Topic: Four studios in a class action suit

[samuelrichardscott]

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/sony-universal-fox-and-paramount-hit-class-action-lawsuits-over-home-video-rentals-73411

Hmmm, interesting. I wonder how this'll pan out and if it'll have an effect on which catalogue titles are released in the future to rent?

[Jimmy]

Hope their car chaser lawyer realize that it's a waste of time and money... Sure the studio got 100% of the sale ammount but this isn't the eighties anymore.

1. The product aren't sale for more than 100$/unit (cost + licencing fee) to the retail store anymore,
2. most of the physical retail store doesn't really exist anymore,
3. the stores buy few units,

By exemple a service like Netflix will buy maybe 30 DVDs (I'm generous here) and they won't buy anything else to replace the broken or lost discs. So the labels will make a huge, at best, 300$. In the eighties a label was able to make easilly 100,000$ or more on retail store.

Another exemple of people listening the lawyers non-sense (they don't care as they are paid anyway) to go on a lawsuit for not even 50$.

BTW you can trust me on that as the new model was explain many time to me by many labels owners.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

BTW you can trust me on that as the new model was explain many time to me by many labels owners.

Oh I trust you to believe the label owners.
I just don't believe that those were telling the truth.
If they were, the release of special Rental versions (which do exist) would be commercial suicide.
It wouldn't even make sense to supply those rental facilities (local or central) anymore.
Calculating in the loss made by illegal copies from rentals makes this system even less attractive.

The mere fact that they still manufacture copies exclusively for rental proves them as liars.
If the market really was as unattractive as they claim, they would have abandoned it long ago.

[Jimmy]

The mere fact that they still manufacture copies exclusively for rental proves them as liars.

Not the ones I talk about... and I've seen the Netflix sell sheet for one of the labels I talked about wich would be more than enough proof for me if the fact I talk of friends wasn't enough.

[samuelrichardscott]

There's a big difference in what independent labels can achieve compared to Universal/MGM/Fox/Warner/Paramount though. The big companies can bully because of the size and desirability of their catalogues compared to say, Blue Underground, Raro or NoShame. Sucks, but true.

[samuelrichardscott]

Lovefilm (over  2 million subscribers in UK) sell their ex-rentals via their owners Amazon. I just had a quick look and the first titles that came up bearing in mind they'll have sold a few already and will still have enough to use for their business...
Star Trek - 25 copies
Little Fockers (Blu) - 49 copies
Hotel Rwanda - 27 copies
True Grit (Blu) - 48 copies
Kaboom! - 42 copies

Based on that, I would doubt Netflix only get 30 copies of titles from big companies when their customer base is over 10x that. Hotel Rwanda and Kaboom aren't 'big' titles and yet LoveFilm have a ton for sale, and will have had them for sale for a long time. They'll also still have plenty in stock for renting.