8 ms·

Leaving aside the matter of Mormons and their weird puritan sensibilities, what this company essentially did was reinvent movie rental, but because they did it

Leaving aside the matter of Mormons and their weird puritan sensibilities, what this company essentially did was reinvent movie rental, but because they did it on the internet instead of a brick and mortar shop we're all expected to think it obvious and self evidence that what they did was horrible. In other contexts on sites like this, "do [common thing] but on a computer" patents get mocked and derided because "but on a computer" is seen as a farce, not a fundamental difference from the [common thing]. Anyway, I guess the mormons could get around this and achieve their desired effect by instead selling DVD players with a subscription to a service that distributes EDL files; instructions to the DVD player about which parts of movies should be skipped.

isk517 4y ago
Even during the video rental days you weren't allowed to just go out and purchase a bunch of videos at Walmart and start renting them out, you need to have purchased the rights to rent out the video.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  Why would you say this? It is the opposite of the truth; the first-sale doctrine prevents the copyright owner from interfering with you while you rent out your cassettes. You need to purchase rights to display the video in public. No one can stop you from renting out the tape. You already possess the right to rent out your own property.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  As far as I'm aware, this is not true. The first-sale doctrine allowed the rental of VHS and video games bought normally at retail stores. The movie and video game industry went ballistic over this, a Nintendo executive called it "commercial rape". The movie industry took it to court and lost, and tried lobbying congress to no avail. IIRC, they then hatched a scheme where the retail availability of new movies on VHS would be restricted at least for a time, forcing video rental shops to pay more for copies of popular new movies.
- pavon 4y ago
  Yes, you absolutely could do that legally - it is part of the "right of first sale", however you would have to wait until the videos were available for sale at Walmart. If a video rental store wanted to have access to videos before they were available for home purchase (and most of them did) then they had to make deals with the rights holders and follow the contracts that went along with them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  You are completely wrong. There's no such thing as "right to rent video." You could 100% buy a bunch of videos and start renting them out today, and it would be completely legal. Netflix does this today for their DVD rental business. This is also why libraries are legal. You can't buy a DVD and charge tickets to see the DVD played by you. You can't stream the DVD's contents over the Internet. But you can absolutely rent the DVD itself.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The problem isn't that you can't stream the contents to other people. The current legal situation also roughly states that a viewer is allowed to stream the contents of copies they own, but you can't help them. (See also Aereo, where all data was permanently owned by a single user, no resale shenanigans whatsoever.) The law shouldn't work like that. Users should be able to outsource without causing a violation of copyright law.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    In the current age of gigabit FTTH connections, I wonder how the situation would be if the service provider would just allow you to rent a dvd drive in a datacenter that's connected via regular sata, just tunneled through the internet. That'd avoid all the "breaking the DRM", "modifying the data", etc. As provider you just offer a device that loads dvds from a user's in-datacenter storage cabinet into their in-datacenter dvd drives, and rent them a dvd drive. That might be complicated enough to avoid the whole "performance" interpretation
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      Another comment [0] pointed out that a version of this was already tried, and it was found to still be a public performance. Not sure how much the details of the technologies used would affect the ruling, but probably not enough. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32645286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32645286
      - cxr 4y ago
- jjeaff 4y ago
  That's exactly what companies like RedBox do/did. They would send buyers out to Walmarts and Best buys all over the country to buy up copies. I think they eventually stopped doing it just to appease the production companies and avoid their frivolous lawsuits.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    I was just going to mention RedBox! If I remember correctly, they tried to buy from the company - Disney IIRC - but they were refused sale. Instead, they simply bought retail and rented those.
Ajedi32 4y ago
Taken to it's logical extreme though, such a service could easily render copyright effectively useless. Break the movie into 10 second clips, "rent out" each of those clips during the 10 seconds they're being viewed and automatically return them after. There, you can now "legally" stream 720 concurrent copies of a 2 hour movie at once in perpetuity for near zero marginal cost. The only reason rentals worked was because of the physical constraints that limited the distribution of each copy. Take that away, what you're left with is just thinly veiled copyright abolishment.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  So put a minimum rental time on things. Banning online rental is a bad solution.
  - MikeTheGreat 4y ago
    No-one's saying that online rental should be banned. Instead, the solution that the USA's current legal system is going with is "You _can_ run an online rental service, as long as you have the copyright owner's permission (e.g., you have a contract with them in which you give them money and they give you their permission)"
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      That's a ban on the normal mechanism via which rentals work. Sorry for shortening it. It's a bad solution. It should require no cooperation to build an online version of DVD rental.
      - dahart 4y ago
        For better or worse, the US legal system and media publishers disagree, and they’ve established the rules that do require cooperation with the copyrights holders to build online streaming services. But as I’m sure you know, it’s at best problematic to call online streaming a “DVD rental”. It doesn’t fall under first sale doctrine if you stream a transcoded copy of the DVD you bought. This is why the laws around digital distribution and copyright aren’t exactly the same as the laws around physical distribution and copyright.
mbreese 4y ago
This reminds me of how Aereo worked. They effectively built small little antennas that they could put in a data center. You’d then rent the antenna and stream data to your home instead of using your own antenna. This was found (Supreme Court) to be unauthorized as it was a “public performance”. This DVD streaming service would likely have fallen under the same category. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
- nkurz 4y ago
  While Aereo is certainly relevant, the 2011 "Warner Bros. Entertainment v. WTV Systems" is even more similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc._v._WTV_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc.... WTV ran service called "Zediva" that streamed video from physical DVD players to customers. The District Court of Central California (the same court that ruled against VidAngel) decided that this violated the performance rights of the copyright holders.
jjeaff 4y ago
While some Mormons may have "weird puritan" values, simply wanting censorship options for some movies is something that many families would like to have, not just Mormons. And I don't think it's necessarily puritan to want to cut out that one or two scenes of a head exploding in an otherwise family friendly flick.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  I'm still astounded that Enchanted (the 2007 film) prominently features a scene of the chipmunk sidekick pooping on screen.
  - etothepii 4y ago
    Isn't pooping something we all do from birth? Hard to put it in the same category as fornication.
    - unsupp0rted 4y ago
      Because fornication is something we all want to do from puberty, therefore it’s a less neutral bodily function.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I actually agree, but I got the sense that the company being mormon was meant to bias the reader of that comment towards thinking that the company was in the wrong. I hoped to drive the conversation past that prejudice by conceding and dismissing it rather than pushing back against it, because I felt that on this forum pushback would likely prompt a religious flamewar rather than a discussion about digital rental. Using EDL files to edit movies for my family is something I've actually done before. I think a superfluous sex scene is okay in most contexts, but when watching a movie with parents/grandparents it's generally too cringe for me and everybody else in the room. I used mpv's EDL functionality for this: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.rst https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.r...
teekert 4y ago
It all about ROI (Radio On Internet).
YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
If you ran a movie rental shop using consumer copies of movies you bought from HMV or Target or whoever, you'd've been sued if the rights holders found out. Rental copies that came with a licence that permits renting cost several times what it cost to buy a consumer copy. And of course, when you sign a deal to get said rental copies, you probably have to agree to a bunch of conditions that probably include not doing exactly what they did.

isk517 4y ago

Even during the video rental days you weren't allowed to just go out and purchase a bunch of videos at Walmart and start renting them out, you need to have purchased the rights to rent out the video.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
Why would you say this? It is the opposite of the truth; the first-sale doctrine prevents the copyright owner from interfering with you while you rent out your cassettes. You need to purchase rights to display the video in public. No one can stop you from renting out the tape. You already possess the right to rent out your own property.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
As far as I'm aware, this is not true. The first-sale doctrine allowed the rental of VHS and video games bought normally at retail stores. The movie and video game industry went ballistic over this, a Nintendo executive called it "commercial rape". The movie industry took it to court and lost, and tried lobbying congress to no avail. IIRC, they then hatched a scheme where the retail availability of new movies on VHS would be restricted at least for a time, forcing video rental shops to pay more for copies of popular new movies.
pavon 4y ago
Yes, you absolutely could do that legally - it is part of the "right of first sale", however you would have to wait until the videos were available for sale at Walmart. If a video rental store wanted to have access to videos before they were available for home purchase (and most of them did) then they had to make deals with the rights holders and follow the contracts that went along with them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
You are completely wrong. There's no such thing as "right to rent video." You could 100% buy a bunch of videos and start renting them out today, and it would be completely legal. Netflix does this today for their DVD rental business. This is also why libraries are legal. You can't buy a DVD and charge tickets to see the DVD played by you. You can't stream the DVD's contents over the Internet. But you can absolutely rent the DVD itself.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  The problem isn't that you can't stream the contents to other people. The current legal situation also roughly states that a viewer is allowed to stream the contents of copies they own, but you can't help them. (See also Aereo, where all data was permanently owned by a single user, no resale shenanigans whatsoever.) The law shouldn't work like that. Users should be able to outsource without causing a violation of copyright law.
- kuschku 4y ago
  In the current age of gigabit FTTH connections, I wonder how the situation would be if the service provider would just allow you to rent a dvd drive in a datacenter that's connected via regular sata, just tunneled through the internet. That'd avoid all the "breaking the DRM", "modifying the data", etc. As provider you just offer a device that loads dvds from a user's in-datacenter storage cabinet into their in-datacenter dvd drives, and rent them a dvd drive. That might be complicated enough to avoid the whole "performance" interpretation
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    Another comment [0] pointed out that a version of this was already tried, and it was found to still be a public performance. Not sure how much the details of the technologies used would affect the ruling, but probably not enough. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32645286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32645286
    - cxr 4y ago
jjeaff 4y ago
That's exactly what companies like RedBox do/did. They would send buyers out to Walmarts and Best buys all over the country to buy up copies. I think they eventually stopped doing it just to appease the production companies and avoid their frivolous lawsuits.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  I was just going to mention RedBox! If I remember correctly, they tried to buy from the company - Disney IIRC - but they were refused sale. Instead, they simply bought retail and rented those.

Ajedi32 4y ago

Taken to it's logical extreme though, such a service could easily render copyright effectively useless. Break the movie into 10 second clips, "rent out" each of those clips during the 10 seconds they're being viewed and automatically return them after. There, you can now "legally" stream 720 concurrent copies of a 2 hour movie at once in perpetuity for near zero marginal cost. The only reason rentals worked was because of the physical constraints that limited the distribution of each copy. Take that away, what you're left with is just thinly veiled copyright abolishment.

Dylan16807 4y ago
So put a minimum rental time on things. Banning online rental is a bad solution.
- MikeTheGreat 4y ago
  No-one's saying that online rental should be banned. Instead, the solution that the USA's current legal system is going with is "You _can_ run an online rental service, as long as you have the copyright owner's permission (e.g., you have a contract with them in which you give them money and they give you their permission)"
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    That's a ban on the normal mechanism via which rentals work. Sorry for shortening it. It's a bad solution. It should require no cooperation to build an online version of DVD rental.
    - dahart 4y ago
      For better or worse, the US legal system and media publishers disagree, and they’ve established the rules that do require cooperation with the copyrights holders to build online streaming services. But as I’m sure you know, it’s at best problematic to call online streaming a “DVD rental”. It doesn’t fall under first sale doctrine if you stream a transcoded copy of the DVD you bought. This is why the laws around digital distribution and copyright aren’t exactly the same as the laws around physical distribution and copyright.

mbreese 4y ago

This reminds me of how Aereo worked. They effectively built small little antennas that they could put in a data center. You’d then rent the antenna and stream data to your home instead of using your own antenna. This was found (Supreme Court) to be unauthorized as it was a “public performance”. This DVD streaming service would likely have fallen under the same category. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

nkurz 4y ago
While Aereo is certainly relevant, the 2011 "Warner Bros. Entertainment v. WTV Systems" is even more similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc._v._WTV_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc.... WTV ran service called "Zediva" that streamed video from physical DVD players to customers. The District Court of Central California (the same court that ruled against VidAngel) decided that this violated the performance rights of the copyright holders.

jjeaff 4y ago

While some Mormons may have "weird puritan" values, simply wanting censorship options for some movies is something that many families would like to have, not just Mormons. And I don't think it's necessarily puritan to want to cut out that one or two scenes of a head exploding in an otherwise family friendly flick.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
I'm still astounded that Enchanted (the 2007 film) prominently features a scene of the chipmunk sidekick pooping on screen.
- etothepii 4y ago
  Isn't pooping something we all do from birth? Hard to put it in the same category as fornication.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    Because fornication is something we all want to do from puberty, therefore it’s a less neutral bodily function.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I actually agree, but I got the sense that the company being mormon was meant to bias the reader of that comment towards thinking that the company was in the wrong. I hoped to drive the conversation past that prejudice by conceding and dismissing it rather than pushing back against it, because I felt that on this forum pushback would likely prompt a religious flamewar rather than a discussion about digital rental. Using EDL files to edit movies for my family is something I've actually done before. I think a superfluous sex scene is okay in most contexts, but when watching a movie with parents/grandparents it's generally too cringe for me and everybody else in the room. I used mpv's EDL functionality for this: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.rst https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.r...

teekert 4y ago

It all about ROI (Radio On Internet).

YurgenJurgensen 4y ago

If you ran a movie rental shop using consumer copies of movies you bought from HMV or Target or whoever, you'd've been sued if the rights holders found out. Rental copies that came with a licence that permits renting cost several times what it cost to buy a consumer copy. And of course, when you sign a deal to get said rental copies, you probably have to agree to a bunch of conditions that probably include not doing exactly what they did.