Redbox has ended its "standoff" with Warner Brothers and, despite its earlier moves, has come out on the losing end of the deal. If you'll recall, earlier in the year Redbox decided to let its contract with Warner Brothers expire after the studio decided to withhold its new releases for 56 days -- up from the already ridiculous 28 days. Redbox looked at the obscene size of this window and said, thanks but no thanks, we'll just purchase your movies elsewhere.

This couldn't have made WB too happy, what with Redbox exercising the right of First Sale to bypass the studio's window and let itself in the front door. As for those looking to rent new releases while they were still new, Warner Brothers basically told them to shove off, and go look elsewhere for their entertainment. Having cut off a source of income and given more than a few potential customers a reason to check out alternate sources, the studio finally decided to renegotiate.

Here's how it all works out for Redbox (and by extension, the customers):

For titles with street dates between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2014, the studio will grant Redbox the rights to offer Warner Bros. theatrical titles on Blu-ray Disc and DVD 28 days after their retail release dates.

Apparently, a stupid window is slightly less stupid when it's half the size it previously was. (But more stupidly, it's exactly where the window sat previously, before Warner decided not enough people were buying during the rental shutout). What Warner refuses to understand is that people want to rent movies when they logically should be available (i.e., day and date with the DVD release), rather than at some arbitrary point in the future. Warner is still willing to trade rentals for sales, even if it means giving up some rentals for file sharing. But the stupidity of the deal gets worse:

In addition, Redbox announced plans to join the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) and has agreed to promote UltraViolet through a program of mutually agreed-upon promotions and marketing tactics designed to help retail customers discover UltraViolet.

On top of being forced to humor Warner's ignorant windowing, Redbox is now being made to play nice with the studio's too-little-too-late digital "offering." It's a bad deal all around, but the press release ignores all reality to paint a gloriously rose-tinted future for all involved.

The arrangement will improve the economics for both Warner Bros. and Redbox while ensuring consistent availability of Warner Bros. titles for the consumer.

Really? Judging from past experience, it seems more likely that Warner will continue to cripple the rental service by adding ridiculous agreements and stipulations while slowly killing off the everything anyone liked about it. There's nothing about this equation that "improves economics." Warner opens itself up to more piracy by setting up arbitrary windows and consumers looking for the latest Warner releases still have 28 days to kill before they become "consistently available."

Here's some more rah-rah, go team doublespeak from Warner Bros.

"We are pleased to once again have a direct relationship with Redbox, providing their consumers access to our movies," said Ron Sanders, president, Warner Home Video. "In addition, we look forward to working together on other key initiatives such as UltraViolet and creating promotional opportunities to offer consumers great content when and where they want it."

Translation: We are pleased that we have prevented Redbox from simply purchasing our movies from a third party and renting them out during our arbitrary blackout periods. In addition, we look forward to pushing our clunky digital services and creating restrictive "opportunities" to offer consumers great content when and where we say they can have it.

The best way to combat piracy is to offer content at a reasonable price, make it easily accessible and hamper it with as few limitations as possible. Very, very slowly, the major studios are coming around to this line of thinking. A few tentative (and pretty much awful) steps have been taken, but it seems that for every minute, baby step forward, the motion picture industry staggers several steps back.

Case in point: Amazon's Instant Video service, which has "over 100,000 top movies and TV shows to rent or buy." This includes many new releases, and the purchaser can stream the movie indefinitely and at any time to compatible devices. The purchaser also has the option to download the movie to a PC or Kindle Fire for viewing without an internet connection.

It all sounds like a pretty good deal, until you realize that the words "indefinitely" and "any time" mean something completely different to the studios.

Consumerist reader Rebecca found this out the hard way, when she purchased Puss In Boots for $14.99 from Amazon, believing that, per Amazon’s marketing, she would be able to watch the movie when she wanted and for as many times as she wanted.

And all was going well for a few weeks until Rebecca went to stream Puss In Boots and instead saw a message stating that the film was no longer available for viewing.

As Rebecca found out, "any time" means "any time the studio is not currently milking every last dollar out of its latest release by shuffling it in and out of rental, PPV and premium cable windows." Why these windows should matter to someone who has already paid for the movie is beyond me. After all, the purchaser should be able to set his or her own "window," starting from the point they paid for the movie and going forward.

Amazon's marketing seems to agree with this customer-friendly "any time window." But once something like this happens, the real details come out. Rebecca contacted Amazon for some clarification on this bullshit "anomaly" and received this:

Due to licensing restrictions, videos can become temporarily unavailable for viewing or downloading. The video will automatically be made available again once that restriction ends.

Availability of videos for purchase, re-download, or access from a backup copy is determined by the owners of the content. On very rare occasions, a video you previously purchased may become unavailable.

Well, that's kind of crap. The video you "previously purchased" may become "unavailable" at the whims of "THE OWNERS OF THE CONTENT." No doubt wrinkles of incomprehension form on the brows of studio and label execs when customers make bizarre claims of "ownership" after purchasing movies and music. According to the execs, they only "licensed" the content to you (with all the billions of lousy stipulations that transaction entails). [Unless you're Eminem and demanding to be paid larger "license" royalties. In this specific case, you were sold actual songs.]

While this studio chicanery is nothing new, especially when it comes to digital goods, Amazon isn't helping matters by burying the exceptions and limitations that come with purchasing "indefinite" access. The licensing restrictions Rebecca had detailed for her by Amazon appear nowhere on the purchase pages. In fact, the "Amazon Instant Video Usage Rules" page carries none of this information either. Instead, it gives you this phrase and link:

Viewing Period: Indefinite — you may watch and re-watch your purchased videos as often as you want and as long as you want (subject to the limitations described in the Amazon Instant Video Terms of Use).

The TOS link brings you to a less-than-helpful wall of text, leaving the purchaser to scroll up and down before finding the pertinent information that explains exactly why something they purchased is unavailable.

Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming. You may download and store your own copy of Purchased Digital Content on a Compatible Device authorized for such download so that you can view that Purchased Digital Content if it becomes unavailable for further download or streaming from the Service.

Nice, huh? For any reason, your purchase may be limited, unavailable or removed completely by the "content provider." Amazon suggests (when it's done letting you know that "hey, not our fault") that the purchaser download and store their own copies to avoid being locked out of their purchases by the content providers. Well, thanks for the suggestion, Amazon, but even that half-assed "workaround" is useless thanks to the fact that the content provider can also make purchases "unavailable for further download." It's not as if Dreamworks is going to send an email blast letting customers know that their purchased streams are about to vanish thanks to a six-week run on pay-per-view. And the studios certainly aren't going to tell customers "Download now because we're yanking that movie from Amazon completely." Everyone involved would just rather the problem be dealt with when the angry emails start pouring in, if at all.

Now, Rebecca obviously prefers streaming, so getting shafted by the studios probably isn't going to drive her to massive torrenting. What it may do, however, is send her towards streaming services like Amazon Prime or Netflix. Because of its shortsighted urge to drain every last penny out of "Puss in Boots," Dreamworks seems willing to sacrifice actual "digital dollars" from Amazon Instant Video for the "digital dimes" of other streaming services. Of course, if the studio already has your $14.99, it's probably not very concerned about how satisfied you are with the spotty availability of your purchased movie license. It's not like Rebecca can return it. All she can do is wait for Dreamworks to reopen her (prepaid) window.

Streaming is becoming the preferred option for movies and music and Hollywood seems to be willing to fight it every step of the way. It's sad and it's ugly. The industry has crippled Hulu and Netflix (while offering nothing comparable of their own) and now seems ready and willing to kick Amazon and its customers around for as long as it can get away with it. It's one thing to play stupid games with content when customers are playing a flat rate for "all you can watch." It's quite another to yank content away from customers who have paid directly for a title at prices that rival a physical DVD purchase. That's not a "business model." That's abusing your customers for fun and profit.

With all the talk of movie studios trying to create a new window between DVD releases for sales, and DVD releases for rentals, it's sometimes forgotten that Redbox tried to fight this fight a few years ago... and ended up in a big legal battle with the studios, before caving and agreeing to delay rentals. However, it appears that the company may be ready to fight back again. Rather than accept an increased 56 day window with other annoying restrictions, Redbox is apparently telling Warner Bros. to take its dumb idea and to shove it, because it'll just buy the DVDs from alternative sources:

However, after lengthy talks between WB and Redbox this month, the companies couldn't come to an agreement over the new demands from the studio.

Instead, Redbox has opted to turn to "alternate means" to purchase the films on DVD and Blu-ray it makes available to rent for as low as $1.20 a night through its more than 28,000 kiosks -- and offer them the same day they hit store shelves to buy, according to Redbox senior VP of marketing Gary Cohen.

This could get interesting, because the last time they had this fight, the studios sought to block companies like Walmart from selling to Redbox, and Walmart put in place some restrictions to make it harder for Redbox to do this. I still think Redbox could potentially crowdsource these purchases, and get around any restrictions.

Either way, it's stories like this that show why the First Sale doctrine is so important. Redbox should be able to buy from alternative sources and then be free to rent those movies. And that's the case due to "first sale" rights -- even if Warner Brothers wants to pretend they don't exist.

We pointed out that the early reviews of Hollywood's new UltraViolet DRM aren't particularly good, but the industry is still pushing forward with the idea. Leading the way is Warner Bros., who is trying to turn the movie-based "social network" it bought a few months ago, Flixster, into the central hub for your movies. The NY Times has an article about it, where it repeatedly claims that the strategy is all about trying to get people to "buy" movies again, rather than just rent them via Netflix of Redbox. Of course, I find this pretty funny, because nothing about UltraViolet is about actually "buying" anything. You're still renting -- and if things ever went to court over, say, your first sale rights to resell a movie you "purchased" using UltraViolet, you can bet that Warner Bros. would be first in line to claim that the license shows you're merely renting the movie, and not buying it. It's just that you're renting it on an open-ended timeline, basically until the studios bail on UltraViolet and shut down the servers.

Rob Pegoraro, in commenting on the article, notes that oddly, the article doesn't even mention DRM in talking about why people don't want to buy from the studios or the fact that it's still much more convenient to get the content by unauthorized means. But that concept still hasn't reached the brain trust at Warner Bros., who seems to insist that as long as you can access the movies you "bought" from anywhere, people will prefer that to file sharing. While it's great that they're at least trying to add benefits, to make it more valuable and worth paying for, the whole thing smacks of someone's father trying to "act cool" for his kids' friends. Warner Bros. still doesn't seem to understand why people like things like Netflix: the convenience. Everything about Ultraviolet sounds inconvenient, and that hardly makes anyone want to "buy."

The movie studios' short-sightedness knows no bounds, apparently. Warner Bros., which has been the most aggressive of the big movie studios in getting companies like Netflix and Redbox not to rent its movies until 28-days after they go on sale, has now decided to do the same thing for libraries, putting in place a 28-day embargo on all DVD sales to libraries, from the time of the DVD release. To make it even more obnoxious, they're removing bonus features and extras from movies sold to libraries.

Here's the thing, though. What's to stop a library from just buying an official version and lending it out? The whole thing is pretty silly anyway. Is Warner Bros. really thinking that if someone can't take out one of its movies from the library, that they'll really go buy the DVD from WB? Also, doesn't this seem like a form of price fixing?

In the end, though, it's unlikely to actually help. Slightly more enlightened studios, such as Paramount, actually tested such 28-delays and looked at the data, which said Netflix and Redbox don't cannibalize sales, and appear to "expand" the movie business. Too bad Warner Bros. hasn't seen that movie yet. Perhaps they're still waiting for the 28-day delay to pass.

With Google announcing that it's now offering 3,000 movies for "rental" via both YouTube and Android, it's worth asking a simple question:

Why does Hollywood insist on making online movies so damn annoying?

If you look at pretty much all of the online rental options (with the exception of Netflix), the deal terms are almost always identical. Prices range a bit, but for big name movies they're $3.99. The rental term is 30 days from when you pay... but once you start watching, you only have 24 hours to watch. This particular limitation is particularly annoying to those of us who don't always watch movies in a single sitting or a single day (it's amazing how your movie watching gets fragmented once you have little kids).

Obviously, this has become the standard set of terms that the Hollywood studios are demanding, but these limitations are annoying and make no sense. Why put artificial limitations on offerings like this, making them less valuable and a lot less interesting? It also means that there's little innovation in the space. Basically, every offering in the space (again, with the exception of Netflix, who got grandfathered in with its unlimited model) is basically the same. The only innovation is around the device or the very front end of the service. There's no innovation in the actual model, which is a shame, because this "standardized" offering is really quite annoying and not at all compelling.

A few weeks back, we noted the rumors that a bunch of studios were getting ready to offer $30 video-on-demand movie rentals, in an attempt to create a new tiered "window" much closer to the original theatrical release date. It appears those stories are now confirmed, as DirecTV has said that it will, indeed, be offering $30 film rentals for movies just 10-weeks after their theatrical release. Of course, before we discuss how bad an idea this is from the studio's perspective, let's look at the even more braindead response from movie theaters:

Regency Theatres, based in Calabasas, California, will pull "Just Go With It" from its second-run theaters, where it was among the top two titles last weekend, said President Lyndon Golin.

"We don't want to show movies that are on TV," Golin said in a telephone interview. "We want to protect the movie-going experience."

Protect the movie-going experience? Huh? Does Golin even hear what he's saying. First off, how does pulling the movie out of the theaters protect the movie-going experience? It seems to do the opposite. It seems to tell people "we don't want you to enjoy the movie-going experience" with this movie. Golin seems to be flat-out admitting that his movie theaters suck. After all, if he can't provide a better movie-going experience than a TV at home, then apparently his theaters really aren't worth going to, right?

I've pointed this out in the past, but I can never understand theater owners who complain about competition from rentals or video streaming. The whole point of a movie theater is that it's a social experience. It's "going out" to the theaters. It's enjoying the overall event on a giant screen. Obviously with home theater systems, there is some competition, but theater owners can certainly provide an overall excellent theater experience, if they put some effort into it. What Golin's statement here says is that he's not interested in trying, and he doesn't think his theater's experience can compete. That's really more of a statement about problems with his own theaters than about this new rental window.

As for the rental window, it'll be interesting to see who actually pays $30. I understand the studios' logic. They think they're providing extra value by making a movie available earlier. But that's not -- at all -- how consumers are likely to view this. They're going to compare it to Netflix or other PPV/rental options and have no idea why the studios and DirecTV think they can get away with charging many multiples higher.

Of course, going back to the theaters' response, it seems even more ridiculous when you realize that Regency doesn't even think it can compete with a ridiculously overprice home rental option that very few people are going to choose.

We were pretty surprised when Redbox caved in to the Hollywood studios, and agreed to annoy its customers with a ridiculous 28-day delay. We had many commenters say that people wouldn't care and it wasn't much of a big deal. However, the company is now admitting that the 28-day delay resulted in much lower holiday rentals than it had expected. Meanwhile, the only studio that has publicly released information about how its experiments with the 28-day delay went, Paramount, has said that such delays are bad for business, as it doesn't increase sales of DVDs, and that allowing Redbox to rent movies sooner actually helped the studio (and Redbox) make more money. So why do we still have those delays?

What is it about the entertainment industry that actually makes them think that it's a smart move to take features away from consumers? They seem to focus on building business models by pissing off as many people as possible, and then wondering why those people seek out alternatives. Case in point, visual77 points us to the news that movie studios are increasingly offering up feature-limited DVDs for the rental market, and then encouraging you to buy the DVD itself if you want all the features. As Consumerist reports:

Consumerist reader Joseph brought this to our attention after he spent $3.99 to rent the DVD of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World from Blockbuster. When he went to the disc's main menu and attempted to watch the Blooper Reel special feature, he was greeted by a screen telling him: "This disc is intended for rental purposes and only includes the feature film. Own it on Blu-Ray or DVD to view these bonus features and complete your movie watching experience."

This is the same thinking that leads the studios to seek to have rental places delay movies for a month. The entire business model seems to be centered on creating artificial scarcities that piss off people. Is it really so difficult for the industry to realize that they can make more money by adding value and actually delivering what people want?

Hollywood continues to seek new and ever-more creative ways to shoot itself in the foot and drive movie fans to unauthorized copies of movies. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. studios was successful in pressuring Netflix and Redbox to delay rental releases by 28-days, with the hope that people who couldn't rent the movie would buy it. Warner Bros. has been claiming this strategy succeeded and that they've sold more DVDs because of it. I would doubt that it's the delay that's increasing sales, and it seems like a pretty short-sighted strategy to look to increase sales of a format like DVD right now. Either way, Warner Bros. is now claiming it may try to increase the window over 28-days. It's as if they want to drive more people to get the movie from unauthorized providers. Making it more difficult to let people watch movies the way they want to isn't a solution that will work long-term.