Business Week on DVD region codes

From: "Chris Palmer" <cpalmer _-at-_ accesscable.net>
To: "No DMCA in Canada" <canada-dmca-opponents (at) flora.org>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 20:19:11 -0400
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020115221331.03221eb0@pop.broadband.rogers.com>

When Business Week runs an article saying that DVD region encoding is a bad
business idea:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2002/nf20020116_7617.htm

then it might just be the beginning of the end.

The article describes the reporter's experience in France where store clerks
offer to hack your DVD player to play any region, and there are as many
region 1 (North America) DVD's on sale as region2 (Europe) .

Quote:

My question: Isn't the movie industry unintentionally abetting a culture of
digital lawlessness? By allowing, even forcing, customers to defeat the DVD
zoning scheme through technical tricks, movie studios are sowing the seeds
of more pervasive and damaging behavior in the future. ...

The last thing content producers need is to turn their customers into the
unwitting partners of content pirates. But if beating the system becomes an
acceptable norm, that's exactly what will happen. The implications can only
get worse as more content goes digital and more consumers have speedy
broadband Net connections.

LANGUAGE BARRIER.  Producers should go out of their way to make it easy for
people to buy and use legitimate content. That means doing away with silly
schemes like DVD zoning.

Endquote



--
For (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
links to other related sites please see http://www.flora.org/dmca/