When a circulating institution pays a premium for something, it’s either because of some value-added service (shelf-ready, pre-catalogued, etc) or because a relationship with a particular distributor trumps specific savings. If they’re buying physical media, there’s no such thing as a library-required channel.

Now, when you move into the realm of licensed content and contract law takes over from property law, first sale and a bunch of other things go out the window. As you can imagine, that’s where I’m headed, hence starting with the highly-resonant tale above.

“since a VCR owner could watch a purchased movie countless times, individual cassettes were priced at dozens of times the going rate for a box-office ticket.”

Then, as you recount, the rental model took over anyway.

As a result of the rental model, the price for actually BUYING a movie dropped substantially, videotapes (and now DVDs) are NOT any longer sold to consumers at dozens of times the price of a box-office ticket, but at maybe 2-4 times, typically. Presumably because once the rental model took over, it was clear that those higher prices were unrealistic for consumer purchase (really, they always were).

Now one thing I’ve never understood the legal basis of. Video rental stores (and netflix too?) still pay a MUCH higher price for copies than the consumer price, closer to that dozens-of-times-the-price.

While this might seem “fair”, since many people are going to watch that copy — I don’t know how (or if?) the publishers are able to _require_ rental stores to do this. I thought the “first sale doctrine” applied to videos, and I thought the first sale doctrine said once you buy something, you are allowed to rent it out without a license. (Printing additional copies yourself like you say Netflix does still requires a license).

One reason this is interesting to libraries is that the first sale doctrine is exactly what lets us libraries buy one copy of a book and then loan it out without a license to do that. (While some libraries pay special higher “library prices” for books, it’s never been clear to me if this is legally enforceable either; the first sale doctrine should protect our ability to buy a standard consumer copy and lend it out).

Now the first sale doctrine does NOT apply to software, typically. Which is one reason why libraries are having so much trouble figuring out how to provide e-books to patrons at any kind of reasonable cost. But I know it applies to books, and I thought it applies to videos, which is why I’m confused about why libraries are willing to pay special higher “library prices” for certain books, and why video rental stores are willing to pay much higher rental store prices for purchase of videos.