gaspode | Sony puts two fingers up at fair trade and fair use

So much for fair trade laws.

Once again the MPAA & Sony screw the consumer (through sony throwing literally millions of dollars in bribe money around). Its no real skin of my nose - I have a PS3 and an HD DVD player - not to mention Bluray and HD DVD drives in my PC (Btw - the cheapest way to play the disks - the drives are around 80 quid if you shop around).

The reason why I've been (and continue to be) so pro HD DVD is the lack of region coding. I have no problem with copy protection aside from fair use - thats a different arguement - however region coding is another matter. Why shouldn't i be able to pick up a disk if i'm in new york and play it at home? Region coding is in direct opposition to fair trade laws and as such should be denounced and denied.

As a matter of fact I can rip US Blurays into a format I can watch (I had to do this with a copy of Lost S3 that I was given, I own the disk so why shouldn't I ?) really easily - no lose of qulity or use of compression but its soomething I shouldn't have to do. I will continue to buy HD DVD's over blu ray for as long as they are being released (and theres a fair few lined up stateside for release over the next few month) .. By then I suspect someone will have produced a region hack for UK PS3's.

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If you ever hear of that region hack, let me know - that's when I'll be buying a PS3! :)

I will - the damn thing won't even play r1 DVD's - but it DOES play divx and HD rips bizarrely ..

Why shouldn't i be able to pick up a disk if i'm in new york and play it at home?
Already answered this elsewhere, it's perfectly legal and as far as I am aware, no one is saying you can't (have I missed an MPAA memo?)

Region coding is in direct opposition to fair trade laws
Can you point me at such a fair trade law that applies? Just asking ... or is it the underlying principle of "fair trade"?

I own the disk so why shouldn't I
This too has already been answered. Copyright. It's a sucky law and hopefully it will be changed soon, but at the moment creating a copy of a copyright work without permission of the copyright holder is an offence.

I should point out that I am in total agreement with no region coding and we should be able to do what we want with *content* we've bought (regardless of the delivery mechanism, so it matters not whether it came on HD, BR, DVD, CD or via download), but the law has not kept up.

It's the MPAA that continue to put pressure on the manufacturers to use region coding - therefore they are saying I cant buy a disk in New York and use it in the uk - with no legal backing at all.

This also applies to fair trade - I beleve,although i'm not an expert - we have trade laws/treaties with the US that are supossed to allow for trade between the countries of all goods as long as all taxes on the forementioned are paid. Region coding is in direct contravention of this.

There is in fact several high profile lawsuits in progress (alas have been for years) in the US regarding this very fact.

(Wades in with no legal background...)

My understanding is that, legally, the creator is perfectly at liberty to restrict the sale and use of their product in any way they see fit. Fair trade agreements (which, being international agreements, have no overseeing authority) cover restrictions imposed by national governments, not private or corporate agents - they simply don't apply in this instance. The MPAA is an organisation of creators (the film-makers) and so backs whatever its members decide.

To me it looks like the studios are guilty in this - and they are entirely entitled to impose this kind of restriction.

Now, in terms of the way they handle this restriction, I agree, it's entirely unfair and a heavy-handed over-reaction to piracy (the main aim, originally, was to stop international piracy - it failed!). Its use to restrict sales to specific regions is well out of line with the original idea. It's already out of date, now that purchased digital downloads are becoming practical and we'll go through entirely the same thing with the download market.

On the other hand, I'm sitting happily here, secure in the knowledge that I made the right decision in waiting to see what would happen before buying a player or any of the DVDs. It's Betamax all over again (only this time Sony won!). My only concern is to see what Paramount will do with the re-mastered Trek.

Incidentally, in the matter of back-ups and "format-shifting" - the restriction here is legal - as in copyright. The good news is that
revised laws are being drafted to allow for this in this country right now - a number of library organisations are being included in the discussions.

(the main aim, originally, was to stop international piracy - it failed!)

Yes it failed ... and I'm trying to decide whether I agree with you that it was *the* main aim. I think it was one of two main aims, the other being to maximise the amount they could charge local distributors.

(As you all know) when a film is made, someone has to organise distribution, and unless the film is made by a studio with their own distributors (e.g. Disney and Buena Vista), the film makers sell the rights to distribute the film to local distributors in each region. E.g. some company in the UK will buy the rights to distribute a film in the UK. It is then up to the local distributor to find cinemas to show the film, get reviews into the papers, fly the stars over for premieres etc. If they choose the right films and promote them well (and people go to see them) the distributors make a bunch of money (and some of it may go back to the original studio!)
See http://www.launchingfilms.tv/

It's the same with video distribution. Local companies handle duplication, advertising, getting the product stocked etc. and pay the rights owner chunks of money to do so.

Region 2 distributors might also be responsible for the translation and subtitling of the DVD into twenty or more European languages, providing insert cards in the local languages, getting film censor clearances in each of the territories, providing screeners for the newspaper critics in each major city in each country in region 2 etc. all of which costs money and may add delays to release dates.

And if I were a UK distributor for, say, Star Wars or Juno and discovered that enough people were buying their copies from the US, it wouldn't be worth my while spending money promoting the UK release.

So region coding was set up to maintain the old style of releasing DVDs (so that there would be someone local to get the cardboard displays into Tesco and Woolworths, to get the ads onto TV etc.) ... so it all makes good business sense, even if you, me and most of our friends will just buy it from Play.com, Amazon.com or someone else as soon as the US release comes out. At the moment there are enough sales from HMV, Tesco etc. that region coding still is a viable business model.

Yes, it's a chunk of protecting a rapidly decaying business model, but at the moment that's the one they've got and it sort of works. It will be interesting to see what happens with foreign language versions and international marketing when the business model changes ... !

This all may be boring and splitting hairs, so if you're bored with this, just say and we can move on :-)

therefore they are saying I cant buy a disk in New York and use it in the uk - with no legal backing at all.
a) what

emperor_zhark said, the copyright/rights holder can say what is done with their work. And if they say it can't be sold in Cuba or Iraq or Finsbury Park, then they do have that right. In the US there is another piece of law which basically says though, that if a person in the US buys something, then that person now owns it and can sell it on as they see fit (no copying of course, and no breaking export bans of restricted materials to certain countries). So having an agent/friend buy something in the US and then send it to you should be perfectly legal.

Nowhere, as far as I have been able to find, does the MPAA or anyone else stop you buying a region 1 player for use in the UK, do you know any different? Certainly that's what I had to do for my original Region 1 DVDs (before multi-region hacks became common). And as far as I'm aware, that's still perfectly legal and the MPAA haven't stopped anyone selling region 1 players to the UK.

Sony puts two fingers up at fair trade and fair use - again ...

Has something happened in the last few days, or is this just the same Blu-Ray stuff?

The gray market is something forced on us to protect european expensive prestige designer brands from secondary imports. It is just a law.
In New Zealand they encourage gray imports to increase economic competition and keep prices down for consumers.

Sony puts two fingers up at fair trade and fair use - again ...

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oh, and a question for you ...

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