Get Rid Of DVD Zoning
from the a-waste-of-time dept
An article from Business Week explaining why the movie industry should get rid of the idea of DVD Zoning. Zoning, of course, is the way the movie industry prevents piracy, by making certain DVDs only work on players in certain regions. The Business Week reporter recently moved to France and wants to view certain movies that he has from the North American zone. It's apparently quite easy to hack most DVD players to become "zoneless" - and that's where the problem is, according to the reporter. The movie industry is now encouraging normal everyday people who want to watch a movie they own to become hackers. This encourages people to do other "illegal" things against the movie industry, he claims. I kind of like the idea that the movie industry is pushing people into "illegally" flexing their own fair use rights...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Hmmm
If they removed regions, they would have to release movies simultaneously across all of the regions. Frankly I think that's all a good idea though...
msykes
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Hmmm
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
Apparently too open solution for movie producers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
What bizarre reasoning you have
How does zoning stop piracy? You can either copy a DVD (in which case you copy a US DVD to sell in US, copy a EU DVD to sell in EU, etc) or you can't. Zoning is there to artificially create scarcity in different regional markets, giving the ability to selectively inflate prices (or rip us off in the UK, as we tend to say). And NTSC/PAL has nothing to do with DVD which is recorded in plain MPEG-2 format.
Phillip.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: What bizarre reasoning you have
Also, it's more difficult, since instead of just having a single source to make all those copies you need ones from various regions.
And, the NTSC/PAL point had to do with videotapes, not DVD.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
um
[ link to this | view in thread ]