It isn't clear to me why it's unreasonable to have different pricing for rental vs. owning. In any case, the general trend seems to be towards not owning digital media in general.
The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway, but you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given that most of us no longer have DVD players, they seem destined to only survive in pirated copies. If that.
The problem isn't the different pricing. The disgusting greedy thing is purposely designing something to destroy itself to enforce that false dichotomy.
The real issue with DIVX wasn't the rental/PPV model, it was certain studios who were boycotting DVD, due to poor DRM security. (Which they eventually 'patched' legally.) So it was imperative that DIVX failed to avoid a format war.
It’s not unreasonable. The problem is that blank media imposes a lower bound on the discount that can be offered for these rental schemes (to say nothing of the e-waste) to make economic sense to the seller.
Most consumers aren’t going to rent a movie they can only watch a few for a 10% discount off the price of unlimited views.
For example, Apple typically prices movie “purchases” around 4x of a 24 hr rental (75% off), and that has essentially zero marginal cost of production. With physical media there would be no profit.
ghaff|3 years ago
btilly|3 years ago
The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway, but you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given that most of us no longer have DVD players, they seem destined to only survive in pirated copies. If that.
mrguyorama|3 years ago
flomo|3 years ago
labcomputer|3 years ago
Most consumers aren’t going to rent a movie they can only watch a few for a 10% discount off the price of unlimited views.
For example, Apple typically prices movie “purchases” around 4x of a 24 hr rental (75% off), and that has essentially zero marginal cost of production. With physical media there would be no profit.
LudwigNagasena|3 years ago
salawat|3 years ago
Producers rent seek. More at 11
temporallobe|3 years ago