Dublin brothers reported for renting out retail DVDs: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2006/09/10 > Dublin brothers reported for renting out retail DVDs

Dublin brothers reported for renting out retail DVDs
Sunday, September 10, 2006 - By Kieron Wood
Two Dublin brothers who set up a DVD-rental business have been reported to film companies for breaching copyright by renting out retail DVDs.

Gavin and Iain McConnon launched their online DVD rental service, Moviestar.ie, last month. However, the company has been unable to obtain sufficient copies of rental DVDs from film companies and has been buying DVDs from shops and renting these out instead.

‘‘DVD suppliers were unable to provide any rental copies of certain titles, as they are only manufactured to order once, when the title is released,” said Gavin McConnon, the managing director of Moviestar.ie. ‘‘We asked our suppliers to contact the studios directly to obtain advice, and they confirmed that there are no rental copies available.

‘‘You cannot run a DVD rental business without having all the movies released in the last year, and we did everything we could to obtain rental copies.

“When the studios and suppliers were unable to supply us with rental copies we had no choice but to obtain sale [retail] copies.”

But Frank O’Grady, the chief executive of Screenclick.ie, a competitor to Moviestar.ie, said: ‘‘We have to predict product demand months in advance.

If you predict that you will need 200 rental copies and you end up needing 400, you may have difficulty getting stock.

‘‘Buying is key to what we do. It’s not fair that a company can set up in competition and, if it finds that has miscalculated the demand, it just goes and buys extra retail copies and rents them out. Rental DVDs are about three times the price of ‘sell-through’ - or retail - DVDs.

‘‘Almost all retail DVDs have a warning on the DVD and on the cover that they must not be rented out. A colleague rented a retail copy of Scary Movie 4 from Moviestar.ie last week, and we have informed Miramax and Disney about this.”

Gavin McConnon said: ‘‘We asked a senior counsel to look into this for us and his opinion was that it was just a contractual issue and was not illegal.”

Solicitor Paul Lambert, who is a board member of the Copyright Association of Ireland, said: ‘‘Potentially, there could be copyright infringement.

“The licence given by the studios to buyers of retail DVDs is for personal use only.”

The McConnon brothers are also directors of Promocom Ireland, which was accused by the Office of Fair Trading in Britain of running misleading prize promotions.

The brothers have now promised the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to stop running such schemes in Britain.

In April 2004, the Irish regulator, Regtel, shut down lines for Parcel Plus, another McConnon company. It had sent misleading postcards telling recipients to phone a premium rate line for details of a package awaiting delivery.

Promocom’s registered office is at one of Gavin McConnon’s apartments on Clarion Quay in the IFSC, Dublin. Falcon Telecom, which is registered at the same address, was fined stg£10,000 by the British premium rate regulator, Icstis, a year ago for a misleading promotion.

Falcon is owned by MCC Print & Promotions, of which the McConnon brothers are also directors.