Sherm, Djtoell, and Cultshock are absolutely correct. The IRS and copying are completely different issues. You do not need any license from the studios to rent dvds. Does anyone think that before big chains like BBV, Holywood Video etc. that movie studios had agreements with the thousands of mom and pop video stores throughout the country? My uncle has one of the oldest video stores in the state of NY and does not have any arrangement with the studios. Never has and never will. Sometimes my uncle will buy his dvds from DDD or Costco instead of getting it through his long time distributor.

I can't see anything but trouble coming from renting one's personal collection out to friends or relatives. They would tend to not take you seriously when you say they are late in returning a disc, the disc was rendered unplayable or lost by the renter, that kind of thing. As mentioned above it wouldn't take long for your profits to be lost with the breakage or disappearance of a few titles.

I don't think it's worth the hassle or the headache. If someone wants to watch a movie, they can go buy or rent it. Friends have friends whom are strangers to each other, and the chain of destruction can commence fairly quickly. I loan/rent a movie to a pal, his pal asks to borrow it, and the owner winds up never seeing his movie again, and maybe loses a friend because of hard feelings over a $10 disc. Just because I have alot of movies doesn't make me a video store, no more than if a pal has a garage full of tools it doesn't make him a tool rental store. I have a friend who loans out his music cds to pals and he sees them go missing for months at a time, sometimes never seeing them again and having to replace them. Not everyone has the same respect for other peoples' property...why risk friendship over something so small as a DVD? If youre going in knowing you may never see that disc again, and youre okay with that, cool. If not its just asking for problems.

Sorry I guess I forgot to say that the policy was simply posted over my DVD racks and then no one asked to borrow them anymore. I never got a single dime. I know about that never gettting them back. I have a friend that if he did not cover me so often back when I was unemployed I would not loan him anything two CDs and two DVDs never returned and about three or four things came back in less than perfect condition. I figure even if I deduct it from what I owe him I still owe him more so I just replaced the disc and tried to put it out of my mind. I try not to let him borrow anything hard to replace though.

Well, this link has been posted before, but I really believe that it sums everything up VERY NICELY! You might want to copy the relevant parts and paste them up on your DVD shelf.

Myself, I just have a very strict policy about not loaning any DVD to ANYBODY, my friends know it, they don't ask, and there are no hard feelings caused by it.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/vze26q...ckbustered.htm

I thought in the days of VHS rentals, stores did have to pay fees in order to rent out tapes? I seem to remember looking for a movie, and only being able to find a "rental only" copy that cost $80.

If that guy *really* loved 'Prince of Darkness', he'd have the region 2 with the commentary.

He mostly sums up my feelings, but I also trust my friends. To some extent. I'll lend them out DVDs with their understanding that they'll have to replace a disc if it gets fucked up (I've never had anybody have to do this, because I only lend them to people who I know will be careful; I had problems with my videos in college, so I learned), and I refuse to lend out anything OOP, on the simple grounds that I can see potential problems saying to a friend "You owe me $100 for that 'Spinal Tap' disc you messed up." I don't want to be in that position, so a few specific discs ('Little Shop', 'MST3k', etc.) stay in my apartment.

But I want people to be able to enjoy my movies. I have plenty of stuff I'm not likely to watch any time soon (sometimes people want to borrow something and I refuse just because I do want to watch it in the near future), so if somebody's interested, why say no? Even if the case comes back a little damaged (which hasn't happened to me yet), personally, that doesn't mean anything to me, because I'm collecting the movies.

A rental only copy was what was known as the "rental window." Studios artificially inflated the prices of new VHS releases so that rental stores would have to pay through the nose to be able to rent. It was a way for the studios to screw the rental houses and get more money. Any normal person could have bought one of these tapes had they actually wished to pay that much for a VHS. This had nothing to do with the law, though I think the studios should have been sued for Anti-trust violations. Rental houses were not paying these prices so they would be allowed to rent out the tapes, they were paying that price because the studios simply would not sell them the tapes any cheaper. They had to pay that price if they wanted to get the tapes.

DVD did not have a rental window because it was released as a sell through item from the start. As DVD became more popular, it became too hard for the studios to justify inflating the price of a DVD to almost $100 for a specified "rental window." Adopters of the format as well as Warners were staunchly against a rental window because they knew it would seriously slow the acceptance of the format.

Yepp. I no longer loan out discs...because none of my friends and acquaintances take care of things as well as I do. I've had discs come back scratched and scuffed, hubs broken, or discs kept for months at a time. Now when anyone asks to borrow a disc, I reach into my pocket and peel off three $1 bills and hand it to them and say, "you're friendship is worth more to me than a DVD.... here's $3 and rent it from Blockbuster".

After the stunned look on their face subsides, they get the point and don't take the disc or the money.

Thanks for the replies. Over the years, I have accumulated enough DVD to tinker with the idea of lending out my collections to other people for a small fee. All of my DVDs are genuine- no bootlegs. I am fully aware that I run into a risk of losing DVDs during the lending process but I'm willing to accept that.

So is it safe to say that I can go ahead and start my small business?
Any suggestions are always welcome. I appreciate your help.