DVD region codes

[Park]

Interesting arguments, though I don't concur with some of them.

On 14 Jul 2003, Brian Pearce wrote:

: Oh, please. That has *nothing* to do with the region coding scheme
: employed in DVDs...
: You may disagree with them (and mostly this seems to be because they
: inconvenience you)

I disagree with encoding for two reasons: overly profit-thinking and
inconvenience. There. I said it *s* No need to get condescending though,
right?

And true: better DVD with circumventable limitations than no DVD at all.

: On 14 July 2003, George Slusher wrote:
: 
: There was great resistance among the studios to DVDs
: because the quality is so good: they were afraid that
: they would easily be copied.
: 
: ... I, and other fans... think that this is because
: the program's owners and distributors want to preserve the
: syndication value of reruns.

Sounds like profit-orientation to me. Understandable to some degree; studios
are not charitable institutions.

: As for the "legal" issues, perhaps someone who think sthat DVD
: encoding is illegal can cite a specific Federal statute (or
: equivalent law outside the US), treaty, or Constitutional provision.
: As Brian said, it seems that some people think that anything that is
: inconvenient for them is, by necessity, illegal.

I must have overlooked that and can't find *any* reference to legality
except in George's e-mail. Did someone really label region-encoding
"illegal"?  

I hope we all agree: asking for region-free capabilities does not make one a
pirate.

Does it?

Cheers,
-tobias.