, but without distribution to the general public, just to the person who paid to do the preservation. (Though, they could certainly sit on their own copy of the digitized work indefinitely, never giving it to anyone or acknowledging that they have it, waiting for the day it either enters the public domain, or they acquire distribution rights to it, whereupon they can put it into a public catalogue.)
bscphil 8y ago
>We mostly use Apple's movie rental system, because the quality is better than Netflix You might want to look into this again. If you can get Netflix's highest quality 1080p streams they have much higher bitrates than what you can rent or buy on itunes. But you are 100% right about availability. Streaming is almost a myth if you're like me and want to watch a bunch of unpopular titles.
chrischattin 8y ago
The last sentence is incredibly naive. The rural U.S. has great connectivity.
Pxtl 8y ago
Yup. I live in Canada and I was quite sad when RedBox left us because of the Target collapse. It was on my way home and was quarter of the price of a streaming rental, and full of new releases.
seanp2k2 8y ago
Agree, but population density is heavily skewed toward cities, which tend to have (though not always) better internet: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29072 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29072 https://www.networkworld.com/article/2345839/population-density-dictates-broadband-service-quality.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2345839/population-dens... https://geoisp.com/us/ https://geoisp.com/us/ has some data about availability by population, but not a great map.
black-tea 8y ago
A person using the Pirate Bay 10 years ago had access to a larger selection than someone subscribing to Netflix today. The copyright industry just has a different agenda than we do. We think when technology improves we'll get more selection, faster at higher quality. The copyright industry thinks when technology improves about what new ways they can restrict the public so that lawyers can continue to make money from the hard work of long dead authors and artists.
anonytrary 8y ago
I'm afraid a similar thing will happen with video games in the next 20 years, mark my words. I remember when you could buy a video game for 60 dollars and keep it forever. You still can, but I would not be surprised if this eventually stopped being the case. With mobile games, developers are starting to realize that they can get far more money from the addicts who need to play 4 hours a day by throttling gameplay to 20 minutes a day, and forcing them to buy gems in order to bypass the throttle. This could get worse with things like Google Stadia if they decide to monetize their platform in a "pay as you play" sort of model, where you can pay, say, $4.50 for 5 hours of playtime.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  With some games you can not or at least will not soon. The first few waves of games with online features now have their online parts shut down. A lot of games are online only now so when those games shut their servers it will be all over.
  - JCSato 8y ago
    I wouldn't say we're seeing the first few waves now - MAG and Metal Gear Online were circa 2008-ish, right?
- rashkov 8y ago
  I watched the google stadia announcement video and I was amazed by what they accomplished, but your comment cuts through all of that and points to a future where google sets the artistic priorities via financial incentive... the way they currently do on YouTube.
oldjokes 8y ago
Yes. I regularly see failures and weird issues that are technically "impossible" according to the spec in things like TCP/IP, HTTP, as well as higher application layers. And trying to convince someone like Google or Microsoft that their site or service is not very robust when things start getting lossy is a complete waste of time, even if you have a massive following on social media people who dare to complain about not having megabits of data are completely ignored.

dontbenebby 8y ago

I'm mostly surprised because for free you can request the same titles (including Blu ray) from the local library. In my county you can search for a title and have it shipped from any library to the one closest to you (and conversely return it at any county library location). Why pay 10ish a month for something that has the same selection and speed as Netflix?

Stunting 8y ago
I wish that were so for all over. My library does indeed offer dvds, but the selection is no where as robust as Netflix.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  I can hope that one day libraries will stop siloing themselves from each other and implement an efficient inter-library loan system that sends direct to customer. It’s like they see themselves as competitors.
  - khuey 8y ago
    Here in San Francisco we have a pretty robust inter-library loan program (Link+) but unfortunately it's limited to books only.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    ILL exists, but as far as I can tell, it's limited to books. I've ordered books from libraries thousands of miles away. It takes a few weeks for the books to arrive, possibly because they go 4th Class mail. But they get there eventually.
    - pmoriarty 8y ago
      This depends on your library system. In parts of New York, ILL will send you DVDs as well.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Some libraries used to do that but media mail replaced the USPS service that they used. In my area, about 40 regional libraries are linked and will ship most stuff to the library of your choice. They also accept returns anywhere. It’s fabulous except for new bestsellers.
  - __jal 8y ago
    Assuming you're talking public libraries, it depends on the state. Some states do ILL much better than others, including lending through multistate compacts. Having both a family member and a couple friends who are/have been librarians, I seriously doubt it is a competitive instinct. I'm sure there are exceptions, but most librarians are genuinely dedicated to information freedom. (They certainly aren't getting MLS degrees for the money...) I doubt they'll ever mail it direct to your home, though.
  - meej 8y ago
    It has nothing to do with competition. The biggest barrier is cost. ILL is one of the most expensive services libraries provide.
asark 8y ago
There's also Kanopy, which is a free limited-views-per-month streaming service you can sign up for with some library cards. My boring Midwestern city's main library has it—the library network in the outer 'burbs didn't, but most people in the area can get a free card in the main system anyway—so I assume it's pretty widely available. Signing up was kinda clunky but now I can watch 12 things a month on it. Selection skews "art" and documentary but there are quite a few mainstream movies on there. Lots of Criterion Collection, too, if you're into that. No idea if you can inflate your views-per-month by having others in your house sign up for it too, and juggling logins.
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  Criterion also is launching it's own platform next week. I've been missing having the full collection absolute since filmstruck died because it was too good for this world.
  - brownbat 8y ago
    I loved FilmStruck and am glad criterion grabbed it. They are small, so super responsive. I had gotten halfway through a film and was interrupted, came back the next day and it was off catalog, so I gave some feedback about wishing for more transparency. They sent out a schedule of movies leaving to all subscribes like the next day.
    - ajmurmann 8y ago
      If you liked filmstruck you might want to take a look at mubi as well. They have 30 movies at a time and ever day one movie gets added and another one leaves. It's very well curated and you get introduced to some real gems that you otherwise might never hear of or end up on your watchlist forever. About half the time I watch a movie there because I'm interested and it's leaving soon. It's a great forcing function. Many of the most memorable movies I've seen the last years were through mubi.
RandallBrown 8y ago
In my experience new releases have long waiting lists at libraries. Might be less true now that everyone streams most things, but this is how it was when I was in college. I used to go to the college library and get videos pretty often. I'd usually rip them to my laptop and return them in the same day, letting me get way more movies than I could watch.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  It's still true. Earlier this week I returned a new release that my wife ordered from the library. She waited several months for it to become available. Part of the problem is that the library allows online pre-orders, so even when the movie is still in theaters, it has a waiting list several hundred deep. The other problem is that the library system holds back a number of copies for people who walk in, which I totally understand. Doesn't help my wife, though.
  - dontbenebby 8y ago
    >Part of the problem is that the library allows online pre-orders, so even when the movie is still in theaters, it has a waiting list several hundred deep. Also IIRC there's no limit on DVD preorders. Conversely the Overdrive kindle lending service maxes you out at 20 and usually has reasonable (well, sometimes 3-6 week) wait times.
- dontbenebby 8y ago
  >In my experience new releases have long waiting lists at libraries. True, but libraries are more my goto for things that aren't on streaming. For example I wanted to watch "Reanimator" and none of my steaming services had it but the local library had a DVD. For new stuff I'm willing to pay a dollar or two on Amazon. (Especially since you can earn that easily by picking a slowing shipping speed on nonessential items... so order a dvd the library doesn't have, get a credit for a current release, and rent an old favorite to tide you over.) It's not perfect, but in my experience you're often paying for convenience, and being willing to be slightly inconvenienced pays dividends.
BeetleB 8y ago
I loved Netflix DVD, but this is the primary reason I canceled. I wasn't watching them as often, and I told myself that once I exhaust the library's selection of all the movies I want to see, I would resume the Netflix subscription.
pmoriarty 8y ago
Libraries vary tremendously in their selections of DVDs. Some libraries have pretty good selections (though still not nearly as extensive as Netflix). Other libraries have absolutely awful selections. Also, from my experience, many library DVDs tend to be scratched up (especially popular DVDs), while Netflix DVDs tend to be better (though some still don't play on my DVD player, for some reason).
bdowling 8y ago
> Why pay 10ish a month for something that has the same selection and speed as Netflix? Possibly because you don’t trust the government.
- stordoff 8y ago
  What is there to trust the government with? And I'm sure anything they could get from the library they could get from Netflix, if they found it interesting/useful.
Endy 8y ago
Are you in Bergen county, NJ? Because I'll be honest, BCCLS is probably one of the best library consortia in the world - 70+ libraries and massive collections. PALSPlus, the Passaic county system, is comparatively pretty awful - in part because of the priorities of the library boards and directors.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

There is certainly the case to be made that physical DVD/Blu-Ray rental is still a viable business due to the stagnation of internet improvement in the US. With that said, I'd think that Redbox basically does Netflix-by-mail more efficiently, no? It seems like the speed of the mail service guarantees that it will take at least a few days between you sending your finished movies back before new ones arrive, as opposed to driving to your nearest grocery store or gas station to pick something else.

ddingus 8y ago
If you like / want what is in the Redbox, sure. Not much there at any given time though.
Klonoar 8y ago
History has shown that this isn't the case... otherwise people would've kept Blockbuster in business in the face of Netflix DVD rentals. People value the convenience, it's only recently that people wax nostalgic over the whole "going to the video store to rent on a Friday night". They generally forget the long lines, employees who were rude and didn't care because it was a minimum wage job, often messy as hell store where the availability was mixed... the list goes on.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Blockbuster wasn't good at video rental. They were the big, inefficient bully, and the last choice of anyone with any sense. The selection was tiny compared to the independents they mostly priced out of existence, then became the most expensive place to rent once that was done. They had major films sooner for about as much as going to the cinema. That's it. Their only selling point. They got shot of old stuff far too soon so you could never actually find old stuff in Blockbuster unless it was 2001 or Wizard of Oz. The corner shop near us that rented, and next door but 2 to Blockbuster, kept going years after Blockbuster closed. Having experienced Blockbuster in 3 or 4 places I've lived, I gave a little cheer when they went.
  - 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago

>>> today because the first sale doctrine protected the video rental business. First sale only applies if the video rental business purchases physical copies. It is/was not unusual for a large rental business to, rather than buy copies, to license the work for distribution during a particular time/area. That allowed them to burn/build DVDs to meet demand and replaced broken disks as needed. When the license was over, the DVDs were destroyed per the licensing contract.

bnjms 8y ago
The threat of first sale was still enough to protect the video stores during negotiations so the threat mattered. As an example, I recall hearing Netflix had some early negotiations fail and went to buy disks in stores as an end run.
skywhopper 8y ago
Sure, but they only needed that surge in inventory when the rental was in high demand. But a few copies could be purchased outright to remain on the shelves, available to rent for market rates, loyalty discounts, etc, for the lifetime of the media itself. The status quo today is far worse.

jshaqaw 8y ago

Absolutely! In NYC I miss the great video stores of yesteryear like Kims. The streaming services don’t have depth and the problem is getting worse as they devote more spend towards building internal proprietary content and less towards renewing older third party content.

imglorp 8y ago

> somewhere with shitty connectivity (basically the entire rural US) So infuriating. We were surcharged and paid billions into fixing this. The universal service fund went into CEO compensation and not much else.

cfmcdonald 8y ago

I agree. The wake-up call for me that the streaming promise was hollow was when PBS Video went on line. I imagined it steadily growing to cover the entire back catalog of PBS. What a fabulous public resource that would be. Alas, no, it's a tiny slice of stuff with limited availability windows. We supplement streaming Netflix with our local library system, which has a fairly deep collection.

mixmastamyk 8y ago
Same here, once wanted to view some old Frontline from the 80's. Nope.
- philg_jr 8y ago
  Ugh, the catalog of Frontline is insanely huge. What, am I supposed to pay $24.99 per DVD of previous episodes? uh, no, I will not. Please PBS, give us real access to your catalog.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Agreed. Went back to watch the "US of secrets" on Netflix last year, gone. It was on Kanopy last I checked at least. WTF does public television think its doing with this strategy? Makes me want to pull funding.
delinka 8y ago
It costs lots of money to digitize and host the old stuff. And the non-profit organization doesn't lend itself well to selling access - it takes time and effort (read "money") to research with the lawyers whether "selling" or "membership fees" or whatever other business model is legally acceptable under the organization's structure. But since new content is shot in digital, and edited digitally, it's a minor step to convert for streaming and also broadcast so they just stick to that.
- briandear 8y ago
  It’s a bit annoying though when people complain about cutting federal funding for PBS under the guise of “saving Big Bird,” yet the taxpayer doesn’t have access to the fruits of those tax dollars. Similar to publicly funded research being hidden behind paywalls. If PBS has the money (some from taxes) to make the programming, they should have enough to provide the content for free either via their own streaming services or via commercial services.

ikeboy 8y ago

>Sometimes something won't be available for rental anymore, but remains in the list as a purchasable (ha) item. This is just straight-up rent-seeking bullshit Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of rent-seeking? They explicitly don't want rent. (Yes, I know the economic definition, I'm just punning)

mikepurvis 8y ago
I guess it really depends whether you consider a DRM-protected digital asset to be something which is possible to own vs rent. The button might say "purchase", but it's really still a rental. (Yes, I say this from the point of view of someone who has "purchased" dozens of videogames on PSN and Steam, fully aware that any of them could have the plug pulled on them at any time...)
spartas 8y ago
That depends on who the "they" is. Movie distribution companies want to maximize the value of their product, and that means marketing and advertising, exclusivity periods, product tie-ins and collaborations with different streaming providers. They know that they can get the audience numbers from anywhere, but the question is how much a particular streaming provider will pay over a competitor. So movie distribution companies are certainly engaging in rent-seeking behavior–only you're not the customer. The streaming providers are. (Reasonably good pun though)

ohazi 8y ago

What should an equivalent of the first sale doctrine for digital content look like? It seems like we need something new here to cover things like streaming content, ebooks, digital delivery, drm, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one annoyed by how the world has moved from selling to renting, especially when services and the companies providing them seem more ephemeral than ever.

Spooky23 8y ago
Something like movies anywhere crosses with iTunes Match, with a token that is owned by the consumer and available anywhere. There is no reason why a license should be locked to a platform. IMO it’s a great area to regulate.
- zanny 8y ago
  Cross-platform compatibility hurts exclusivity and revenue protection. Its why Disney et al are trying to claw back ground against the Internet with their own subscription based viewing platforms. Trying to get media companies to agree to almost anything that hurts their bottom line is antithetical to their corporate charters, they know lock in, exclusivity, and rent seeking done right is the maximal revenue model they can manage under modern cultural constraints, and they are optimizing for it - some will fail to implement it successfully, but those that do will probably reap the most possible revenue for their given library of IP.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    The same argument was made against VHS. In short, I say too bad, copyright exists to promote the useful arts and benefit society. IMO making Amazon, Netflix, etc even more of a commodity is in the interests of the producers and consumers of content.

stcredzero 8y ago

The implicit promise -- actually, occasionally made EXPLICITLY in marketing -- of high-speed broadband was that everything would be available, but the reverse has proven true. A person living in an urban area had a larger selection of movies available for rent in 1999 than they do today The last DVD I rented from Netflix was "Iron Monkey." This movie is very hard to get your hands on otherwise. (If you search for the torrent, there's a good chance you won't get any viable results!)

ukyrgf 8y ago
My Netflix DVD queue was 100% movies I couldn't torrent / find available to buy. They would be at the top of my list for years, presumably one copy getting slowly making it's way around the country. Netflix even had a production company called Red Envelope Entertainment that did some really great alt comedy movies (an early Zach Galifianakis special with the Netflix exec sitting front row with his Netflix hat on like a nerd, for example).

ghaff 8y ago

Most people don't actually care all that much what they watch. If one thing isn't available they watch something else. The (urban) people I know who have Netflix DVD subscriptions are movie buffs (ADDED: like myself). Others I know who have good Internet consider renting DVDs as something a bit weird.

zippergz 8y ago
This rings true to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't care. But there is so much more content than I actually have time to watch that I can easily fill my watching time with something I enjoy even out of the fairly limited streaming catalogs available. The limitations absolutely do bother me in principle, and on occasion I get frustrated about not being able to find something specific (then I have to decide if I care enough to go try to find it from another source). But in general I do not find myself suffering from a shortage of video content to watch at any given time.
- ghaff 8y ago
  It's true to me to a degree as well. There are streaming TV shows I'd like to take a look at but there is also a limit to how many services I'll subscribe to. At some point, I just say I can do without.

cwyers 8y ago

Most of the video rental business for new releases wasn't carried out under the first sale doctrine, because video stores worked out a deal where they could purchase videos before they were available for sale, at inflated prices.

hinkley 8y ago

I complain about how long it takes my guests to pick a movie on Netflix + Hulu + Apple + whatever else I have this week, but if I'm being perfectly honest we used to spend more time at Blockbuster. Especially if you included transit time. Because Blockbuster had a lot more movies than Netflix streaming ever has. And you can scan a rack of movies faster than you can scan in Netflix.

gtirloni 8y ago
Really? Here in Brazil I remember Blockbuster having a fairly limited number of options, mostly the new releases. The old pop and mom video store usually had way more options (because they didn't throw anything away most of the time). There are still days I can't find anything I want to watch on Netflix but it seems way better than the DVD/Blueray situation we had here.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "Here in Brazil I remember Blockbuster having a fairly limited number of options, mostly the new releases." This was exactly what Blockbuster was like in New York. They focused on mainstream, mostly blockbuster movies (hence the name, maybe). For a really good selection, you had to go to independent video rental stores, like Kim's Video in Manhattan, which had way, way, waaaay more movies available than any Blockbuster store I've ever been in could dream of. There were some other independent video rental stores scattered across NYC and Long Island with similarly good selections. Also, Blockbuster movies were often cut or censored, so you had to go to an independent video rental store to find uncut films. I've heard some people dispute that Blockbuster ever carried such films, but I'm far from the only one who remembers this happening. Search around on the web, and you'll see others reporting the same thing.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Was it a limited space store or something? The blockbusters down here in Texas, where property was cheap were huge.

babyslothzoo 8y ago

I am also surprised it's not quite a bit higher. There are many, many parts of the USA where the 'high speed' internet service is somewhere between 1mbps to 3mbps maximum, or slower, assuming there's any broadband at all. Internet speeds plummet when you're in most rural areas, often even semi-rural smaller towns that are 30-45 minutes outside of major cities have comically slow internet.

xfitm3 8y ago

Just another reason why file sharing is popular.

TheGRS 8y ago

Blockbuster had exclusive rental agreements where they could rent movies for weeks before Redbox. I'm not sure where the first-sale doctrine came into play there, but this was a reality of the time when Redbox began to make a big splash in the physical rental scene. I think the fact that renters had more choices in 1999 is because Blockbuster was a near monopoly and nobody was really challenging their status quo outside of some regional shops. All of the price changes happened as Redbox entered the scene, not Netflix streaming (though Netflix mailers were a challenge as well). So even without these streaming services you'd be seeing the same BS with only being able to buy a film for several weeks before it would be available to rent.

tzs 8y ago
> Blockbuster had exclusive rental agreements where they could rent movies for weeks before Redbox. I'm not sure where the first-sale doctrine came into play there, but this was a reality of the time when Redbox began to make a big splash in the physical rental scene. First sale only works effectively once the studio starts selling copies at retail. After that, when anyone could go down to Target, or Walmart, or Best Buy and buy retail copies, then so could Redbox, and there was nothing the studios could do to stop them. I believe that the way things like the Blockbuster exclusive deals worked is that the studios would make a deal with Blockbuster to sell copies to Blockbuster weeks before they released them for purchase at retail.

takeda 8y ago

As usual publishers make everything they can to make experience shitty. Before streaming became a thing, you could download movies and music through P2P networks. Streaming became a huge success, piracy became less of an issue, because many people didn't have problem with throwing $7 a month to use Netflix. Now once again you get much better experience if you pirate. That's the only real competitor, can you imagine how bad it would be if there was no piracy?

krrrh 8y ago
It is getting bad though. Less piracy means it’s much harder to find long tail films. The number of seedless torrents on private trackers is much higher now than it used to be.
- petra 8y ago
  Long tail is a failure point of the torrent system. And it feels it's possible to solve, by someone with good programming skills , and some cooperation from a popular bittorent software.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    How is it a programming issue? The content needs to be hosted (in a decentralized way). And, as a given title becomes less less popular--because it's older or people are just generally not torrenting as much--the odds that someone will have it available for downloading decreases. Essentially torrenting depends on people randomly making content available as sort of a quid pro quo and and streaming makes using torrents generally less interesting for a lot of people.
    - petra 8y ago
      You're right. But: The basic idea is this: Let's say i once downloaded long-tail file X. Me sharing it for years and years isn't the default. But what if it was ? what if this was built into one of the popular torrent clients , and i would have to opt-out to change it ?

mcguire 8y ago

I currently have a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes laying here in front of me.

derefr 8y ago

I would pay for a service where a company gives me a PO Box-like address, and I can have other DVD/BR-by-mail services target that address, and anything that gets sent to that address gets ripped to a server for private one-time streaming. ("one time" meaning you start a watch-session and can pause/rewind at will, but once you've passed through all the frames once and hit the-credits-minus-a-minute-or-so, you can't rewind any more—so you can't start watching from the beginning any more—and the movie will get deleted a few days later.) Would that be legal? It's a lot closer to Pay Per View than to traditional streaming.

osrec 8y ago
Why would you pay for this? What problem does it solve for you better than existing content delivery methods?
- ghshephard 8y ago
  You would get high quality, online access to the entirety of the world's movie collection for a reasonably low rate.
  - osrec 8y ago
    I understand, but it seems like an incredibly inefficient method of achieving that goal, no?
- derefr 8y ago
  Presuming this company existed in many countries instead of just my own, and that I could get something sent to any of their receiving centers in order to stream it... this would enable me to watch stuff that Netflix only has available (on DVD) in countries that are not my own. It's a physical-media VPN. If such a service also provided a more general permanent digitization service for media you actually own (where you would send them your own discs, or forward them any random CD/DVD/BR you buy off the Internet, and they would rip the disc out of the packaging it comes in, digitize it, put it on a server for you, and then destroy the original), then—in combination with the multiple-countries thing—I could use this to consume content that doesn't have a streaming version, only a physical edition; and where that physical edition isn't sold for export, but only in its country of origin. (Think: limited-release pressings of albums from indie bands; movies from film festivals that never ended up seeing general release; etc.) Essentially, it's like getting some physical media sent to Archive.org for expert digitization+preservation, but without distribution to the general public, just to the person who paid to do the preservation. (Though, they could certainly sit on their own copy of the digitized work indefinitely, never giving it to anyone or acknowledging that they have it, waiting for the day it either enters the public domain, or they acquire distribution rights to it, whereupon they can put it into a public catalogue.)

bscphil 8y ago

>We mostly use Apple's movie rental system, because the quality is better than Netflix You might want to look into this again. If you can get Netflix's highest quality 1080p streams they have much higher bitrates than what you can rent or buy on itunes. But you are 100% right about availability. Streaming is almost a myth if you're like me and want to watch a bunch of unpopular titles.

chrischattin 8y ago

The last sentence is incredibly naive. The rural U.S. has great connectivity.

Pxtl 8y ago

Yup. I live in Canada and I was quite sad when RedBox left us because of the Target collapse. It was on my way home and was quarter of the price of a streaming rental, and full of new releases.

seanp2k2 8y ago

Agree, but population density is heavily skewed toward cities, which tend to have (though not always) better internet: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29072 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29072 https://www.networkworld.com/article/2345839/population-density-dictates-broadband-service-quality.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2345839/population-dens... https://geoisp.com/us/ https://geoisp.com/us/ has some data about availability by population, but not a great map.

black-tea 8y ago

A person using the Pirate Bay 10 years ago had access to a larger selection than someone subscribing to Netflix today. The copyright industry just has a different agenda than we do. We think when technology improves we'll get more selection, faster at higher quality. The copyright industry thinks when technology improves about what new ways they can restrict the public so that lawyers can continue to make money from the hard work of long dead authors and artists.

anonytrary 8y ago

I'm afraid a similar thing will happen with video games in the next 20 years, mark my words. I remember when you could buy a video game for 60 dollars and keep it forever. You still can, but I would not be surprised if this eventually stopped being the case. With mobile games, developers are starting to realize that they can get far more money from the addicts who need to play 4 hours a day by throttling gameplay to 20 minutes a day, and forcing them to buy gems in order to bypass the throttle. This could get worse with things like Google Stadia if they decide to monetize their platform in a "pay as you play" sort of model, where you can pay, say, $4.50 for 5 hours of playtime.

ndnxhs 8y ago
With some games you can not or at least will not soon. The first few waves of games with online features now have their online parts shut down. A lot of games are online only now so when those games shut their servers it will be all over.
- JCSato 8y ago
  I wouldn't say we're seeing the first few waves now - MAG and Metal Gear Online were circa 2008-ish, right?
rashkov 8y ago
I watched the google stadia announcement video and I was amazed by what they accomplished, but your comment cuts through all of that and points to a future where google sets the artistic priorities via financial incentive... the way they currently do on YouTube.

oldjokes 8y ago

Yes. I regularly see failures and weird issues that are technically "impossible" according to the spec in things like TCP/IP, HTTP, as well as higher application layers. And trying to convince someone like Google or Microsoft that their site or service is not very robust when things start getting lossy is a complete waste of time, even if you have a massive following on social media people who dare to complain about not having megabits of data are completely ignored.