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Peerflix Launches P2P DVD Sharing Service 183

Posted by ScuttleMonkey 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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Peerflix Launches P2P DVD Sharing Service More

Peerflix Launches P2P DVD Sharing Service

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  • as opposed to the NetFlix project? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:31PM (#13610046) Homepage Journal
    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 @08:32PM (#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.

    • Re:Asks about piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by modemboy ( 233342 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:34PM (#13610079)
      How would you tell if someone pirated it?
      I believe the submitter is suggesting that the end user would make a copy, keep the copy, then send on the original, not the copy...
      • Yes, that's possible. And kind of encouraged in the fact that the DVDs are shipped without any case or cover art or inserts. I'd expect people would be more likely to copy and pass it on if they don't have the artwork and such. You also don't even get the bonus discs, just the disc with the movie itself.

      • Re:Asks about piracy (Score:5, Funny)

        by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:40PM (#13610111)
        How would you tell if someone pirated it?

        I usually see a little box drawn on the disc with a sharpie. Next to the box, the word "copied" is written. If there is a check in the little box, well, you know it's been pirated.

      • Re:Asks about piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:42PM (#13610125) Homepage
        Actually, you're forgetting pirated in Hong Kong / China pirated. The far more popular kind of pirated. I've seen plenty of pirated hardware for consoles, and the same holds true for DVDs. The worksmanship is far superiour to your average burnt in a DVD-r quality, but still not a decent release. Pirated carts are typically much easier to spot, since they usually don't work right and the labels look like trash. This is the sort of piracy that netflix can prevent by purchasing in bulk from reputable distributers, that peerflix can't quite filter for.

        But the submitter probably was suggesting the usual rent-burn-return piracy. It's just not the only form out there is all.
      • A friend worked at blockbuster for a year or two (in the UK) and she was adamant that they could know if a disc they rented out had been copied by the renter.

        When they'd find someone with suspicious renting patterns, they'd collect all the discs he returned and send them off for "analysis"

        It's an interesting idea to convince your employees and even store managers that you are capable of doing something technically impossible, presumably with the hope that it'll trick your customers too.
        • That is complete and utter bullshit. There is no possible way that they could tell that the disc was copied from. How, exactly, would they be able to do that? To copy a disc, all you'd have to do is, um, read it. You know, with a laser. Just like when you play it.

          So they'd be able to tell if somebody scanned it with a laser one time as opposed to others? I don't think so.
          • It probably is bullshit, but you are awfully cocksure in your assumptions. The history of adversarial technologies frequently contains one adversary doing the "impossible". Once you learn how the trick is done, you realize that your initial idealized description of the problem was too simple.

            Great example: terrestrial microwave links were thought to be interception-proof in the '70s. How could any outsider intercept this incredibly narrow beam of RF energy?

            Well, now we know that the NSA was intercepting
            • Weird, I've never really thought about it but i never imagined microwave links would be secure. I figured you'd do it with a higher tower further away, or perhaps a baloon... but i guess that's just one example.

              However, i'm certain there's no difference to the disk whether i read it in my laptop or kept the vob files to watch later. Of course time-shifting is probably permissable so they'd have to prove that i didn't delete the vobs in a reasonable time period or that i burned another copy.

              Also, i fear that
          • I suspect most vhs pirates probably made a lot of copies in the few days that they had the rental, which would show up as extensive wear on the tape.

            If they did a before and after analysis then they could probably infer that the video was read hundreds of times.

            Of course that doesn't work for dvd - but still :)
          • There is no possible way that they could tell that the disc was copied from. How, exactly, would they be able to do that?

            How fast does your DVD player read a DVD when playing it to screen?

            How fast does your DVD-ROM drive read a DVD when making a copy?

            The disks could be impregnated with something that retains a signature of how fast it was made to spin and for how long. Maybe tiny switches embedded in the hub that close at certain angular velocities causing data to be recorded in a small, practically invisi
        • Works on the airlines, I'm sure we all remember that stuff about "If you use a cell phone, you'll make the plane crash" and "If you use anything electronic during takeoff, the nav stuff won't work and we'll end up flying to Finland, not China."

      • Re:Asks about piracy (Score:5, Funny)

        by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @10:38PM (#13610666)
        How would you tell if someone pirated it?

        Scratch marks. The pirate will leave scratch marks when they put the disk in its packaging 'cos they have a hook hand.

        Plus, the notes on the back of the box differ in telltale ways from the usual fare, for example they might say stuff like "Ahar me mateys, this be a fine film, 'two hooks up' raves the critics! The whole crew will rejoice at this swashbuckler of a picture, plus an extra DVD with a treasure chest of bonus scenes! Rated ARRRRRR!"

      • The archive bits are all set!
    • Hmm, so if it appears to be pirated, people can report it themselves. Sounds a bit like distributed anti-piracy, except done manually by people using a service.

    • Re:Asks about piracy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      The problem isn't sending pirated discs, but pirating the disc for personal use and then sending the original back.

      Me, I've attempted to use way too many pirated discs (it wasn't mine, it was given to me by friend(s) and I didn't realise until I started watching it). The quality has been so shit that I've given up. Sure there's ways to pirate stuff while keeping the quality, but I've been burned so many times (friend rents a DVD and burns it) that I've given up with all of it and now refuse to watch any pir

  • Fighting The Waves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JordanL ( 886154 ) <jordan,ledoux&gmail,com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:36PM (#13610090) Homepage
    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?

    • Lying, cheating bastards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Barbarian ( 9467 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:39PM (#13610107)
      They already think everyone who uses their product is a lying cheating bastard who deserves their scorn.

      Reference:
      - the "do not pirate" commericals in a theatre, after you've paid to see the movie
      - The FBI warning at the beginning of every DVD that you can't fast-forward through
      - Unskippable advertisements on DVDs, especially rentals
      • This may be true, but that isn't a court case. Proving what they need to with this system would be nearly impossible without the MPAA storming people's houses...
      • Have you tried chapter-skipping? It usually works for me, generally skips to the next bit until you get to the menu.
        • In my experience this does usually work, but it does depend on both the player and how stringently the DVD was authored. I have had some DVDs that are extremely locked down where I cannot skip past certain things no matter what buttons I push (on my Panasonic DVD-R30). Even when one of the buttons does work (menu, next chapter, FF (4 times to get it to 16x and then still some waiting), title), it's still irritating to have to have tried all those combinations just to skip some stupid screen or advertiseme
          • Yeah, I concur with how annoying it gets. Shaun of the Dead was nicely done ... and, in fact, I actually watched one of the previews (Blade Trinity, which was a good movie IMO. Compared to the 2nd one, at least.)
        • have you tried not giving those bastards your hard earned money?

          they're not far off from the computer/video game industry.

          and the reason being, is we have, no offense, people like you who don't even take a stand intellectually, let alone actually. you just find new ways to bypass the little problems but you feed them money to keep them afloat to ensure you new problems down the road.

          can you at least think they're not the good guys while you're watching their dvds, enjoying their music and playing their game
      • Can't forget the FBI anti-piracy warning now being printed ON the disks, yes they ruin the woderful disk art are by printing the anti-piracy seal on the disk itself. "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning: Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law" yes, I know that and since I paid for it and own it I'm only going to make the authorized copy for my iPod. When are they going to realize that when someone buys something they're not going to turn around and give it away? The "pirates" who distribute it are the on

  • Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:42PM (#13610124) Homepage
    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.

  • - 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 @08:45PM (#13610139) Homepage

    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!

    • Among your friends is one thing. That has always happened, since music (and then movies) was first recorded.

      This is an intermediary between that, and regular P2P. You're still (supposedly) swapping the physical medium, but amongst a far wider group of pseudofriends.

      There have been similar deals with books for ages.

    • thanks to future advancements in DRM, Insidious Computing and online "distribution" you won't be able to do that for much longer.

      try asking people you know that own err i mean paid for a "license" for half life 2. ask them to let you borrow it...

      it's going to get A LOT worse before we see any relief.

      they just now have gotten a whiff of Insidious Computing and the enormous power it brings them to implement Digital Handcuffs (DRM). did you think they would spend billions of dollars and then back down? there i
  • Being a service that aids in piracy, Peerflix has been served by the RIAA lawyers....can't wait to hear this one.
    • It would be the MPAA and not the RIAA. However, I don't see how the MPAA could win. PeerFlix is the same exact thing as EBay. Peerflix is just the middle-man handling the LEGAL transaction between two citizens exercising their right of First-sale.

      The only option the MPAA would have would seem to be to bribe the corrupted politicians to pass a new law banning First-sale doctrine [wikipedia.org].

      I just signed up for the service to give it a try. I have some DVD's that I just don't watch anymore. There is no legal re

  • Why'd this take so long? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (dlonrasg)> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:47PM (#13610149) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • "Users will dupe discs before trading them" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by verbatim_verbose ( 411803 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:48PM (#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 @08:49PM (#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.
    • "I guess I'm just pretty cynical, and relying upon other Joes to send me their movies in a reasonalble timeframe with reasonable quality."

      I'm pretty certain that there will be a peer review system, if not a penalty system.

      (1) Don't send the movie on time? You won't get full credit.
      (2) Peer ratings, a la Ebay
      (3) Don't ship a DVD, or habitually late? Bannination.

      The thing is, you can't get a DVD until you've shipped one or more out.

      I'm sure the initiation fee will cover cost of replacement for "l
    • Yes, I wonder how the rating system works, and it better not be by age. Before the special effects revolution of the late 90s movies relied on something called 'good acting' and 'plot' and 'story line' I'd take "a bunch of Clint Eastwood movies from the 70s" over something new like the Dukes of Hazzard and any of the soon to be new releases from this summer's crash and burn titles. They should scrap the "peerbux rating" and give everyone the matching offers and let them decide. If I was offering Stealth, th
    • Personally I think a centralized version of this idea would work better. Being decentralized, people can really easily abuse the system to steal dvds.

      1) Register account.
      2) Start a bunch of trades with people all at once.
      3) Send out a bunch of empty boxes.
      4) Take DVDs and run for the hills.

      A centralized system would allow the company to authenticate users and build a trust system. They could keep a bunch of extra DVDs around to replace damaged/misplaced disks (at a service charge, of course). They
      • What you are suggesting won't work. You don't get CREDIT for your trade-ins until they are received by the person(s) you sent them to and they rate if the DVD(s) were working. Once you have CREDIT or peerbux you can then request a DVD be sent to you.

    • I guess I'm just pretty cynical, and relying upon other Joes to send me their movies in a reasonalble timeframe with reasonable quality.

      There is a review system. Send out a bad disk, you get a bad mark and can be banned. You have to give your mailing address to Peerflix so it would be easy to ban that mailing address from the system and not allow you to re-register with it.

      When a DVD you have listed is requested, you click a button to "mail this disk". The next screen asks you to promise to mail it w

  • 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.
    • "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."

      You're not lending out the disc; you are trading it for peerbux, which you can use to purchase movies on your want list -- provided you pay the admin fee.

      The $0.99 is to cover administrative costs for the transaction (and to pay the owners of the company and their lawyers).

      This, other than the fact that it
      (1) is trading physical products; and
      (2) c
  • 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.

  • Ripping traded discs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:56PM (#13610211) Journal
    People already rip rental DVD's. I can't imagine the problem getting much worse with traded DVD's.

  • What is this easy DVD copying method that they (Score:4, Insightful)

    by multiplexo ( 27356 ) * on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @08:59PM (#13610229) Journal
    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?

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @09:10PM (#13610280)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Most of the DL disks I've seen have two copies of the movie, maybe different angles for improved 3D view or something. The reauthoring option is nice, pick only the main movie and remove all the unneeded audio tracks, why have 5.1 surround and 4 languages with subtitles if your tv is only 2.0 surround, that will remove several hundered MB. If you want 90%+ of the original you can set the start and end frames, remove begining and ending credits, those few minutes of end credits will get you another 5-7% for
      • Better still, go to doom9.org and read their DVD ripping/copying guides. Even the high quality DVD copy guide using DVDDecrypter, DVDRebuilder, and CCE only takes 20-30mins setup, and once that's done, it's a two-click operation to copy/rebuild/encode any DVD9 to a DVD5.
    • If I remember right, when I first tried Napster I had a 4 or 5 gig hard drive. At 40-60 Mb for an album compressed down to 96 or 128 kbps, gee that's only like 100 albums, and compressed to crappy quality. This music sharing thing will never take off.

      OK, now movies don't usually get split up into song sized chunks, but still, I think your view is a little short sighted. Where will hard drives be in 5 years? Even now on a 400 Gb drive if your movies are 2Gb (which I think looks fantastic on a big screen, at

    • DVDs are nowhere near as easy to copy as CDs, especially if it's a dual layer DVD.

      Even without a dual-layer burner, ripping a dual-layer DVD needs only about 10 GiB of temp space: 8 GiB for the DeCSS'd VIDEO_TS folder and 700 MB for a DivX .avi file of each act of the film.

      I'm assuming that we don't want further compression because it degrades the image which looks like shit on a big screen TV

      Given what's traded on P2P, many pirates don't care how good a movie looks on a big screen TV because they

    • Let's see...

      1. Walk to post office and pick up batch of NetFlix movies. 10:00am
      2. Pop into Linux media PC.
      3. "mount /dvd ; vobcopy -m ; eject"
      4. while (( i++ -lt $NUM_MOVIES )) goto #2
      5. Walk to post office to return batch of movies, well before the day's last pickup.
      6. Watch movies at leisure, delete/keep what you see fit.

      Keeping the rental pipeline full at all times allows for more bang for your rental buck. Err... theoretically.

      With the current best GB per dollar ratio being a 320GB dr

      • I don't have time to watch 32 dvd's....

        With an average time of 1 hour 20 minutes... thats roughly 42 hours of entertaining. A full work week needs to be dedicated to viewing pleasure!

        However, on a smaller less profitable scale I could see this working out on a smaller scale.

    • (I'm assuming that we don't want further compression because it degrades the image which looks like shit on a big screen TV)

      Don't blame the problems you've had with some particular crappy codec on "compression" as a whole.

      Using libavcodec, I can re-encode a DVD to MPEG-2 at 1/2 the size or sometimes less. With MPEG-4, halve that again (1/4 the size) but won't play on most DVD players. And that's all without artifacts, without quality degredation of any kind (even on a "big screen"). In fact, the copies

    • your post is valid, I am not debating that for the average person you are 100% correct.

      However, I have a 42" plasma HDTV connected to the buffalo linktheater. I have been ripping all my DVD's to divx format and placing them on my hard disk (which is streamed to the linktheater, when it requests.)
      when I rip to divx format, I do 2 pass encoding, to a VBR of 2kbps, this makes a 2 hour DVD about 2 Gig. for everything, put blue sky shots, it is impossible to tell on this TV the difference from the 2 gig divx f

  • Amazing, Isn't It? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @09:05PM (#13610255) Homepage

    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?
    • A few issues:

      One is motivation -- the average users aren't that unhappy with Windows that they want to try something like Linux. They do, however, want to source music and videos and they look for the quickest and cheapest way to do it.

      Another is awareness -- no one in my brother's circle of friends (pro athletes) talks about installing Linux. They talk about which apps are best to copy DVDs or download music. You could tell them about Linux but they wouldn't bother remembering the details because they don'

      • Motivation and awareness are on point.

        You gotta wonder, though, when people are tossing their PCs due to spyware, if the issue isn't either one of those, but simple knowledge of WHY they NEED it.

        Which reduces to ignorance, basically.

        I think that might change if the geeks writing Linux software would learn to leapfrog Windows in usability - which wouldn't be that hard. The problem is, even though Linux isn't harder to use than Windows, it isn't vastly EASIER to use than Windows, either. And geeks by definiti

    • Re:Amazing, Isn't It? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by samael ( 12612 )
      1) Put DVD in drive
      2) Click on "Clone DVD"
      3) Wait for popup message to say "Change disks"
      4) Change disks
      5) Write name of DVD on disk.

      Gosh. That's _much_ harder than learning Linux.
      • Hah! Not nearly that easy...even with the right software - which most users probably wouldn't know the name of, how to find it, how to install it, etc.

        The same complaints people have about Linux, in fact.

        If it's true in one, it's true in the other - or not.

  • bah... we already have a trading medium (Score:3, Interesting)

    by voisine ( 153062 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @09:11PM (#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.

    • Re:bah... we already have a trading medium (Score:5, Informative)

      by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @09:46PM (#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.

      • By purchase price I was refering to the price the buyer purchased it for. Amazon charges you 15% plus $0.99 unless you have a $40/mo seller account, in which case the $0.99 is waived. With this service you pay basicaly the same amount you would without a seller account and get the added convenience. I imagine the shipping credit covers the cost of the postage and mailer.

  • they already have this service for free (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportlandNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @09:16PM (#13610304) Homepage Journal
    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 @09:22PM (#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 @09:22PM (#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.

  • 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
    • that's only if you believe you have "bought" anything in the first place.

      the software/copyright/movie/music cartels are trying as hard as they can to convince even intelligent geeks that what they really get for their hard earned money is a LICENSE.

      and they are succeeding quite well if you listen to the umpteen slashdot users spout off how you "only bought a license" garbage.

      it's sad but it can be countered through education.
      • "it's sad but it can be countered through education."

        Unless they were forced to take the RIAA respect copyright classes. I don't remember if they were only a proposed classes as condition or receiving a "generous" donation or it may have been for British students or maybe even Florida.

  • Been there, done that... (Score:3, Informative)

    by NetDanzr ( 619387 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @10:21PM (#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.

  • First Sale (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday September 20, 2005 @11:16PM (#13610866) Homepage Journal
    ...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 @01:18AM (#13611322) Homepage Journal
      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.
  • ...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.

  •  
    "content owners"

  • DRM the US Postal Service (Score:3, Funny)

    by ChaosDiscord ( 4913 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:47PM (#13616309) Homepage Journal

    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.

  • ...I want to know what makes Peerflix better than MediaChest [mediachest.com].

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