So says Apple, ending its TV episode rental service. There's clearly interesting empirical work to be done on conceptions of copy ownership and rights in copies, with implications for first sale. We're willing to rent movies, but when we download something, we apparently want to own it--even if there are transfer restrictions.
I suspect the reality is more like "consumers who go through us like to own copies." If Apple is your DVD-store replacement, then of course you'll want to buy and not rent. But the rental crowd has long since strayed from Apple to streaming sites (legal and otherwise). Why pay for something ephemeral when you can watch it on Hulu, after all?
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