The first sale doctrine allows any individual/company to buy retail discs and rent those physical copies out. No need of an agreement from the copyright holder for that.
However, in practice, large rental companies (like Netflix) likely DO have contracts that make it easier and cheaper for them to get large numbers of discs without buying them on the retail market. But at least the first sale doctrine provides a fallback if contracts fail. I think I read somewhere that in the past Netflix has had to refer to the retail market for certain titles.
I'm seeing more discs from my subscription that are marked "Rental" ... with monochrome labeling (no graphics), fewer subtitle & foreign language options, and lower bit-rate.
So they definitely have agreements with the studios/distributors to get discs for the rental market, and it looks like that agreement is covering more and more titles. For the Marvel titles - it's about 50:50 (in perfect balance..)
Ah, okay, that's what I must have heard and misinterpreted. Kind of makes sense, as it could allow for arrangements that reduce the losses from unused copies and thus the risk of buying too many.
Edit: I also wonder if the unit price difference will ever be big enough that Netflix has to charge a premium for those who want the excluded titles?
Yeah I got that part. I just thought there were separate rights you had to buy in order to rent them out for money, based on comments I'd read from previous discussions. I just did some googling and found out there doesn't seem to be such a restriction.
