Disney's attempt to prevent Redbox from buying its discs for rental and resale may have blown up in the House of Mouse's face. The Hollywood Reporter describes how District Court Judge Dean Pregerson sided with Redbox to shoot down a Disney-mandated injunction. In addition, Pregerson contended that Disney may itself be misusing copyright law to protect its interests and its own forthcoming streaming service.
If you're unfamiliar with the backstory, Redbox didn't have a deal in place to procure Disney DVDs and Blu-rays for its disc rental kiosks. So, the company simply bought the discs at retail, often snagging combo packs that include a DVD, Blu-ray and a download code for the movie as well. Redbox would then offer up the discs for rental, and sell on the codes at its kiosks for between $8 and $15.
Such a move enraged Disney, which includes language in its packaging and on the website demanding that users must own the disc if they download a copy. But this is where Pregerson began to disagree, saying that Disney cannot dictate what people do with copyrighted media after they have bought it. Specifically, that there's no law, or explicit contract term, that prevents folks from doing what Redbox did with Disney discs.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/disney-redbox-lawsuit/
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:40AM (1 child)
Once the "you can't rent these videos/DVDs/etc" clauses got tested in court, it turned out that first sale doctrine allowed anyone to do anything with the physical media.
Back in the day, they used to sell new release Videos to rental outlets for $100, while the for-sale consumer versions were $20. When they realised they couldn't get away with that, as the rental outlets just rented the retail versions, they tried to sue, but came afoul of the law. So then they just sold the $100 new release videos to video shops, and only a month or two did they start selling the lower cost retail copies.
Just because they include some non-skippable FBI warnings with bogus legal stipulations, doesn't suddenly mean they can circumvent the law and force you to use a product in a certain way.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:25PM
Interesting. This makes me very curious to know how it works in Europe.
What I know is that the Berne convention led to some harmonisation of copyright internationally.
What I also know is that in Europe, you used to have these "not for public viewing" warnings.
From a little googling, it seems that an equivalent to first sale doctrine ought to exist in the EU.
If there's a lawyer willing to weigh in, color me curious!