Netflix is considered the main driver behind this DRM madness. In the context of Netflix, an often voiced reason for DRM is the fact that it rents movies, rather than sells them. Besides DRM being completely ineffective to prevent piracy, the concept of rentals itself doesn't make any sense for digital goods.
The core logic behind a rental (for physical goods) is reusability. Physical goods have a fixed cost of production per copy, so the price of selling it should cover that cost. Renting is expected to be cheaper than buying, because the object is returned to the renter which allows reusing it for new clients without expenses on another physical copy. I.e. most of the price in the rental case goes for the service of using it, and not for covering the cost of production.
With digital goods this whole premise doesn't apply. There is practically zero cost of producing another copy, so reusability is implicitly achieved with practically no expense by copying bits. And it also means there is no need to return the merchandise so it could be reused by others, since the merchant easily duplicates the merchandise practically for free. Therefore why would renting cost any different than buying? The whole concept of renting is illogical for digital goods. Therefore user can buy the digital merchandise for a (lower) price as paralleled by physical renting, while still retaining the ownership.
Netflix proponents claim, that they are charged per month to access anything, so in such context renting makes sense. But it still doesn't. They are charged for the service to stream the data. I.e. for convenience. It's cheap not because they need to return the merchandise so others could reuse it (as above). It's just cheap as is. There is completely no need to prevent users from retaining a copy once they watched it (i.e. which means buying). In order to it put in practical perspective, Netflix can be achieved without any DRM by selling each copy for some small price or / and charging a monthly fee for a convenience of streaming that data from the cloud while users could also keep those downloaded DRM-free copies all they want. I'd totally subscribe to such service. But I'd never subscribe to Netflix the way it is now because of DRM.
Claiming that rentals don't make sense in the digital age is focusing far too heavily on the technical fact of how digital data works, and completely ignoring the legality of things, including intellectual property.
If I make a movie and sell you a DVD, the terms of the sale prohibit you from, say, showing this movie in a theater to a bunch of strangers and charging them money. Yes, you own the physical DVD, but you don't own the intellectual property of the movie itself. This holds true for physical copies, and it holds true for digital distribution as well. You are purchasing the right to personal use of the movie (i.e. viewing), and that's it.
If you want to e.g. show it in a theater (whether or not you're charging admission), you have to purchase that right separately. And that costs a lot more.
In the case of rentals, the company that is doing the rentals pays for the privilege of renting out the movie, and the cost they pay is predicated on concurrent access to the movie being limited.
When it comes to digital rentals, limiting concurrent access to the digital movie file doesn't make sense. Users who rent things digitally expect there to be no wait. But in turn, they're only given access for a limited time. For iTunes, that's 30 days since you paid for the rental, and then only 24 hours since you started actually watching it. You can't rent a movie on iTunes and watch it every day for a month, because you don't have that legal right. You must pay for that privilege, which is to say, you must buy the digital movie.
For Netflix, the limited access to the movie is gated by you having an active Netflix subscription. The moment you stop paying for Netflix, you no longer have access to the movie. This again makes perfect sense, since you're paying Netflix for the right to access all of their streaming movies for the duration of your active membership. You are not paying for completely unrestricted access.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of digital content, the only way to actually enforce these legal restrictions is by use of DRM. It sucks, but it's a fact of life. This is true for rentals, and it's generally true for purchases as well.
> yes, you own the physical DVD, but you don't own the intellectual property of the movie itself. This holds true for physical copies, and it holds true for digital distribution as well.
This is really irrelevant. When you buy a book you also own the book, and not the intellectual property it contains. Same thing with files - you can own the file, but not the intellectual property it represents. So legally nothing is wrong with buying digital goods (files), while the intellectual property they hold is only licensed to you (and not sold). I don't see how it correlates with any necessity for DRM.
> But in turn, they're only given access for a limited time
I don't see a need for it. Limited time of rental is justified for physical goods. For digital it's not (I explained above why).
> his again makes perfect sense, since you're paying Netflix for the right to access all of their streaming movies for the duration of your active membership. You are not paying for completely unrestricted access.
I understand Netflix terms, what I question is their sensibility. You say it makes perfect sense. I don't see any sense in limiting access. Netflix can charge the same thing for unlimited access, plus allowing making backups and still make the profit (it can add a charge per file if they worry that users would just download the whole catalog at once).
> Unfortunately, due to the nature of digital content, the only way to actually enforce these legal restrictions is by use of DRM.
No, DRM can't enforce it (since this stuff is pirated practically instantaneously). So why is it used?
My question "why" was not pointed at Netflix. It was pointed at publishers (studios, etc.) which demand that DRM. They have no valid answer for that question.
While Netfilx aren't an ideological champion for DRM, they are a huge proliferator of it. Compare it to distributors which sell only DRM-free content and actually attempt to influence publishers to sell through them (like GOG for games). Those are actually doing something good! Netflix just help to spread the sickness claiming that "they have no choice". But that's a poor excuse.
It's a form of price discrimination. If you want to watch a movie once ("rental") it costs $5 but it you want to watch it unlimited times it costs $20. As a customer, I appreciate this because it allows me to pay less when I want less.
Why discriminate? Let's say users watch N movies per month on average. They can set average purchase price per movie at $20 / N, not at $5. That's it. They can combine the two to make it more even. Charge X per month for the convenience of streaming and Y per movie for the purchase (and aim to arrive at the same $20 / month roughly). All that doesn't require any DRM.
I find such price discrimination to be a despicable practice, unless we are talking about differentiating prices because of different average level of income in those markets. And even so, regional discrimination becomes even less relevant in the digital space. The fact that such practice leads to resorting to unethical methods in the digital world (DRM) implicitly proves the point that it's crooked.
I agree, but they have every financial reason to keep doing it. How would you convince them to sell one product for one price to everyone for less total money?
Usually such crookedness can be avoided if competition is high enough. I.e if competitors can be profitable without ripping customers off, they could do that in order to attract customers to their option. Seeing that they are losing customers, those who resorted to price discrimination start thinking about restraining their greed. Unfortunately when completion is weak, or all participants agree on using this crooked practice to keep the prices high (which should be illegal really), they get away with it.
one aspect of this - if you don't make an attempt to protect the content, even if it is "pirated practically instantaneously", then the studios can't go after anyone pirating their product in the legal system with any chance of winning. there is great fear of the slippery slope you go down in that world.
> if you don't make an attempt to protect the content, even if it is "pirated practically instantaneously", then the studios can't go after anyone pirating their product in the legal system with any chance of winning.
Why not? Absence of DRM doesn't make infringement legal. Studios can go after it the same way they do now. What they'll lose are various evil perks they get from DMCA-1201. But they weren't entitled to them to begin with. They all exist because of undemocratic and corrupted political process.
> When you buy a book you also own the book, and not the intellectual property it contains.
But a book is not a movie. You can't take your physical book and let 500 people read it simultaneously. So there's no need for even considering restrictions on what you can do with your physical book. The closest thing that comes to mind is scanning and re-printing the book 500 times and distributing that. And you can't do that. That's illegal.
> I don't see how it correlates with any necessity for DRM.
Because of the extreme ease of reproduction + distribution, coupled with the near zero chance of being caught, is a strong incentive to violate IP law.
> Limited time of rental is justified for physical goods. For digital it's not (I explained above why).
No you didn't. What you said has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the validity of limited-time licensing of the right to view content.
> I don't see any sense in limiting access. Netflix can charge the same thing for unlimited access, plus allowing making backups and still make the profit
Hah, in your dreams. Netflix's ability to negotiate (with the content providers) for the legal right to stream content to you is predicated on there being limitations. The more unrestricted the access, the more they have to pay.
Not only that, but if you did remove all limitations (and restricting access to the duration of your membership is, of course, a limitation), then there would be no reason for people to stay Netflix members for longer than it takes to download and save all the movies they want to watch for the next few months. Subscribe for one month, download 6 months worth of movies, unsubscribe. Doesn't sound like a great business model, does it? But of course they couldn't do this even if they wanted to, because no content provider is going to give Netflix a license to re-license the content to Netflix subscribers in perpetuity.
> No, DRM can't enforce it (since this stuff is pirated practically instantaneously). So why is it used?
Because it's better than nothing. New content is pirated pretty fast, sure, but stuff doesn't stay easily available forever. Netflix doesn't deal in new content anyway (barring their recent ventures into producing their own content, which is a different discussion).
Without DRM, if I have a friend with a Netflix subscription, I can just ask him to grab a few movies and send them to me. Not only does this work even if the movies aren't easily available on BitTorrent, but it's also a lot safer because nobody can track this (whereas BitTorrent does have a non-zero risk of being tracked, or of quality problems, or fakes, etc). At this point it's about convenience. Make it hard enough or risky enough to acquire the content for free, and people will decide it's easier to just pay for it. And that's what DRM does.
Granted, DRM solutions do not work particularly well. But in the eyes of the rights-holders, it works better than nothing.
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To clarify, I'm not an advocate of DRM. I would much rather get content without it. DRM-free content is more convenient to work with than DRM'd content. But there is a vast gulf between saying "I'd rather have DRM-free content" and saying "All content must be DRM-free". The former is something I can ask for. The latter is just wishful thinking.
> But a book is not a movie. You can't take your physical book and let 500 people read it simultaneously.
So what? Because you can make 500 copies doesn't justify using an unethical police state approach which DRM implies (i.e. treating all users as criminals by default). DRM is unethical by definition, because it's an overreaching preemptive policing. One would reject all DRM on the same ethical grounds one would reject police state approach to society.
That's besides the fact that DRM doesn't prevent any piracy, since it's broken practically right away and subsequent pirates never deal with it. Therefore this argument of copies is completely irrelevant to justify it.
> Because of the extreme ease of reproduction + distribution, coupled with the near zero chance of being caught, is a strong incentive to violate IP law.
Again, DRM has no effect on easiness of illegal reproduction (see above). It has nothing to do with incentives or fear of being caught. It's the same with or without DRM.
> What you said has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the validity of limited-time licensing of the right to view content.
I disagree. If you have some point to present for the benefit of the discussion, address what I expressed above, otherwise we just affirm our disagreement.
> Not only that, but if you did remove all limitations (and restricting access to the duration of your membership is, of course, a limitation), then there would be no reason for people to stay Netflix members for longer than it takes to download and save all the movies they want to watch for the next few months.
Even that out with a fee per file. That would prevent downloading the whole catalog at once.
> Because it's better than nothing.
No, it's worse than nothing, because it cripples usability for legitimate users while having no effect on pirates.
> New content is pirated pretty fast, sure, but stuff doesn't stay easily available forever
On the contrary. Once it's pirated by the first pirates which scrape DRM, it becomes easily available practically forever for the rest of the pirates.
> Without DRM, if I have a friend with a Netflix subscription, I can just ask him to grab a few movies and send them to me.
Too much hassle for potential pirates when they can access the same with just a few clicks through P2P networks. The scale of such copying can't compare. Pirating through P2P is waay more massive than any potential copying from friends. DRM doesn't make piracy neither more risky nor more scary. According to some, DRM actually only increases piracy (see an interview with CD Projekt Red).
> Granted, DRM solutions do not work particularly well.
They work - to cripple the product for users who pay for it. Plus they work for whatever shady reasons those who push for those solutions came up with. They surely don't work for stopping any piracy.
You've drifted from your original claim that rentals don't make sense for digital goods, into railing against the effectiveness of DRM, while presenting your argument as railing against the idea of DRM itself. DRM is ineffective, yes, but that doesn't mean the concept is inherently bad. It just means the implementation is bad. It's certainly quite plausible that there is no way to produce good DRM, but that would be a different argument.
I'm not interested in debating the merits of implementations of DRM, nor of its morality (as it is quiet unlikely that an argument about the morality of DRM will ever sway any participant, as this is not a topic where logic and reason tends to apply).
If you want to try and argue again as to why you think the concept of renting digital goods doesn't make sense, feel free. But you'll have to go back and address my original reply again.
Two arguments combine and reinforce the conclusion that DRM is never needed. To clarify:
1. Rental of digital goods doesn't make sense for me (explained above).
2. Even if you can come up with sensible reason for rentals of digital goods, DRM is still ineffective so there is no point of using it anyway, which makes rental unenforceable which kind of makes it pointless even more and brings the argument back to #1.
> I'm not interested in debating the merits of implementations of DRM, nor of its morality
That doesn't fit with your statement that "that doesn't mean the concept [of DRM] is inherently bad". Unethical nature of it makes it inherently bad. Ineffectiveness of it in combination with always crippling the usability makes it inherently bad. Security and privacy threats it represents makes it inherently bad. Implementation is always bad because it's always aimed at crippling usability and treating all users as potential criminals by default. It's the definition of DRM. So there can't be a good implementation, otherwise it wouldn't be DRM anymore.
> as it is quiet unlikely that an argument about the morality of DRM will ever sway any participant, as this is not a topic where logic and reason tends to apply
Why not? Ethics has its logic. I explained in this thread why DRM is unethical. The logic is pretty straightforward and similar to how it's explained that police state is unethical.
So far I never saw proponents of DRM coming with any convincing arguments against either of those objections. They either claim that since many users are ready to accept DRM's overreaching policing it's not unethical, or they claim that DRM is actually doing something useful. Neither of that is convincing, because many users have no clue or don't understand the nature of DRM, so their acceptance doesn't mean much. And DRM is proved to be ineffective on the constant basis. I'm yet to hear any other argument which actually makes sense.
> Rental of digital goods doesn't make sense for me (explained above).
You mean "stated above". You never adequately responded to my comment, instead drifting off into the weeds of railing against DRM.
> Unethical nature of it makes it inherently bad.
You're taking it as a given that it's unethical. You haven't proved that yet, you merely made an analogy to a police state.
> treating all users as potential criminals by default
The perfect DRM would enforce the IP rights without interfering with legitimate use. Such a perfect DRM would not, in fact, treat users as potential criminals. Certainly not any more than, say, merchandise tags in retail stores. I doubt you rail against those.
What does treat all users as potential criminals is those unskippable FBI warnings at the start of movies. But that's not DRM.
Granted, DRM implementations in general are flawed, and those flaws do impact legitimate users. But that's not always true. For example, I wouldn't say that the DRM iTunes uses for movies/TV is crippling otherwise-legitimate uses. Which is to say, it's never stopped me from enjoying my movies or TV shows the way I wanted to. Granted, I've never wanted to watch my TV shows on, say, an Android device, but the ability to view iTunes content on an Android device is not something I purchased the rights to in the first place.
> Why not? Ethics has its logic.
And yet you haven't even attempted to use logic to defend your claim that it's unethical. You've just made sweeping generalizations and analogies, with the expectation that I would agree with you.
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In any case, I did say I'm not interested in debating DRM, and I'll say that again. If you want to try to make an argument for why rentals don't make sense, using some justification other than "because rentals require DRM and I believe that DRM is unethical", go ahead (but you should go back and reply to my original comment, not this thread). But you don't really seem interested in defending that statement, instead you just want to talk about DRM. And I would rather not.
Which one? About no bearing (I didn't see what to respond there), or about risk of users downloading the whole catalog at once? I responded to that (the service can charge some fee per file to prevent such thing). Or you mean about that Netflix has to negotiate something? The discussion wasn't about what is handed to Netflix by the publishers, it was about the concept of renting of digital goods which I find to be illogical. So please point me to the comment you want me to answer to, because I'm not sure which one that is.
> You're taking it as a given that it's unethical.
For me it is. I can expect that some people have different view and find it normal. After all some people find extreme Orwellian policing of society acceptable. It's not normal for me and never would be.
> The perfect DRM would enforce the IP rights without interfering with legitimate use.
Perfect policing system would prevent all crime without interfering with legitimate activity and without suspecting innocent people. I doubt such thing can exist. Increasing policing to extreme levels of total surveillance is not perfect policing because it equals to suspicion by default and it clearly interferes with legitimate activity. That's what DRM is. Overreaching preemptive policing.
I.e. the logic of DRM goes like this:
1. All users are potential thieves.
2. We need to prevent all of them from doing anything that is not authorized.
3. Let's build some technical measures and deploy them on users' systems and devices (since there is on other way to achieve the goals of #2).
4. Let's enjoy piracy free world.
They eagerly do #3, while #4 obviously utterly fails (it doesn't stop them from doing #3 for some reason as we discussed above). Now, I see huge problems with 1-3. Firstly, all users are assumed criminals. It's insulting and disgusting and it's not comparable to a lock on a store or tags like you said. Because of #3 - i.e. users' private digital space is invaded for the sake of deploying the enforcement of all these policies.
Imagine some police claiming, that all people in the country are potential criminals, so they need to invade all people's houses with police cameras to prevent any potential crime. That's what DRM does in essence. House is one's private area. One's computer / system / program one uses is one's digital private area. Invading it with preemptive policing measures is unethical and overreaching and prone to all kind of abuse.
> And yet you haven't even attempted to use logic to defend your claim that it's unethical.
See above, I expanded on my previous brief explanations which I assumed were sufficient.
> you can own the file, but not he intellectual property it represents.
So I'm allowed to distribute files I own freely, as long as I take the file extension off of it? Or the metadata?
I agree, the long string of the presence or absence of electric charge that make up A New Hope is not the concept of a "A New Hope". Too bad nobody else sees it that way, because when you put that number through a math function named (and patented) h.264, and you draw the outputs of one stream to a pixel grid on a fixed update cycle and you output the other stream as a sine wave of PCM values, you get "A New Hope", the visual and audible experience.
> So I'm allowed to distribute files I own freely, as long as I take the file extension off of it?
Who said you are allowed to distribute them freely? You are not. Same way you aren't allowed making photo copies of books and distributing them freely (except fair use cases). Making personal copies is fine (it's fair use). It's not relevant to the discussion above really.
> you can own the file, but not the intellectual property it represents. So legally nothing is wrong with buying digital goods (files), while the intellectual property they hold is only licensed to you (and not sold)
He makes references between books the paper and books the print. My point is that while that distinction holds in digital space, nobody actually believes it.
> why would renting cost any different than buying?
So that you can segment the buyers into two: Those who want to see a movie only once and those who want to see it more than once. This way, you can double charge the second segment and use those funds to reduce the price for the first segment. Classic market segmentation.
As long as there are customers of both kind, rentals (even for digital goods) will make sense.
No, it doesn't. My point is there is no need for such segmenting and overcharging those who want to see it more than once (except greed). Because there is no big difference in expenses for the distributor between these two use cases, except for the fact that the second can use the service more. But they already charge the monthly fee.
Anyway, it's not even the case here! Netflix has no plans for purchasing, so there is no segmenting there at all.
Profit and greed are not the same thing. Greed means overcharging for no reason besides wanting to overcharge. I.e. ripping users off for the sake of it. Usually it's possible only when competition is weak. Otherwise customers would just walk away to the competitors. In the case of DRM in video, publishers are a tight conglomerate and there is little disruption there. So they enjoy all kind of sick idiocy they can force on users who buy their stuff.
I don't buy your definition for greed, but even so this case doesn't fit.
Copyright law provides for the difference between a one-time and perpetual license for content. Clearly, viewing content multiple times is more valuable than watching it once, and thus is appropriate for price differentiation.
The fact that the company could take less profit by marking both as the same low price is irrelevant.
> Clearly, viewing content multiple times is more valuable than watching it once, and thus is appropriate for price differentiation.
"Appropriate" is questionable. I already explained above. What is "appropriate" for raising a price? Or what can be called fair pricing? I don't consider raising the price fair, when the merchant has no difference in expenses. It's called a rip off. It is not irrelevant and as I said, it usually happens only when competition is weak. Healthy market tends to prevent such bad behavior, because completion could successfully use the lower price for both cases and all customers would prefer them.
The same arguments you have for 'renting' apply for 'buying' software. Why has software a cost associated at all when the copy (to download) is produced via 0$?
It doesn't make 'sense' too. Maybe in the very long term you are right and software as well as digital goods can be consumed for free (or via paying a special tax)
Lot's of software is sold without DRM just fine. So I don't understand what your point was. I never said about anything about getting all for free. The discussion was about that renting doesn't make sense for digital goods (buying does).
Even more absurd is the story of ebook lending.
IIUC libraries fought for it in the consumers' interest with the result that you can sometimes now "take out" an ebook from a library or another reader, blocking their access to it until you "return" it.
Worse, publishers implemented "wearing out" of the copy after some number of uses!
[http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/e-book-library-lending-b...]
I tried to go paper-less last year but gave in when I noticed most books I wanted I can get on Amazon for like:
- $15 for a ebook (of limited use due to DRM)
- $10 printed in advance on dead trees and shipped to me
- $4 for a used paper copy (in near-perfect condition)
How is it possible that a new physical book is cheaper than the ebook!?! The only explanation is that DRM prevented the existance of a second-hand market letting prices sky-rocket.
The key point here is first-sale doctrine. Physical goods could always be resold, and the used books market kept book prices (both sale and rent) in check.
Ironically, until the internet peer-to-peer resale was impractical, so second-hand stores came in as "trackers" and libraries as both "trackers" and "seeds" :-)
Anyway, I see this as a counter-point to the replies claiming some customers want DRM because it allows renting which at lower prices than buying.
Without DRM, giving up a film you watched to save money wouldn't have to be a justifiable business model for publishers — it'd be an inevitable result of your ability to sell it.
("Selling your copy" also doesn't make any sense in a digital world. But it's no more absurd than the concept of "buying a copy" in the first place, and as long as copyright enables first sale we are better off with second sale freedom.)
I suppose video renting only exists because film studios had to compete with themselves selling physical media. (Scary realization: If Hollywood embraced exclusively digital delivery, they could be more evil!)
I understand the situation with studios having crazy demands. My question was equally addressed to their reasoning. And I don't agree in general that Netflix has no way to improve things. Distributors have more influence on publishers than single users.
I already wrote elsewhere about GOG. They work with gaming publishers and convince them that DRM is never needed. And it works. Not always, but with some of them. The more it works, the easier it is for them to demonstrate it to others. But one needs a will to put an effort into it. GOG have DRM-free as their core value. Could Netflix attempt a similar effort? They could. But they don't value DRM-free distribution, so they don't want to bother.
No, GOG don't sell just old games only. They changed their strategy a few years ago. They work with publishers on getting new games and successfully (for example Deep Silver). It's a tedious process, but they put an effort into it and it produces results. They gave a few interviews about this in the past. How they have meetings with publishers who ask for graphs, stats and other information in order to decide whether to go with DRM-free or not. It shows that not all of them are lacking common sense. When they are convinced that it only helps their business - things start moving.
With more data to back up their approach GOG have more arguments for these publishers. So the more this grows, the easier it becomes. I wish some distributor would do the same thing for video.
May be gaming is in better shape because there is a higher percentage of good quality indie games than indie films. Independent studios are usually more sensible and don't care about DRM. GOG have that as a base for their statistics. With movies that must be harder, since there aren't that many good quality indie films.
However going back to the "old games" point. If it's easier with old games, what about old films? I don't see any DRM-free distribution for those either.
There are plenty of good indie films - they just aren't desirable in the way indie games are right now. The glut of content is really helping sites like GoG or humble to experiment with different models and push things like no drm. Successful films, and successful indie films, are different.
There is a similar glut of tv content as indie games, so you see many more ways to access this content, but no real push for free-drm here. They are still following the ad-based method.
Netflix/amazon/hulu as they grow their own original content could get to a point where they can disrupt distribution (more than they already have). But all of them already have a culture of drm so it's not clear that they would follow a similar stance as gog given the chance.
> Netflix/amazon/hulu as they grow their own original content could get to a point where they can disrupt distribution (more than they already have). But all of them already have a culture of drm so it's not clear that they would follow a similar stance as gog given the chance.
Yes, I was thinking about that. Netflix sounded apologetic in their W3C discussions, blaming the need for DRM on the publishers. Let them prove that with actions - when we'll see DRM free content that Netflix owns, it would mean that they themselves don't want it. So far I see no indication of any movement in that direction, so their arguments don't sound sincere.
What profit? Netflix offers rentals only, and no sales. And Netflix DRM doesn't prevent any piracy since users who want to illegally retain the copy can do it either way. So what is the reason for them using it? They can simply use sales and have the same profit.
Engaging in proliferating an unethical practice under pretense that "they have no choice" is a very questionable thing. Netflix had a choice, but they chose to do this.
They could exist trying to concentrate on DRM-free distribution. Others managed that: https://www.headweb.com/en/
Of course it wouldn't have the same scale. But we aren't talking about scale - you mentioned existence as if selling something DRM-free is not possible or not sustainable.
But the right owners also license same movies for sale via other channels, and they (I presume) agree to lower price for Neflix because it's only rentals.
Physical media is a very different market with different mechanisms. In the digital space there are no major offerings with selling files with video so far (besides small local examples like Headweb), so there is no segmenting like mentioned above.
The core logic behind a rental (for physical goods) is reusability. Physical goods have a fixed cost of production per copy, so the price of selling it should cover that cost. Renting is expected to be cheaper than buying, because the object is returned to the renter which allows reusing it for new clients without expenses on another physical copy. I.e. most of the price in the rental case goes for the service of using it, and not for covering the cost of production.
With digital goods this whole premise doesn't apply. There is practically zero cost of producing another copy, so reusability is implicitly achieved with practically no expense by copying bits. And it also means there is no need to return the merchandise so it could be reused by others, since the merchant easily duplicates the merchandise practically for free. Therefore why would renting cost any different than buying? The whole concept of renting is illogical for digital goods. Therefore user can buy the digital merchandise for a (lower) price as paralleled by physical renting, while still retaining the ownership.
Netflix proponents claim, that they are charged per month to access anything, so in such context renting makes sense. But it still doesn't. They are charged for the service to stream the data. I.e. for convenience. It's cheap not because they need to return the merchandise so others could reuse it (as above). It's just cheap as is. There is completely no need to prevent users from retaining a copy once they watched it (i.e. which means buying). In order to it put in practical perspective, Netflix can be achieved without any DRM by selling each copy for some small price or / and charging a monthly fee for a convenience of streaming that data from the cloud while users could also keep those downloaded DRM-free copies all they want. I'd totally subscribe to such service. But I'd never subscribe to Netflix the way it is now because of DRM.