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

[gaspode]

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.

Comments

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

(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 ... !