4 ms·

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 purc

by 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.

by 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.