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$30,000 fine for renting new releases early???

A

alexjohnson16

Platinum Member
Last night I was at one of our local video stores with a few friends, Family Video...

It closes at 12:00 AM and they usually let people browse around and if they haven't made their decision, ask them to leave at about 12:05...

Well, last night, at about 11:55 they started putting out the new releases for today, Tuesday the 10th. I asked the lady if we could rent a new release, and she said "Sure, if you want to pay the $30,000 fine I'll get."

Is this true? If we had rented it after 12:00AM, would she be fined? Its Tuesday, the scheduled release, or is it the start of Tuesday's business???

What about 24 hour movie stores???

 
Originally posted by: alexjohnson16
Last night I was at one of our local video stores with a few friends, Family Video...

It closes at 12:00 AM and they usually let people browse around and if they haven't made their decision, ask them to leave at about 12:05...

Well, last night, at about 11:55 they started putting out the new releases for today, Tuesday the 10th. I asked the lady if we could rent a new release, and she said "Sure, if you want to pay the $30,000 fine I'll get."

Is this true? If we had rented it after 12:00AM, would she be fined? Its Tuesday, the scheduled release, or is it the start of Tuesday's business???

What about 24 hour movie stores???
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what?? that must be a bs she probeably didn't want to go and ge the movie
 
At the very least it will get their new releases delayed if she rented it out before 12AM. Usually release date starts at 12AM....24 hour stores will occasionally have lines waiting to buy or rent the 'new' movie in big cities.

The reason for making everyone wait for a certain date/time has to do with many factors.

Whatever the contract they signed stated as recourse would be enforcable.
 
Originally posted by: alexjohnson16
Last night I was at one of our local video stores with a few friends, Family Video...

It closes at 12:00 AM and they usually let people browse around and if they haven't made their decision, ask them to leave at about 12:05...

Well, last night, at about 11:55 they started putting out the new releases for today, Tuesday the 10th. I asked the lady if we could rent a new release, and she said "Sure, if you want to pay the $30,000 fine I'll get."

Is this true? If we had rented it after 12:00AM, would she be fined? Its Tuesday, the scheduled release, or is it the start of Tuesday's business???

What about 24 hour movie stores???
Click to expand...

WTF? $30,000 for renting a movie early? Anyone work in a video store and have more info about this?
 
I'd believe it....some stores have the movies a couple weeks in advance....if someone were to release it early and a copy were to start floating around it could potentially ruin sales.

That is believeable to me. I am sure 5 mins early would not a lawsuit make, but say the store let a 'friend' see it a couple weeks early and he stuck it on KaZaa.
 
Originally posted by: alkemyst
I'd believe it....some stores have the movies a couple weeks in advance....if someone were to release it early and a copy were to start floating around it could potentially ruin sales.

That is believeable to me. I am sure 5 mins early would not a lawsuit make, but say the store let a 'friend' see it a couple weeks early and he stuck it on KaZaa.
Click to expand...

the local video store i go to puts the movies on the shelf about a week or two before they're officially released all the time
 
I knew a guy who worked at Family Video, and the employees get to watch the new releases early. I've always wanted to ask if I could rent a new release early, but I guess I won't now.
 
Hm...reminds me of when I saw a stack of Jackass: The Movie DVDs two weeks before they were officially released on VHS/DVD...I was seriously tempted to swipe a few and sell them on ebay.
 
Never worked in a store so i cant give exact details but they do get them at minimum 2-3 days beforehand, sometimes as early as 2-3 week before street date so there is no delay in getting the title out on release day. The employees typically can take them home and view them since it doesnt go in the system but they are not officially allowed to "hit the street" until the date the company dictates. A $30,000 is not out of the question but I dont think it would happen on a first violation. What would likely happen is a warning and/or the studio holding future shipments until the release day which would slow down the release of the title in that video store and cut down on profits which the store obviously doesnt want.
 
This most certainly is the case, my wife used to be a District manager at Blockbuster and had a store locally get busted for it. They DO monitor this, as it breaks several laws to rent it early, and the fine typically is around 25 to 30K
 
Originally posted by: SammySon
I bet the enforcement rate for this "crime" is insanly low.

Moot point.
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🙂 This is exactly what many haxors thought in the mid-late 80's....

Movie companies are pouring money into copy protection and anti-copy / tracking schemes. It would be as simple as embedding a country, region, state, county, city, store code into each disk that would be copied when the data is copied...then they could see where these earily releases are coming from and crack down....it may actually be in the works.

Some Fed / Movie Cop is probably keeping a running total on some mom and pop store somewhere out there just waiting to pounce with a large public case.

Remember Phiber Optic, he wasn't even the bad guy in MOD and they nailed his ass to the wall late 80's maybe early early 90's. The other two guys Corrupt (from 8lgm) and Wing/Brest Tumor were the ones that should have gone down.
 
They are pretty serious about stuff like this. I heard about a retail store that got busted for selling new releases early. I don't remember the specifics, though. This doesn't sound outrageous... I'm sure the clerk wouldn't get busted for $30,000, but the chain might... or just the store.
 
yup true dont know about how much the actual fine is but I do know there is one. As an assistant manager I got to take stuff home all the time, it used to be all employees but we had some problems. I miss my days working in video, so much free time all the free movies, and I would "test" games that people said were bad.
 
Originally posted by: BunLengthHotDog
This most certainly is the case, my wife used to be a District manager at Blockbuster and had a store locally get busted for it. They DO monitor this, as it breaks several laws to rent it early, and the fine typically is around 25 to 30K
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I don't believe there is any law (let alone several) that regulates renting videos before the official release date. The contract with the studio might specify a penalty, but that's not a law.
 
When i worked for a major bookstore chain, our contract with the publishers specified major penalites if we sold a book before it's "Street" date.

One of our chains DID sell a book before the street date, and lost it's rights to ANY new release shipments from that publisher.

That is enough to put a store out of business.

 
When I worked at Staples we got in copies of Windows XP weeks before the release date. When I did a price check it came up at $10,000. I asked my boss about it and he said that's the amount we would get fined if we sold Windows XP early.

There's also a $10,000 to $20,000 fine for a copy center (Kinkos, etc.) to make photocopies of copywrited works (without the owner's consent). What's scary about this one though is that not only does the store get fined, but the person who does the copying has to pay that much as well.
 
Originally posted by: alkemyst
Kranky: the contract is not law, however there is major contract laws that govern them.
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My point is that because there is no law that controls if someone rents a video before the studio wants them to, you can't call the police and have them do anything about it. They can file a civil suit for breach of contract, but I cannot imagine any scenario where the police would show up at a rental joint and take any action. There is no "fine"- the studio can try in court to recover damages, or they can point to the contract which might say the rental store agrees to pay $30,000 in damages if they rent early.

A civil action isn't as simple to pursue as a criminal one. You have no cops gathering evidence, no DA to press charges. Just whatever one guy's lawyer can come up with, against what the other guy's lawyer comes up with.

I'm not trying to split hairs, but people on AT are quick to say "X is against the law" when it is not. Just like the other day when someone said if you put a sign on your bedroom door that says the parents can't come in, they need a warrant to enter.
rolleye.gif
 
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