HomeWeekly News Roundup (February 4, 2018)
Alright, it’s going to be another short one this week, as news was light on the ground again. So without wasting too much of your time …
Redbox fires back against Disney with its own lawsuit
The Redbox/Disney legal tussle gets interestinger by the minute, this time, Redbox’s the one killing trees by filing a lawsuit against the studio. Redbox claims that Disney has had it in for them from the very beginning, refusing to work with them, creating artificial barriers and even going after Redbox’s business partners to pressure them not to do business with the rental kiosk company.
Redbox says that unlike most other studios that have all come to some sort of agreement with the company, Disney at first demanded a 28 day exclusion window for Disney titles in Redbox vending machines, and when Redbox circumvented this by buying discs at retail to fill their machines, Disney went after any distributor or retailer found to be doing business with Redbox in this way.
What really got Disney angry was that Redbox had found the value spot when it came to buying Disney titles and maximizing their profit. Instead of buying individual packs, Redbox bought combo packs that contained the Blu-ray, DVD and even a Digital Copy of the film. Redbox then rented out the two discs types individually, and just recently, started selling the Digital Copy code. This was the final straw for Disney, who sued Redbox in early December.
I’m really sitting on the fence on this one. In my opinion, it’s pretty clear that Redbox has been skirting around the lack of a deal with Disney. Buying from retail, separating a combo pack, and re-selling Digital Codes, all sounds a little dodgy in my opinion, and not something a company that has over 42,000 kiosks should be doing. Disney of course is only looking after themselves, and they couldn’t care less if people are inconvenienced from being to rent their movies from Redbox, not if they can maximize their own profits. It’s greed vs greed, and it feels to me this is something the two companies should hash out behind closed doors, not in a court of law.
As to who I think has a better case, if I had to guess based on the court’s tendency to favour the big guys, Disney will probably win both cases. It’s all about whether Disney has the right to prevent their retail products being used in this way – the disclaimers and warnings make it clear how Disney wants their products to be used, but will these stack up in court?
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That’s all I have for you this week though. More next week, I’m sure. So until then …