DVD Region Lockout is
officially aimed at preventing some
DVD movies to be exported to
areas where they have not priorily been played in
theaters.
The big
problem with this idea is its
lack of
coherence as around one year later such risk disappears.
For example, I bought
The Ten Commandments DVD which is set to
Zone 1.
Is there a single country in the world in which theaters this film has still never be played ?
Also, what about
John Woo's fans who can't get their
idol's
films because they were only released in Hong-Kong ?
What about Indian film lovers ?
BTW,
Warner has recently
announced they'd add some special
routine in their DVD so that they'd just refuse to be played on
Region-free players. This generates a
legal problem as all the DVD players sold before Jan 1st 2000 were
supposed to be Region-free. I think
Ralph Nader won't retire that soon.
Here's a
suggestion to make DVD Region Locking sound a little less
stupid :
- When making a DVD, stamp it with a date so that instead of just being Region locked, it will be Region locked until YYY/MM/DD.
- If somebody imports it before this date, then he won't be able to play it on a non-Region-free player
- After the given date, it will become possible and the DVD will look Region-Free
Just my $0.01...