Most movies have a sticker on them saying not for rental (rental ones have a sticker saying not for resale).
They could also claim this was a public performance.
Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#32I'm curious to see wich kind of legal weapon the movie companies are going to use to fight this one. I expect something like forbid playing rental dvds on players more than 10 feet away from the TV... This is going to be sick.
Oh, that's easy. This company claims that the user is the only thing legally involved, and they have merely provided tools which the user is using to watch DVDs that happen to be physically located elsewhere. Therefore they are entirely uninvolved and therefore can't be said to be in violation of anything, indeed, they shouldn't even be a party to the suit; if the movie companies want to sue anyone, they will claim, it should be the end-users. The companies will claim that this is not simply a tool and that the company is actually involved in serving out streams that they do not have a license for and are therefore violating copyright.
The reason why this will be an exciting lawsuit to watch is not that the arguments are subtle or difficult to predict in advance, it is that they are both oqually correct. What's wrong isn't either of these arguments, it's the foundation of law they are built on, which simply can not handle this conflict. I've been waiting for this one to pop up for years. There are numerous other minefields like this waiting too.
BTW, the temptation to physical metaphor is strong here, but as always should be resisted. There are no physical metaphors that adequately capture the Internet and this is no exception. No, this is not merely like stringing a big wire across the internet, there are critical ways in which that differs from this situation. For instance, when I physically own a DVD it isn't possible for anybody else to know what I'm watching, and if the manufacturer goes out of business nothing happens. (Remember, it only takes one relevant difference to sink your argument-by-metaphor, which is why it's such a terrible argument technique and basically should simply never be used for Internet issues.) On the other hand, this is also quite clearly not identical to Netflix-style streaming, as it also has relevant differences. (So, from another point of view it is fair to say both arguments are also equally incorrect.)
You can argue the ethics quite fruitfully, but I believe the legal answer to this can only be said to be undefined. There is literally no provision for this anywhere in copyright law, in fact copyright law is fundamentally built on the premise that it is possible to cleanly separate copyright issues into various distinct "domains" (books, music, movies, etc) which don't cross or interact. As computers and the Internet blur these domains together and create some news one, the law really can't deal with this. The system is not built to handle the idea of you owning something and consuming it from a distance, either, the particular undefined thing this company is trying to wiggle through.
(Which won't stop a ruling shutting these guys down this time, but at some point the law is really going to have to address this problem head on.)
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#33Wow, that's not a very scalable business. You need one physical DVD player for every concurrent customer, inventory of all of the DVDs sufficient to handle peak demand, and a small staff of bored employees keeping the right DVDs in the drives. In other words, you still have all of the worst features of owning a DVD rental store.
With a dvd player costing $30 or less retail, it shouldn't be hard to get 500 of them at $15. Hook up some IR remote infrastructure, automated switching of the output signals and you should be ready to serve 500 customers at a time for 25k. (for an order that size or a bit bigger a Chinese outfit may even be willing to wire the IR receiver so that there is a direct control line hanging out of it, ready to be hooked u…
You could have a robotic arm doing the disc changing. The SCARA types are pretty cheap these days (just checked ebay and used ones are $2-5K US). Without human contact the discs should last a very long time. And the robot would be a fraction of the cost to operate of your 7.25 employees.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also more difficult, and drastically more expensive than BitTorrent.
Yes yes, and paying for your groceries is more expensive than shoplifting too, can we please not have the discussion where people pretend that stealing stuff is just as good as buying it? Most people are law-abiding citizens.
I'm pretty sure paying for groceries is drastically easier than stealing them, further hurting the comparison.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes yes, and paying for your groceries is more expensive than shoplifting too, can we please not have the discussion where people pretend that stealing stuff is just as good as buying it? Most people are law-abiding citizens.
Stop using the S word! Seriously. When you steal something, the rightful owner no longer has the item. You cannot by definition steal digital content. You can merely copy it. Does that result in damages to the original owner? Maybe. Is it stealing? No.
honest question: do you think identity theft should likewise be renamed?
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes yes, and paying for your groceries is more expensive than shoplifting too, can we please not have the discussion where people pretend that stealing stuff is just as good as buying it? Most people are law-abiding citizens.
Stop using the S word! Seriously. When you steal something, the rightful owner no longer has the item. You cannot by definition steal digital content. You can merely copy it. Does that result in damages to the original owner? Maybe. Is it stealing? No.
> honest question: do you think identity theft should likewise be renamed?
I don't care about that one so much. The reason is that nobody's agenda is being pushed each time that we say identity theft. We also all know what identity theft is and what it does to the victim. OTOH saying "don't steal music" makes it sound like a different issue than it really is.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#37I guess, it's actually like renting a digital copy (since most of the time it will be served through cache, right?), just you aren't able to serve more copies at the same time than you legally possess. That's smart.
I think if they had to argue it in court, they will present the cache as an irrelevant technical detail, just like how fleeting copies of frames from a DVD are stored in buffers and decoded when playing the DVD on a traditional player.
The Doctrine of First Sale allows people to rent out DVDs, and people in lawful possession of a physical object like a DVD to watch them (but not make a copy); if the transient data stored in DVD players for the purposes of decoding and playing a DVD don't count as copies.
US law explicitly gives the copyright owner exclusive rights to authorise who can "display the copyrighted work publicly" - but if it is only going out to one person, I suspect that they might not be able to prevent it.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#38I'm curious to see wich kind of legal weapon the movie companies are going to use to fight this one. I expect something like forbid playing rental dvds on players more than 10 feet away from the TV... This is going to be sick.
I think one could make a not-entirely-unreasonable argument that by streaming the DVD you're making an unauthorized copy of the data on it.
What are they doing, after all? They read bits off the DVD, make another set of bits which contains essentially the same information compressed, and transmit it to a remote location. Sounds like making a copy to me.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stop using the S word! Seriously. When you steal something, the rightful owner no longer has the item. You cannot by definition steal digital content. You can merely copy it. Does that result in damages to the original owner? Maybe. Is it stealing? No.
honest question: do you think identity theft should likewise be renamed?
Since identity theft means that the person looses stuff (privacy, high credit score, etc) it seems like it was perfectly named.
Re: Zediva Streams Movies From Physical DVD Players, Argues It’s Legal
#40I'm curious to see wich kind of legal weapon the movie companies are going to use to fight this one. I expect something like forbid playing rental dvds on players more than 10 feet away from the TV... This is going to be sick.
I think one could make a not-entirely-unreasonable argument that by streaming the DVD you're making an unauthorized copy of the data on it. What are they doing, after all? They read bits off the DVD, make another set of bits which contains essentially the same information compressed, and transmit it to a remote location. Sounds like making a copy to me.
How do you play a DVD on a modern TV? HDMI. Same exact type of "copy".
If you "rent" the player from them as well as the movie, then it is the same fair use that allows you to play a DVD on your tv.
HDMI, or whatever--even via analog makes up to 5+ copies just to get out of a modern TV (D->A from your player, A->D to your TV, several copies and augmented copies into a buffer handling picture processing, scaling, and motion smoothing, and then pixel elements in an active matrix LCD store their values in embedded transitors, and the physical twist of the liquid crystals is another copy, not to mention the light travelling through the air, the copy your retina makes as it scans the TV, the persisted gradually degrading copy that makes it into your mind)).