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Peerflix Launches P2P DVD Sharing Service

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Sep 20, 2005 07:29 PM
from the more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat dept.
Dotnaught writes "Peerflix has offically launched, ending a 12 month beta test. The company manages the peer-to-peer trading of physical DVDs (with CDs and videogames coming soon) by mail. As the article in InformationWeek suggests, while such trades may be legal under the first-sale doctrine of U.S. Copyright Act, content owners won't be pleased -- discs are easy to copy and there's ample precedent to suggest users will dupe discs before trading them."
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  • as opposed to the NetFlix project? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by way2trivial (601132) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:31PM (#13610046)
    (http://www.ocean7motel.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 07 2007, @07:50AM)
    rent it all, copy and send back? is this less/more offensive than netflix= just because there is no monthly fee?
  • Asks about piracy (Score:4, Informative)

    by sdaug (681230) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:32PM (#13610055)
    I've been using Peerflix through the beta test. Every time I receive a disc, it asks me if it appears to be pirated. I assume they would then take action against the sender if this is the case, but I don't know for sure.
  • Fighting The Waves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JordanL (886154) <jordan.ledoux@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:36PM (#13610090)
    How would any media corporation of any kind fight something like this on any principal but that they think all their users are lying, cheating bastards?

    And even then... would companied like Paramount have to sue themselves for owning something like Blockbuster?
  • Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)

    Like I'm really want to keep a copy of the new Planet of the Apes movie or the new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy... Studios only wish I wanted those so badly.

    Maybe thet's it, people will realize what turkys they are when Peerflix gets flooded with those loosers.

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  • "content owners won't be pleased.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AdmiralMustapha (536603) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:44PM (#13610136)
    - discs are easy to copy".

    Well, content owners will NEVER be pleased, what they'd like you to do is pay $$$$$ and keep the stuff.

    There will always be people that copy (be it legal or not). But this creates an opportunity for those people who don't want to spend lots of money on new films but want to stay legitimate as well.
  • This is GREAT! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GecKo213 (890491) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:45PM (#13610139)
    (http://slashdot.org/~GecKo213)

    I like the whole idea. In fact, my friends and I have been doing this for years now. We never buy the same game (unless it's needed to play networked games) and just pass it around between each other when we're finished. Always have new games to play and typically at about 1/4 the cost.

    Now it has happened and will continue to happen that we all like the game so much that we end up buying our individual copies of the game anyway. I really like this idea though!

  • by defro (857858) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:46PM (#13610144)
    Being a service that aids in piracy, Peerflix has been served by the RIAA lawyers....can't wait to hear this one.
  • Why'd this take so long? (Score:4, Insightful)


    I used to do this with my friends in college - I bought Eye of the Beholder, he bought Ultima Underworld. When we finished them, we'd trade boxes.
  • by verbatim_verbose (411803) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:48PM (#13610157)
    Yet, they aren't worried about this happening with Blockbuster rentals or Netflix? Give me a break.

    Seems to me that labelling anything as a cooperative act between peers leads to mad content owners.
  • I don't see the advantage (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Matt2k (688738) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:49PM (#13610167)
    If you're just going to trade casually, this service might work okay. Hopefully your sender will mail the disc on time and isn't away on vacation. Does anyone know how long it usually takes to get a request?

    On the other hand, if you're someone who really wants to watch a lot of movies, wants to count on being able to get new releases relatively soon, I don't know if this would work out so hot. With Netflix for $18/mo if you really push it, you can get maybe 9-12 DVDs a month. Of course if you sit on your discs, you might only get five or six a month. But they at least ship stuff on a schedule, not whenever they feel like hunting down a DVD and walking it out to the mailbox. I guess I'm just pretty cynical, and relying upon other Joes to send me their movies in a reasonalble timeframe with reasonable quality.

    Do I get this right.. You print out the mailer from your printer?

    And movies are assigned "peerbux" ratings, so you can't offer up a bunch of Clint Eastwood movies from the 70s and expect to get the complete Sopranos in return? How does that work? You need to build up a library of good movies so you can give them away? I'm not understanding.

    *shrug*

    I just don't see it as being worth the hassle, but good for you if you like it.
  • by Locarius (798304) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:51PM (#13610179)
    So, does this 99 cents cover the cost of your disc in case it is never returned? Basicly their service is a 'loaner's insurance' not a distribution cost.
  • Sigh... (Score:1)

    by Tracer_Bullet82 (766262) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:55PM (#13610201)
    Why does every other article seems hellbent on rehashing this 'copyright crap' issue?

    Yeah its important, but again and again and again?

    Now, before I'm modded flamebait or troll, as I'm sure people would already state, who cares if there's precedents of duping?

    The industry didn't die, hell its not even barely sick.
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  • Ripping traded discs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dtfinch (661405) * on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:56PM (#13610211)
    (Last Journal: Monday September 25 2006, @01:19PM)
    People already rip rental DVD's. I can't imagine the problem getting much worse with traded DVD's.
  • by multiplexo (27356) * on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:59PM (#13610229)
    (Last Journal: Friday November 18 2005, @02:06AM)
    refer to in the article. It sounds like FUD to me, DVDs are nowhere near as easy to copy as CDs, especially if it's a dual layer DVD.

    It would be nice if these media retards understood that the reasons why MP3s took off in the late 1990s was that hard drive capacities increased dramatically in a short period of time relative to the capacity of CD-ROMs, because CD-RW drives became real cheap all of a sudden and because the people who liked making mix tapes really liked a format that was a lot easier to deal with that allowed you to make mix CDs with hundreds of songs just by pointing and clicking. None of these things apply with DVDs, the biggest hard drive you can get today will only hold 100 uncompressed DVD images (I'm assuming that we don't want further compression because it degrades the image which looks like shit on a big screen TV), people don't make video mix tapes (although it would be kind of interesting) and also because it's still a pain in the ass to strip CSS off of DVDs. Jesus Christ, could these lazy media bastards just put down the grape-flavored MPAA piracy Kool-Aid for once?

  • Any different? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by querk44 (643184) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:04PM (#13610249)
    (http://www.ericsellars.com/)
    As far as content owners are concerned, I'm not sure how this would harm them anymore than something like Netflix. The same making a copy and sending it back is just as easy if not easier with their service.
  • Amazing, Isn't It? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Master of Transhuman (597628) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:05PM (#13610255)

    The "average user" can't (according to the Windows shills) figure out how to run Linux - but they can figure out how to duplicate a DVD and then share it over a P2P network (according to said "average users" writing for the RIAA and MPAA).

    What's wrong with this picture?
  • by voisine (153062) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:11PM (#13610282)
    why not sell your stuff for cash. http://replaylink.com/ [replaylink.com] you get the full purchase price minus a $1 service fee and the Amazon seller fee, and it's as easy as returning a netflix rental. They send you an addressed postage paid media mailer.
    • by great throwdini (118430) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:46PM (#13610442)

      you get the full purchase price minus a $1 service fee and the Amazon seller fee.

      Uh, you get the sale price less the Amazon seller fee and a $1 service charge. It's not based off the original purchase price, as resold DVDs typically don't sell for anywhere near original cost to you. And who gets the extra amount Amazon reimburses for shipping (which is treated separately from its fees)?

      Whomever is behind replaylink.com is basically printing out the mailer and charging you for that nicety. Why not sell it yourself and not pay the fee? It's pretty easy to list items for sale on Amazon, with no need to share information with another third-party.

      It also seems a bit shady vis-a-vis Amazon's resale policy, what with a seller listing items for trade that aren't in its direct possession ... neat idea, but it basically introduces a second middle-man (in addition to Amazon) to the transaction between true buyer and true seller.

      [ Parent ]
  • they are called 'Libraries'

    check one out some time.
  • The Situation in a Nutshell (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grumpygrodyguy (603716) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:22PM (#13610326)
    The only right movie producers have is to exclusively show first viewings in movie theaters. That's the only right they've ever had for the last 100 years since films were first made.

    The fact that digitization is making it easier and easier to distribute this media after the showing in theatres is completely beyond the moral scope of these companies.

    They quite simply found a lot of free cash in the 80s with cable TV distribution and VHS rentals. That free cash was never theirs by right in the first place, and they offered a viable distribution service back then...those times are over, and the right to reap all those free profits is being taken back by the real bosses in a free market, the customer.

    Eat shit and die MPAA/RIAA
  • My own Peerflix experience... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rageon (522706) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:22PM (#13610327)
    I've been using Peerflix for a couple months and have been relatively satisfied with it. It's proven to be a good way to get rid of all those old DVDs that would have either gathered dust for years or fetched me 3 bucks at a pawn shop. I've gotten plenty of movies as gifts or free throw-ins with things that I never wanted in the first place, or others that I bought but later realized I never watched. Frankly, the $1 it costs to upgrade a crappy movie to something else is well worth it.

    I've only had 1 problem so far. I got a copy of Night of the Living Dead that was scrathed to hell. When it arrived, it played, so I confirmed it. Of course, when I played it, I found that a couple minutes would not play. But because I had let a week or so pass between receipt and claim, I was out of luck. I wrote about 5 emails to their CS about this, and got 1 response, which really had nothing to do with my complaint. But otherwise nearly all the movies I've gotten are in very good condition.

    The bad part is that a lot of movies are technically "available", but might only be in the hands of 1 or 2 other users, neither of which actually intends to share their copy, but has it listed for one reason or another. So it sometimes takes a few weeks (or more) to get some movies. Also, maybe half the movies I listed have been requested by others. But then again, I didn't expect the demand to be extremely high for that copy of The Mask someone gave me. Generally, good movies get requested fairly quickly.

    If you have a specific movie in mind that you want right away, Peerflix isn't the best solution. But if you have a list of 20 or so movies you would like to get eventually, it's a nice service.

    My only other complaint would be that when your "Peerbux" goes to zero, it automatically charges another $5 worth to you, rather than waiting until you actually want to buy something. This is obviously a nice way for the company to get a few bucks extra from everyone in the end, but it strikes me as shadey.

    As far a Piracy goes, well, it's really no different than renting movies or using Netflix, so I think it's a non-issue as it pertains to Peerflix specifically.

  • by squatex (765966) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:23PM (#13610334)
    I found it during some googling and thought it looked interesting. I just had a couple concerns.
    Has anyone here actually used it? Is there any kind of quality control standards handed down and enforced on its users? How can I be sure I will get the disc I expect in good condition?
  • Ebay = piracy? (Score:1)

    by Sathias (884801) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:26PM (#13610343)
    I wonder how long it will be till the MPAA and co go after people selling second-hand CDs and DVDs on Ebay. After all, the main argument against piracy is that it robs artists of their rightfully earned royalty dollars. You could actually argue that a bought second-hand DVD on Ebay is actually more likely to be a lost sale than someone who downloads it for free.
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  • by tommers (893816) * on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:32PM (#13610368)
    Is this the reasonably well known site to offer (or promise to offer) mailed audio-cds? While I can definitely see why the RIAA would be a lot more pissed off about audio-cds since they are much easier to copy and are listened to much less often than DVDs are viewed, I don't see what has stopped someone from doing it (besides the local libraries)? Is it currently illegal to rent out a physical product without getting a license to rent it? It seems if the local library can rent out audio-CDs it got donated, I don't see why some ballsy company wasn't loaning out audio-cds years ago?
  • first sale (Score:2)

    by E8086 (698978) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:32PM (#13610370)
    It's covered by first sale, nothing more to see here. All it is is someone saying "I'll sell you my used DVD for the price of your used DVD" and Perflix gets a comossion for their posting and communication services much like ebay and paypal get a percentage of a sale. Of course the MPAA isn't going to like it because they don't get a cut of the sale, they already got the profit from the original sale and with this they're getting NOTHING!
    As for copying before sending, there's always the chance the previous owner copied the CD or DVD before reselling it. The same is true with rented DVDs, there's no way of knowing if someone copied the disk before returning it to the store, unless they rent it again.
    • Re:first sale by KillShill (Score:2) Tuesday September 20 2005, @09:32PM
      • Re:first sale by Joe U (Score:1) Tuesday September 20 2005, @09:51PM
      • Re:first sale by E8086 (Score:2) Wednesday September 21 2005, @02:17AM
  • by kkek (916245) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @08:43PM (#13610429)
    I dont see what the big deal with this is. I mean, I'm sure the MPAA is going to throw a fit, and if they ever do move to CDs as the article suggests, the RIAA wont be too happy either, but they're not doing anything wrong. There's no more risk of people making 'illegal copies' of the movies/songs than there is from renting them from blockbuster/hollywood videos/netflix. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes before the MPAA tries to make up some legal BS about why this service is breaking copyright laws.
  • Been there, done that... (Score:3, Informative)

    by NetDanzr (619387) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @09:21PM (#13610592)
    Back in the days, I used to swap computer games on UGTZ.com. Later they added books and movies swaps, and I participated in both. By the time I completed my collection and left the site, I haven't heard of anybody suing them for anything.
  • So.. (Score:1)

    by McNally (105243) <mmcnally@gmail . c om> on Tuesday September 20 2005, @09:35PM (#13610652)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    So.. Their business model is predicated upon my willingness to send my original DVD off to be handled by total strangers? Lotsa luck, guys!

    Have they ever looked at the bottom of a Blockbuster rental DVD? Sure, most of us on Slashdot rent movies so we can watch them on our television or computer monitors but I can tell you there's apparently a surprisingly large portion of the population that choose instead to, well, I don't know -- use them in their rotary sander or play shuffleboard with them in gravel parking lots or something..

    So I might (big if, actually) choose to share some of the crappiest don't-care-if-I-ever-see-them-again, bottom-of-the-barrel, why-on-earth-did-I-buy-that DVDs through a scheme like this but anything that's an enjoyable movie that I can't replace for less than ten bucks? No way! And if that's the only sort of movie many people are going to be likely to share, well how good is this service likely to be?
  • First Sale (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Arandir (19206) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @10:16PM (#13610866)
    (http://www.usermode.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 04 2005, @07:28PM)
    ...while such trades may be legal under the first-sale doctrine of U.S. Copyright Act...

    That's just because it isn't software. On more than one occasion I have been told by software companies that selling your used copy was illegal, even if the sale included all packing material and an affidavit that you wiped your harddrive of the product. They argue that the First Sale Doctrine does not apply to them because the software was never sold, only licensed. They have shut down eBay sales of software and sent cease and desist notices to yard sales.

    All the DVD manufacturers need to do to stop Peerflix, is to slap a license on every DVD. It won't be legal, but that hasn't stopped the software industry or its lapdogs in the judiciary.
    • Re:First Sale (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mr2001 (90979) on Wednesday September 21 2005, @12:18AM (#13611322)
      (http://www.hansprestige.com/ | Last Journal: Friday September 14, @04:25PM)
      They argue that the First Sale Doctrine does not apply to them because the software was never sold, only licensed.

      District courts in California and Texas have disagreed [wikipedia.org]
      Specifically, the ruling decreed that software purchases be treated as sales transactions, rather than explicit license agreements. In other words, the court ruling argued that Californian consumers should have the same rights they would enjoy under existing copyright legislation when buying a CD or a book.

      If you're in Missouri, though.. watch out.
      [ Parent ]
  • ...renting via Netflix or Greencine (or your local Blockbuster) and duping the rentals before sending them back? Can't see that this is really a new danger, it's just the opposite order from the usual sort.
  • My brothers DVD player doesn't work as well as mine does and there are a few DVDs that have worked fine on my player but will freeze up on his. So if I trade in a dvd that, as far as I know, works great but it turns out someone else's crappy player won't take it, does that mean I get "modded down" and get no credit for it?

    On the flip side...if you have a testy player it's probably best to avoid this service altogether. Of course, this is also true of purchasing ANY previously viewed DVD.

  • by QuietRiot (16908) on Tuesday September 20 2005, @11:57PM (#13611230)
    (http://80d.org/~quietriot | Last Journal: Tuesday September 28 2004, @12:33PM)

     
    "content owners"
  • garage sale (Score:1)

    by Robocoastie (777066) on Wednesday September 21 2005, @07:49AM (#13612616)
    (http://www.robertreppert.com/)
    next RIAA will have their MIB's raiding garage sales.
  • DRM the US Postal Service (Score:3, Funny)

    by ChaosDiscord (4913) on Wednesday September 21 2005, @02:47PM (#13616309)
    (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/ | Last Journal: Saturday April 29 2006, @04:33PM)

    When you mail someone a DVD you don't want any more, it's like walking into Best Buy, shoplifting a DVD, and shooting the cashier on the way out.

    It's unfortunate, but pirates are using this "postal system" to destroy the value created by hard working movie creators. If the postal system is allowed to go on unchecked it will destroy the movie industry. No movies will ever be made again.

    We question the use of this so called postal "service". The creators should have known that it would be abused this way. However, some people claim that there are legal and valid uses for the postal system. Fortunately there is a very reasonable compromise, Digital Rights Management in the postal system. This will close the analog hole. When you mail something, a postal employee will open up your mail and carefully examine what is inside. If it's a copyright protected movie on DVD, or copyright protected music on CD, or a copyright protected page torn out of a magazine, the employee will refuse to deliver the message. Your average US Postal Service customer won't notice any change. Only pirates will be inconvienced.

    We here at the MPAA trust that all law abiding, moral citizens will support this perfect plan. We also look forward to your support for our future plan to monitor all physical human contact to eliminate the "handing a DVD to your friend" loophole.

    Sincerely, the perfectly reasonable MPAA who is doing this for your own good.

  • by discHead (3226) <92vpgn602@sneakemail.com> on Wednesday September 21 2005, @03:02PM (#13616432)
    (gopher://localhost)
    ...I want to know what makes Peerflix better than MediaChest [mediachest.com].
  • by ahowl (817682) on Wednesday September 21 2005, @05:39PM (#13617606)
    Let's just do the usual...make it illegal without thinking of the ramifications down the road...and if you think that "it" is a little too ambiguous, you're not thinking like a lawmaker.
  • Re:Conversion Rate? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Philip K Dickhead (906971) <folderol@fancypants.org> on Tuesday September 20 2005, @07:44PM (#13610131)
    (Last Journal: Sunday April 08 2007, @01:06PM)
    Like they already do with NetFlix?

    I seen a lot of copies of "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Fight Club" with Sharpie labels on people's shelves at home...

    [ Parent ]
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