Redbox DVD-rental kiosks are sprouting up like weeds all over the country. They can be placed at convenience stores and fast-food restaurants and offer customers DVDs for $1. It’s a great deal — movies for $1. Americans, always on the lookout for a bargain, are inserting their credit cards in record numbers to take the latest DVDs home.
Some people aren’t smiling, though. Traditional DVD-rental places, such as Blockbuster, are decrying the low-rent competition from kiosks. In an economic system that prizes competition and entrepreneurial ideas, the old guard still wants it all to themselves, and they’ll stoop to absurd, even defamatory means to maintain their bottom line.
In Vanderburgh County, Ind., a complaint was made against Redbox by an attorney, Paul Black, who represented, you guessed it, video rental stores. The deceitful complaint alleged that Redbox rents R-rated movies to minors and has no control over who its renters are.
You expect the competition to be underhanded, but Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stan Levco was actually going to go after Redbox on those grounds, saying Redbox and other kiosks could be breaking the law by making R-rated films available to people under 17. This was so laughably ridiculous that Levco soon backed off. This was the county’s top attorney not realizing that minors don’t have credit cards, and minors can watch R-rated movies with their parents.
No, this was a matter of two businesses battling it out in the marketplace with one bringing in trumped up charges of immorality against the other.
Black and his client ultimately don’t care who watches movies as long as they come from stores and not kiosks. Their faux concern is only to protect the bottom line.
Hollywood, too, is going after the kiosks. Redbox recently reached an agreement with Warner Brothers that new DVD releases — those available to purchase or rent at Blockbuster — won’t be in the kiosks until 28 days after release. The film studios are equating this to second-run movies that go into theaters for a lower box office price. If people want to wait a month to get their movies, that’s up to them.
What is important to remember is that an agreement was reached between businesses, which is done every day without the insertion of fake moral concerns to tar the proceedings. Still, it’s worrisome when a prosecutor takes such a childish challenge seriously.
In Summary
A county challenging on false morality charges the way a DVD-rental kiosk does business is an overreach.
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