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You state your answer with great confidence, but I think you are wrong. In the US (where Netflix is based), the "first sale doctrine" has been held to allow the rental of any legally purchased DVD (even those purchased at Walmart): Because of the first-sale doctrine, any DVD reseller,
including Netflix, can basically buy a DVD at WalMart, and
turn around and rent it to someone else the very same day.
The content owners have absolutely no control over whether
the copy can be resold or rented. Period. As such, Netflix
has the ability to rent (via DVD) any movie which has ever
been sold on DVD, and its costs are relatively fixed as a
result of the retail price of the actual DVD.
http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/09/18/understanding-why-netfli...In your defense, it appears that many lawyers also do not understand this law. Here for example we see three saying that rental of consumer DVD's is clearly illegal, and two saying that it's just fine: http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-it-legal-to-rent-out-dv... This is probably because various studios have attempted to convince the public that rental of consumer DVD's is not allowed, even though falsely marking DVD's in this way is probably not legal: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/05/first-sale-fandango... But while I'm pretty certain you are wrong, and although I think I understand the law here, I am not a lawyer, much less a specialist in copyright law. If you can point to evidence that supports your contention, I'd be eager to see it. |