[mythtv-users] aereo

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Fri Jun 27 01:48:58 UTC 2014


On 06/26/2014 02:19 PM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 6:30 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 06/25/2014 08:33 PM, jedi wrote:
>>>       The bar owner is offering content to multiple people.That makes it a
>>> public performance.
>>>
>>>       Aereo wasn't. There were old DVD rental shops that used a similar
>>> approach
>>> and managed to survive judicial scrutiny because the courts at that time
>>> did
>>> not redefine the notion of a public performance.
>>
>> Well, something must have happened because buying a license to watch a
>> home-use VHS video was about $8 or so, and a home-use DVD was about $12, but
>> the license for a for-rental DVD (paid by the DVD rental shop) was somewhere
>> around $80+ (per license or copy)--and, AIUI, much higher for some,
>> depending on content/popularity/what the owner could get away with
>> charging...
> My understanding was that video rental stores generally bought the
> same media as consumers and rented it out with no additional
> "license".
>
> For physical copies, anyone with a legitimate copy may
> sell/rent/loan/destroy that copy without restriction of the copyright
> holder per the first sale doctrine.  You don't buy a license to watch
> a home use VHS tape.  You buy a VHS tape with a copy of a movie on it
> created by someone with a license to make copies.

Ah, it seems that the extra charge ($70-$130) was the way it used to 
work in VHS days, but the practice didn't survive into DVD days, and it 
wasn't so much a special-rental-licensed version as an 
earlier-availability version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_rental#Selection

So I guess the "for rental only" versions of the disks I get from 
Netflix, for example, are just specifically made for rental companies 
and sold by wholesalers (possibly at lower-than-consumer cost, and 
justified with the removal of extra features).

Mike (who's showing his age by remembering the $80 VHS rental copies)


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