Tag: Rentals
Belgium outlaws game rentals
It’s amazing how far countries are prepared to bend over backwards to prop up the ailing entertainment industry business model which simply doesn’t work any more. Here’s the latest – Belgium has outlawed video game rentals, because they were making too much of a dent in games sales.
From December 1, no Belgians will be able to rent any video games. Unless they live near the border, I suppose, and the border has a videogame rental store on it. The Belgian Entertainment Association has won a big victory against its customers here, which is a shame – it won’t make people buy more games – it’ll just send them straight to the Pirate Bay.
Belgian Entertainment Association (via Kotaku)
Related posts: Microsoft ordered to ‘cease and desist’ over Belgian newspaper content | Sony adds online movies and TV rental to PlayStation 3
Survey: DVD piracy on the rise in the UK
A new survey suggests that DVD piracy is on the increase in the UK. Armed with a wheelbarrow of scepticism, we bring you the results from an analysis conducted by Futuresource Consulting: 36% of Brits (who responded to the survey) have copied DVDs within the last six months compared to 25% last year. In that time, an average of 22 movies were copied, including 13 new releases, and a “significant portion” of people were copying from rental and borrowed DVDs.
Opinion: Is Apple a bigger danger to our lives than Microsoft?
Jonathan Weinberg writes… I thought I could rely on Apple so this morning I awoke to disappointment in Steve Jobs after his Macworld announcements yesterday. I was sure he’d launch a new iPhone with either 3G or bigger storage memory, thus annoying the FOUR MILLION people who have now, like cult followers, signed up to the iPhone religion.
But it was a clever move. Save that announcement for a couple of months time, and bring a second-generation device out around a year after the first and no-one can have any complaints… can they? After all, technology is always changing and those of us who spend fortunes on gadgets and gizmos, only to see them bettered just weeks later, are fools of our own making. I do it, as much as you…
Macworld 2008: Apple relaunches Apple TV with HD movie rentals, cheaper price
Apple TV hasn’t been a roaring success for Apple, but that hasn’t stopped the company announcing a second-generation version at Macworld 2008. Apple TV ‘Take 2’ will let you rent HD movies for $4.99 a pop, with 100 available immediately.
