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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

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.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        I would say the law around first sale doctrine has not caught up yet more than it actively disagrees. > 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. I don't think transcoding should matter, at least if it's done on the fly, but also it's entirely doable to throw raw DVD bits over the wire. And neither one should count as a copy any more than shining light onto a book makes "copies".
        dahart 4y ago
        I’m not arguing your opinion, I’m just pointing out the established precedent and law disagrees with your opinion, so it’s going to take some work if you want the outcome you’re describing. Saying it could work in theory if people just transcode on the fly and self-limit the rental rate isn’t particularly convincing, fwiw. The shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I’m sure you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a copy, because the bits exist in two places. Not that this matters, it’s splitting hairs that may not exist. The point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder control over who gets to distribute and who gets to consume, and it may not make any difference whether there’s technically copying involved according to however you define copying.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > I’m not arguing your opinion, I’m just pointing out the established precedent and law disagrees with your opinion, so it’s going to take some work if you want the outcome you’re describing. Except for all the pre-digital precedent that informs and agrees with my opinion. > The shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I’m sure you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a copy, because the bits exist in two places. I don't think it reaches hyperbole. The bits only need to exist in two places for milliseconds. It should not count as a copy. It's only a copy in a pedantic technical sense. > The point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder control over who gets to distribute and who gets to consume, and it may not make any difference whether there’s technically copying involved according to however you define copying. Except they're supposed to lose a huge amount of control after the first sale. This feature of copyright is broken for digital items.
tomrod 4y ago
Sure, but that's an effect on tons of laws.
IX-103 4y ago
Sorry. Each 10 second clip is a derivative work of the whole. So you can't sub-license portions of the work without permission. Just like you can't lend out individual chapters of a book....
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  > you can't lend out individual chapters of a book You can't? If I buy a physical book, I can't rip a page out of it and sell that to you? That's certainly the first I've heard of any such law.
  - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
    You can certainly rip a page out and sell it, by doctrine of first sale. Only one person can have the page at a time. What you can’t (legally) do is copy a page of your book and sell it/give it away (though maybe one could argue that a mere page would be a small enough excerpt to fall under fair use). VidAngel (and the hypothetical 10 second streamer) fall under the latter, since streaming inherently makes a copy. As you pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it would be perfectly legal (but completely impractical) to cut up a VHS tape into individual scenes and resell those pieces of tape, since no copy was made.
    - hansvm 4y ago
      > since streaming inherently makes a copy If we're being pedantic about a few stray electrons, you also make a copy when you stream it from the disc to your CPU, from your CPU back to a monitor, and so on. If VidAngel had a minimum "purchase" time of 1yr the case probably would have swung the other way. The issue isn't the streaming, but rather that the nature of the agreement was more akin to making a copy than not (with "sales" happening substantially faster than they would have in meat space).
- gnopgnip 4y ago
  You can't license out a copy of a movie in its entirety either. Renting a physical disc is different because you aren't making a copy
kelnos 4y ago
That's not really a "logical extreme", that's a straw man and an obvious ploy to do something you're not supposed to be able to do. I think a reasonable person would see that what you describe is an attempt to make an end run around both the spirit and letter of the law. But what VidAngel was doing was "one copy = one view", which is IMO entirely reasonable. There is zero moral difference between mailing someone a Bluray disc (with instructions -- either automated or manual -- of what parts to skip) vs. keeping that disc in a warehouse and streaming the (censored) contents to exactly one person at a time.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  Mailing the disk imposes a much longer delay between customers, so it massively reduces the amount of times it can be rented. There's the moral difference - copyright owner won't sell as many copies. But I wonder what would happen if we had some super-fast rocket drone delivery service so it's just a video rental shop on steroids?
- Thorrez 4y ago
  The difference is when mailing it, it gets worn out, so after a certain number of plays the renter needs to buy a new copy. If it's fine digitally it never gets worn out.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    That doesn’t matter since you are allowed to copy your own digital media for the purpose of dealing with that exact situation. A rental shop would legally be allowed to make a backup copy of every disc they have in case it gets damaged.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      Hmm, are they allowed to rent out the backup copy if the original breaks? I thought rental was based on first sale doctrine and backup copies are based on fair use. I'm not sure if you can combine the 2.
lozenge 4y ago
A 10 second clip of a movie that is designed to be stitched with 710 other 10 second clips isn't fair use, it's just copyright infringement. "In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:[8] the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. "
- Ajedi32 4y ago
  We're talking about first sale doctrine here, not fair use. If I did the exact same thing with a VHS tape, cutting out 10 second strips of tape and renting them out to people, that'd be totally legal under first sale doctrine. Doing that with VHS would be totally impractical but legal. Doing it with a digital file would be totally practical but illegal, since currently first sale doctrine doesn't apply to digital distribution of copyrighted materials. My point is just that if you think it's a good idea to extend first sale doctrine to digital files without any restrictions you may first want to consider the logical consequences of that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - hunter2_ 4y ago
    > Doing it with a digital file ... digital distribution ... extend first sale doctrine to digital files I fully understand, but there's got to be a better way to describe this line in the sand given that DVDs contain digital files. "Physical" doesn't work because networks have a physical layer. "Stream" is also problematic because bitstreams are present on any kind of media. Even "network" doesn't quite cut the mustard because a chain of video stores could be described as a trade network. "Tangible" comes damn close, but suppose the baud rate is slow enough and the voltage high enough that I can discern the download by touching the wire? What, then, is the unambiguous word for what we're talking about here? If it really boils down to letting time elapse between views/customers, shouldn't that be what the law demands?

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.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      I would say the law around first sale doctrine has not caught up yet more than it actively disagrees. > 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. I don't think transcoding should matter, at least if it's done on the fly, but also it's entirely doable to throw raw DVD bits over the wire. And neither one should count as a copy any more than shining light onto a book makes "copies".
      - dahart 4y ago
        I’m not arguing your opinion, I’m just pointing out the established precedent and law disagrees with your opinion, so it’s going to take some work if you want the outcome you’re describing. Saying it could work in theory if people just transcode on the fly and self-limit the rental rate isn’t particularly convincing, fwiw. The shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I’m sure you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a copy, because the bits exist in two places. Not that this matters, it’s splitting hairs that may not exist. The point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder control over who gets to distribute and who gets to consume, and it may not make any difference whether there’s technically copying involved according to however you define copying.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > I’m not arguing your opinion, I’m just pointing out the established precedent and law disagrees with your opinion, so it’s going to take some work if you want the outcome you’re describing. Except for all the pre-digital precedent that informs and agrees with my opinion. > The shining light analogy is a little hyperbolic, I’m sure you know. Transcoding & streaming definitely is making a copy, because the bits exist in two places. I don't think it reaches hyperbole. The bits only need to exist in two places for milliseconds. It should not count as a copy. It's only a copy in a pedantic technical sense. > The point of copyright law is to give copyrights holder control over who gets to distribute and who gets to consume, and it may not make any difference whether there’s technically copying involved according to however you define copying. Except they're supposed to lose a huge amount of control after the first sale. This feature of copyright is broken for digital items.

tomrod 4y ago

Sure, but that's an effect on tons of laws.

IX-103 4y ago

Sorry. Each 10 second clip is a derivative work of the whole. So you can't sub-license portions of the work without permission. Just like you can't lend out individual chapters of a book....

Ajedi32 4y ago
> you can't lend out individual chapters of a book You can't? If I buy a physical book, I can't rip a page out of it and sell that to you? That's certainly the first I've heard of any such law.
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  You can certainly rip a page out and sell it, by doctrine of first sale. Only one person can have the page at a time. What you can’t (legally) do is copy a page of your book and sell it/give it away (though maybe one could argue that a mere page would be a small enough excerpt to fall under fair use). VidAngel (and the hypothetical 10 second streamer) fall under the latter, since streaming inherently makes a copy. As you pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it would be perfectly legal (but completely impractical) to cut up a VHS tape into individual scenes and resell those pieces of tape, since no copy was made.
  - hansvm 4y ago
    > since streaming inherently makes a copy If we're being pedantic about a few stray electrons, you also make a copy when you stream it from the disc to your CPU, from your CPU back to a monitor, and so on. If VidAngel had a minimum "purchase" time of 1yr the case probably would have swung the other way. The issue isn't the streaming, but rather that the nature of the agreement was more akin to making a copy than not (with "sales" happening substantially faster than they would have in meat space).
gnopgnip 4y ago
You can't license out a copy of a movie in its entirety either. Renting a physical disc is different because you aren't making a copy

kelnos 4y ago

That's not really a "logical extreme", that's a straw man and an obvious ploy to do something you're not supposed to be able to do. I think a reasonable person would see that what you describe is an attempt to make an end run around both the spirit and letter of the law. But what VidAngel was doing was "one copy = one view", which is IMO entirely reasonable. There is zero moral difference between mailing someone a Bluray disc (with instructions -- either automated or manual -- of what parts to skip) vs. keeping that disc in a warehouse and streaming the (censored) contents to exactly one person at a time.

sacrosancty 4y ago
Mailing the disk imposes a much longer delay between customers, so it massively reduces the amount of times it can be rented. There's the moral difference - copyright owner won't sell as many copies. But I wonder what would happen if we had some super-fast rocket drone delivery service so it's just a video rental shop on steroids?
Thorrez 4y ago
The difference is when mailing it, it gets worn out, so after a certain number of plays the renter needs to buy a new copy. If it's fine digitally it never gets worn out.
- Spivak 4y ago
  That doesn’t matter since you are allowed to copy your own digital media for the purpose of dealing with that exact situation. A rental shop would legally be allowed to make a backup copy of every disc they have in case it gets damaged.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Hmm, are they allowed to rent out the backup copy if the original breaks? I thought rental was based on first sale doctrine and backup copies are based on fair use. I'm not sure if you can combine the 2.

lozenge 4y ago

A 10 second clip of a movie that is designed to be stitched with 710 other 10 second clips isn't fair use, it's just copyright infringement. "In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:[8] the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. "

Ajedi32 4y ago
We're talking about first sale doctrine here, not fair use. If I did the exact same thing with a VHS tape, cutting out 10 second strips of tape and renting them out to people, that'd be totally legal under first sale doctrine. Doing that with VHS would be totally impractical but legal. Doing it with a digital file would be totally practical but illegal, since currently first sale doctrine doesn't apply to digital distribution of copyrighted materials. My point is just that if you think it's a good idea to extend first sale doctrine to digital files without any restrictions you may first want to consider the logical consequences of that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  > Doing it with a digital file ... digital distribution ... extend first sale doctrine to digital files I fully understand, but there's got to be a better way to describe this line in the sand given that DVDs contain digital files. "Physical" doesn't work because networks have a physical layer. "Stream" is also problematic because bitstreams are present on any kind of media. Even "network" doesn't quite cut the mustard because a chain of video stores could be described as a trade network. "Tangible" comes damn close, but suppose the baud rate is slow enough and the voltage high enough that I can discern the download by touching the wire? What, then, is the unambiguous word for what we're talking about here? If it really boils down to letting time elapse between views/customers, shouldn't that be what the law demands?