If you bought a Sony DVD player in the fall of 1998, there was a promotional sticker on the outside of the box, promising ten free DVD rentals and five free DVDs. All you had to do was head to Netflix.com, enter your DVD player’s unique serial number, and bingo: ten free DVDs to rent, five free DVDs to keep. It would have been better if the coupons were on the inside of the box, but Sony’s methodical production schedule didn’t allow for it. Besides, you still had to buy the DVD player to get the serial number, right? Wrong.
