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Television Media

Can I Lend DVDs? 35

Posted by Cliff from the yet-another-blow-to-fair-use dept.
tramm asks: "I just -purchased- a DVD from Hastings that has some rather ominous wording on the license 'agreement': ANY UNATHORIZED COPYING, HIRING, LENDING OR PUBLIC PERFORMANCE OF THIS DVD IS ILLEGAL AND SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION. What happened to the right of first sale? Can I no longer lend my movies to friends without fearing the MPAA's wrath? Or is this another overstepping of consumers' rights that will become more routine once UCITA becomes 'the law'?" And people wonder why I don't have a DVD player. Now I can point to a reason why, although I'm excited about the technology, I just can't get too thrilled about my rights to use it.
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Can I Lend DVDs? More

Can I Lend DVDs?

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  • Ya, but (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As much as I am riled by the licensing cops (you think recent events are bad, don't forget ASCAP went after the Girl Scouts for singing campfire songs without paying performance royalty fees...yikes!) I cannot forget that the reason such laws exist are for a simple purpose: to benefit the artists who created the entertainment (and the people who financially backed those artists).

    If we take away the ability for artists to profit from their work will that be good? Should we not rather respect their right to charge for their product? Of course technology makes it simple to copy and distribute these works, but that doesn't make it right.

    What if Stephen Spielberg had to mow lawns to make a living because everyone circumvented paying him to enjoy his work? (A stretch, but you know what I mean).

    Anyway...

  • Books have been around for few centuries now, and are fairly "traditional". No publisher is going to loose sleep over if you lend a book to your friend/brother/dog, it's (IMHO & IANAL) "fair use". Corporates are just becoming more greedy every day, they use legal imtimidation to scare people (FUD tactics). Lend it to your friend and don't loose sleep over some laywer who have to prove it's existance and 60.000USD salary to write crap like that...
    J.
  • I cannot forget that the reason such laws exist are for a simple purpose: to benefit the artists who created the entertainment (and the people who financially backed those artists).

    Actually, American copyright laws exist to benefit the American people. Implicit in that is the balance between restricting rights in order to promote production of creative works, and giving people rights to enjoy creative works and to express themselves.

    Is it illegal for you to lend a book to a friend? No. Is it illegal for an institution to lend books to anyone for free? No - it's called a library.

  • The way things seem to be going it will one day be illegal to watch your own DVD's.

    "I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."

  • Actually, VHS tapes have the same warning, as do laser discs, and video CDs. The idea is to disallow block buster like places from renting the movies without paying royalties. Not to keep you from loaning you DVD to a friend.

    For the privilage of being forbiden from loaning you DVDs, you'd have to by a DivX machine. Oh wait, you can't.
  • This will never be seen or moderated, but if Mr. Spielberg mowed lawns _and_ made great movies, I might be inclined to see more of them.
  • You're ok. You can lend it to your friend, all you have to do is get authorization from the company :)

    Actually, now that I think about it, they might think twice if they start getting calls asking for authorization to lend your DVDs...

    Chris Hagar

  • Taking things to the logical extreme, could inviting a group of friends over to watch movies be construed as "lending"? The rational-thinker side of me knows it's ludicrous, but to the paranoid-consiracy-theorist side of me, it makes a weird kind of sense. What if you had to give a cut to the MPAA in order to watch movies at home? It gives a new meaning to "home theater"...

  • Actually, I hadn't heard about this before looking at this link. It is an interesting situation, but I still tend to disagree with the writer's conclusions.

    In fact, I think ASCAP is poorly conceived, in and of iteself. As far as I'm concerned (and I spent a few years as a local musician myself, writing and playing original compositions) - artists should cease trying to collect royalties on public performances of their works.

    If a piece of music is performed by someone other than the original composer, it is *not* the same experience for the listener. It might be a good imitation, but it's still different. Anyone publically re-creating someone else's musical work had to go to considerable effort to do so. (Had to learn how to play the music, or at least set up the entire performance -- bringing the needed equipment to perform it, advertise it, etc.)

    If anything, ASCAP should limit themselves to only collecting royalties from commercial entities that replay artists' recordings for commercial gain (such as radio stations).
    Live performances should be left completely out of the picture. Otherwise, you run into this ludicrous situations like the Girl Scouts.
  • Someone on /. has pointed out that there is a bug in the slashcode where if you have never metamoderated, you'll never be asked to.

    Try visiting http://slashdot.org/metamod.pl [slashdot.org]

    -jerdenn

  • You would think so. Unfortunately, this whole DeCSS thing pretty much proves that they're more interested in picking on the small-time consumers who aren't even doing anything wrong than the actual pirates.

    But as far as lending DVDs is concerned, I say go ahead. There's nothing morally wrong with it any way you look at it, and even though the MPAA might want this to be illegal, doesn't mean it should be. In the ideal world, all copyrighted material should be treated like books. And even if they do pass some inane law making lending illegal, how will they ever find out? They won't. They won't ever find out, you're not doing anything wrong, so I say knock yourself out.

    Here's my [radiks.net] DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?

  • i've been posting on slashdot for many months now, and i've never meta-moderated. is there something i'm missing here? i've moderated many times, but am i doing something wrong?

    Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
  • I may be showing my ignorance here, but what's the right of First Sale that was mentioned in the story above?

    Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
  • Sheesh, here's a dollar, buy a clue will ya? please?

    Maybe you don't mind living in (luckily a fictional, but only mildly so) Orwellian world where every aspect of your life is subject to some sort of EULA, but I do.

    You can't just blindly think that people will give up the simple freedom of being able to loan a friend a book or a DVD or a CD. And you can't expect all of humanity to start wearing one bracelet on their right hand that says "WWMD" (What Would the MPAA Do?), and one on their left hand for "WWRD" (What Would the RIAA Do?).

    Humanity will always over-rule "legality" when they collide. When that stops being the case, run, run like the wind!

  • No, it means that if you're in the US, "the book is yours do with it as you wish" and, if you are in the UK, "the book is ours mothah fsckah, we're just loaning it to you, don't spill stuff on it or you are dead!".
  • The same message also appears when you buy a movie on VHS or VCD. And for as far as I can remember, it always has.
  • Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that the additional cost was all there was. There could very well be an additional license that the rental joint needs in order to charge for the rental that could even cost them a per copy fee.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
  • Can I watch a DVD with a friend present?
  • Technically, YOU are the one who has paid for the DVD, and you've bought a non-exclusive right to view the contents as many times as you wish. This means that you and you alone are allowed to watch it.

    Or it would if the industry were able to enforce such a practice. In reality, they just can't do that. The best they can do is to try to ban you from letting too many other people from seeing it, throught the text you quote. It says "lending" is illegal, but what is lending?

    If I lend you the DVD and let you watch it in your own home, then yes, that's lending. If I lend you the DVD to watch in *my* home while I'm off doing something else (maybe you don't have a DVD player), it *that* lending? Possibly.

    And so on. I think the last word is that they would have a pretty hard time proving you'd lent it to anyone, and that particular word "lending" is just a scare tactic.

    Of course if that friend then copied it using DivX (or however it's capitalised) you'd have a very different kettle of fish altogether....

    --
  • Im not so sure that the any one but the consumer is getting bent here per se... as once when i lost the video i had rented, they wanted me to pay full price, (108.95 USD)even tho I went to the same blockbuster and purchased a previously viewed for (19.95 USD) and tried to replace it. WTF???
  • If you're a lawyer only making $60,000 USD, then you're certainly not doing a very good job of justifying your salary :)
  • "lending" a DVD out for $20 is RENTING (or Hiring, as the federal warning states). lending ONLY refers to the free exchange. and as far as i know, the warning at the beginning of the DVDs is the same as the one before VHS movies, as it is the Federal copyright warning.
  • Okay, assume for a minute that I can loan a DVD movie out to a friend or whomever I chose (with no monies in exchange). But what happens if I wanted to give it to someone? I try not to break the law nor stretch legalities, so I'm trying to understand this. (DVD is coming full force, and seems to be more restrictive than a regular VHS tape.)

    I can, under the old "BetaMax" decision, record a show for my own personal use from the TV, and watch that. I can even have someone else watch it with me, and I'm not breaking the law. I can even give that tape to someone, they can watch it at their house, and I'm still not breaking the law. Whether the show comes from basic UHF/VHF signals or Showtime and HBO... It's all legal, as long as no monies are exchanged for the usage of that tape...

    And now comes DVD...

    If I go out and buy a DVD, get bored with it, and then give it to my friend who REALLY likes the movie, have I just done something illegal? (The conversation "Oh, can I have that?" "Sure, take it." ocurs with me in my life a lot.)

    I'm not trying to be stupid, I'm just trying to make sure that if someone comes knocking at my door, it's not law enforcement with an arrest warrant...
  • This is lending in the legal sense as in "rent or lease" ... it doesn't mean giving it to a buddy to watch on Saturday night. If you charge a fee for people to view or borrow the movie, you will be required to pay royaltys to the film's studio. Things are a bit fuzzy here as well because you also owe royaltys if you want to do a public or large-party showing of a film. You must rent a special copy for public showing that usually costs between 50 and 1000 dollars each time you show it.

    Right of first sale that people are talking about is your right to resell the copy; however whoever you sell it to is still bound by the restrictions on public showing and lending.

    ~GoRK
  • I've seen similar legal language in British books. For example:
    Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

    I've seen similar statements, without the disclaimer for the USA, in other books published in the UK. As I understand it, there is no "First Sale Doctrine" in the UK.

    I'm not quite sure what the legal meaning of the statement is supposed to be. Lending libraries in Europe appear to be treated differently by copyright law.

  • The Orem (Utah) Public Library lends DVDs to anyone with a card -- free. A few of the local video stores rent them. Obviously, lending is OK under some circumstances.

    Weston
  • It seems to be restricting unauthorized lending. I'm not sure exactly that means ANY lending at all. I could lend the DVD out to people for $20 and that would indeed probably be illegal. However I'm not sure this restricts just lending it to a friend for free for a night or something. From the short lines of the text that we have here this doesn't sound much different than the rules that have been applied to VHS for ages.
  • ""lending" a DVD out for $20 is RENTING "

    Yeah, that's what I said:
    I could lend the DVD out to people for $20 and that would indeed probably be illegal. However I'm not sure this restricts just lending it to a friend for free for a night or something.

  • The bottom line is, you can loan it to your friends and family, but you can't rent it for a fee. You would have to contract with the distributor and pay the higher for rent cost if you had the intention of renting them out.
    You're right about the two-tiered pricing scheme, regarding "sell through" versus "rental" pricing. However, the price a rental outlet pays for a DVD or video tape has nothing to do with their ability to rent it to a customer.

    Currently, DVD is primarily priced at sell-through prices--MSRP goes from $14.99 to about $34.99 at most. When Blockbuster or your local video chain buys dozens of copies in bulk and rents them to consumers, the studios are losing out on getting a cut of that profit. This is why we can expect rental pricing for DVDs to come into effect some time in the future.

    As far as what does make it legal for you to buy a title and then rent it out, I am not sure. However, it is more than just the initial pricing from the studio. You can buy a copy of The Sixth Sense [800.com] on VHS from 800.com, but it's going to cost you $89.95. And while that's the same price Blockbuster pays for the same tape, paying the premium price still won't give you the right to rent it out for a fee. It doesn't matter whether you're paying the rental price or the $21.95 sell-through for the DVD.

    Does anyone have an idea of what makes it legal for a rental outlet to charge you for the right to borrow a tape?

    ---
  • I run the DVD club at work. Basically everyone with a DVD player enters their DVDs into a database, and other members of the club can request them over a website. The website keeps track of who is line to borrow the DVD next and whose hands it is in. It's pretty nice to just borrow a movie instead of renting it ... i mean how many times do I want to watch the same movie anyway?

    The first rule of dvd club is ...

  • For those who are interested in the campfire songs thing Here's a link [centerset.com]
  • The VCR tapes that you rent at the local video store often cost the store much more than the ones that they can sell to customers. Typically, the studios initially make tapes available to rental shops at a much higher price per copy and then later sell them to consumers at a lower rate.

    There are exceptions where the studios want to get a whole lot of copies of a popular movie out, so all the copies are sold cheaply, but for limited interest releases (I had to wait 6 weeks after _The Truth About Cats and Dogs_ came out for rental before I could actually buy a copy as a present for my wife who, inexplicably, really liked the movie), the two stage release schedule is common.

    The bottom line is, you can loan it to your friends and family, but you can't rent it for a fee. You would have to contract with the distributor and pay the higher for rent cost if you had the intention of renting them out.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
  • No, you're misinterpreting the legalese. Not difficult to do, I know, but you're missing the bit which says:
    ...in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published...

    This is, in fact the equivalent of the "First Sale Doctrine" in the US. It says, in (I hope) english:

    You may lend, re-sell, or hire this book as much as you want.
    You may not however, make a copy of this book and lend, hire or sell that copy
    Anyone who you lend, sell or hire this book to is also bound by these conditions.

    As for the USA part, I don't know where that originates, but it's not in any of the books on my shelf poublished in the last 5 years. I think its meaning is that this edition is not available for sale in the US.

    --

  • Of course you can lend the DVD, because the MPAA is not going to go after the grass-roots level consumer. Legality, whatever it actually is, gives way to reality. They know where their bread is buttered, and they certainly do not want to injure the guy who does buy the actual DVD.

    Of course your friend who borrows it will be sued mercilessly, and will have a special "Region Code" tatooed on his ass as a punishment.

    -L

  • Re:First Sale (Score:4)

    by seeken ( 10107 ) on Wednesday May 17, 2000 @07:52PM (#1064860) Journal
    If you buy a book, you can sell that book to a used book store and they can sell it again. when you bought the book, that was the first sale, and the publishers rights to place restrictions on the sale of that book ended at tht point. Note that this does not mean that you can legally pirate it, only that the publisher can't forbid reselling, etc.

    Incidentally the guy asking the question can certianly lend a DVD to his friend. The unauthorized lending would be if blockbuster was renting them, without paying the royalty fees or whatever they use to screw the rental places.

    Surfing the net and other cliches...

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