In Australia the Video Rental Association has won a case against Warner Home Video. Warner wanted to double the DVD price for the video-rental stores. They said had the right to do this because a DVD is digitally recorded and is played on a machine containing a processor which makes it subject to copyright law.
The AVRA's victory came in the Australian Federal Court last month when Justice Arthur Emmett issued orders that Warner cancel its new arrangements for rental DVDs and desist making "unjustifiable threats" of civil and criminal proceedings against video-rental shops.
The row blew up in May when Warner introduced a new "two-tier" system under which only DVDs with a special blue label, costing $55 (double the wholesale price of those intended for sale in retail stores), would be able to be bought and rented out by video-hire stores. "Normal" DVDs sold to the public would have silver labels with a "not for rental" warning and a dob-in telephone hotline number.
If Warner had won this case the DVD prices in the rental stores would certainly rise and less DVD titles would be available. Fortunately they lost because else we *could* see a world-wide rise in DVD prices.
Good some people still care and fight against big companies with idiot ideas... read the full article here.
Source: smh.com.au
