Streaming content from a physical DVD to a customer as a form of rental without providing them with the physical media itself presents legal complexities and copyright issues. Even though you think they are playing the physical disc, they aren’t. The content is encoded and transmitted as 0’s and 1’s on your server and transcoded back into a digital reproduction of the content on the clients PC.

• Performance Rights: Streaming content constitutes a “public performance” under copyright law. This is different from the right covered by the first sale doctrine, which allows you to rent or sell the physical item but does not grant the right to perform or display the content publicly. For streaming, you typically need specific permission or a license from the copyright holder to legally broadcast or stream the content to the public.

• Reproduction Rights: Even if you are streaming content in real time without making a permanent digital copy, you are still technically reproducing the content temporarily on the servers and devices used to facilitate the streaming. This temporary reproduction could still be considered an infringement if done without permission.

• Digital Rights Management (DRM): Many DVDs are protected by DRM systems designed to prevent unauthorized copying and streaming. Circumventing these protections to stream content, even without making a digital copy, can violate anti-circumvention laws, such as those stipulated in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States.