What’s the licencing costs to rent?
Paul and Sim were in the other night and started pulling apart APPLEBOX! That’s cool, ’cause it’s my baby and once you get me started I won’t shut up (and they think the idea rocks anyway). They wondered how much the licencing costs for renting a movie are. Answer: $0.
Yep - no (additional) licencing. I can buy a movie directly from K-Mart, and rent it. It’s that simple. My initial purchase of the disc provides all the licencing agreements I need. I can rent because I’m not violating copyright laws. I’m not copying it, I’m not broadcasting it. I’m not altering it.
Of course the studios would have it differently if they could. In 2001, Warner Home Video tried to argue that playing a DVD was actually copying it - that data read from the disc and stored temporarily in a DVD player’s memory constituted a copy that breached copyright laws. You can read more about it here. Cheeky! This was defeated by AVRA (Australian Video Retailers Association) - way to go AVRA!
So don’t believe the fine print you’ll sometimes see on a DVD that claims it must be authorised for lending. What bollocks! A sales receipt is all you need to start your own rental business. So buy up and go for it!