<
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/04/hollywood-whines-about-mandatory-release-windows-which-they-used-to-support-fueling-piracy/>
"This is all kinds of hilarious if you’re aware of the history of the Motion
Picture Association (MPA), formerly the MPAA. Basically, the group’s entire
existence has been built around lobbying government for ever more ridiculous
laws that protect the bottom line of the movie studios. In the late aughts, the
studios decided they needed to fight for special “release windows” to make it
harder for people to rent movies (this was the pre-streaming, DVD era).
Specifically, Hollywood had a pretty clear release window schedule (we’ll leave
aside how the industry fought the existence of a “home” movie market all the
way up to the Supreme Court, where they lost): movies get released in theaters.
Many months later, DVDs (and VHS tapes) would be available to
purchase at
inflated prices. Many months after that, you could finally rent them at your
local rental store. The issue in the late aughts was that a new entrant,
Redbox, was bucking that last window by buying the DVDs… and just renting them
out, relying on the first sale doctrine.
And, hoo boy, did the movie studios lose their shit. 20th Century Fox declared
Redbox a menace and ordered its wholesalers not to sell to the company. Redbox
and Universal went to court after Universal demanded Redbox wait 45 days after
DVDs were released for sale to rent them. Warner Bros. then blocked Redbox (and
Netflix, long before Netflix became a member of the MPA) as well. The studios
insisted that these windows were
vital to their own business interests.
How things have changed."
Via Kevin O'Brien.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
