Peerflix's real problem is a complete inability to control supply. It's a great idea to provide a place for people to trade DVDs, but there's no way to actually enforce trading. I joined hoping to get rid of several disks I never liked much but which were pretty popular films (Pleasantville, Princess Mononoke). Requests snapped them up immediately, and I dutifully sent them off. But the movies that I want are almost all backlogged as "long wait." That makes sense: movies that are popular are good enough to keep. The person requesting Pleasantville will PROBABLY like it enough to keep it.

What I didn't count on was that even not-so-popular movies have a lopsided supply-demand ratio because even tho people only want to watch them once, NO ONE wants to actually BUY them in the first place. So one guy somewhere bought Venus in Furs and entered it on Peerflix, and now 40 other guys want to see it but have to wait one at a time.

I had hoped that I could trade, say, Help Wanted Female for ViF because the guy who entered ViF probably wants to watch HWF once and would pass it on. But that's clearly not the case. It's clear now that people merely want to trade disks they don't want for disks they do want and then keep them, meaning they are no longer in circulation but are, for the most part, still in Peerflix's inventory as available for trade. Since there's no obligation to pass disks on, Peerflix has no way to ensure their supply.

The only solution, I suppose, is to raise the value of a DVD when requests start to pile up for it. If a disk is worth 4 peerbux instead of 2, some who are holding on to it will be more tempted to put it back into circulation.