Why Netflix Caved January 6, 2010
Netflix announced today that it will not rent Warner DVDs until 28 days after their retail release. Ponders Engadget:
Why would [Netflix] agree to a clear imposition on his company’s rights under the first-sale doctrine? We’re guessing this is the only way the studios would open up and allow more movies to hit Watch Instantly — and the AP says Netflix is also getting a discount on the actual discs. Yeah, it’s lame, but honestly we’d rather take more streaming content over new releases in the mail straight away, so let’s hope all this wheeling and dealing pays off.
Another reason Netflix would have agreed to this? As we covered in Podcast 13, you try getting hundreds of copies of a DVD when the studio is threatening to black-list any distributor that sells to you. Now, we don’t know of Warner was trying the same tactics here that were tried in the RedBox case, but no longer having access to major releases would be a huge hit to Netflix.
Related posts:
- Redbox Caves As Well We’ve covered the Redbox suit before and are a little...
- Episode 42: Two-For Tuesday Just two stories this week: Summary Judgment motions in Viacom...
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