I agree.. rip off.. the other day I was at the local video store, Network Video.. I chose a DVD and went to the counter. As I say hello to the person behind the counter, he proceeds to tell me off saying that the last DVD I hired was scratched by me.. How can this be when, after watching it, IMMEDIATELY put the DVD back in the case and took it back. He said well you must have. He then rambled on about the cost of the DVD's comes out of his pocket blah blah blah, I thought to myself, well DVD's are so incredibly fragile, so if you are going to chuck a spaz everytime one is alledgedly 'scratched' then why let people hire them? But Ahh! There is the problem, most people today have DVD players, actually ther are only a few of my friends who still don't have a DVD player, after all even Phillips have now stopped producing VCRs. So therefore if the Video Man did not hire these discs out, then he would lose a lot of money. So it's a viscious cycle.. Buy DVDs = costs money.... Don't buy DVDs = Lose money, so because the video cassette is being slowly phased out, the movie companies capitalise on that, and they wonder why people would rather buy pirated copies than the real thing... I would hate to meet the marketing team at those companies..