Mosquito wrote:MikeR, awesome that you also follow Cory's work. Not only is he a strong lobbyist but he also writes excellent novels! I love Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom (we have the nice hardcover book) and am currently reading Overclocked (free, legal download from his website).
Just to namedrop (well Jox does it about you-know-who
), Cory is a very cool guy with lots to say in this area. I work for a big university in the UK and we're hoping Cory will be doing lots of stuff for us in the future.
If you want to get other people to know more about intellectual property, I'd recommend his Hugo nominated novel 'Little Brother'
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ in a post-terrorist San Francisco. It uses a number of technologies that anyone can use to protect their privacy and rights to drive the story, but it also shows how easily technology can be turned against us. (You'll be glad to know Germany has some of the strongest laws on personal privacy in the World; the UK is one of the worst).
Mosquito wrote:But I recommend exactly what MikeR does: Buy an RC-free player! Do not support this idiotic RC system! Who would ever think of making a book unreadable as soon as you try to read it in a different country? I buy Vla and Stroopwafels in the Netherlands. Why shouldn't I eat them in Germany? And if you buy a legal DVD / BD, you PAY the seller and the producer also gets his money. Why do they want to keep you from watching your legal possession just because you didn't buy it in your own country?
It's for a number of reasons. One is censorship, that certain language or levels of violence attracts different ratings in different countries. The biggest difference is between R in the US which *CAN* be seen by minors, and the 18 rating in the UK - which absolutely forbids children from seeing it. Because all videos and the like must be rated before official distribution, putting a region code on them as well prevents them leaking between jurisdictions. I find this a reasonable (ish) explanation, but I argue it is the role of parents, not the state to protect their children from unsuitable material. For instance, I'd be very reluctant to show most of Big D's stuff to children.
The second reasons is that it supports release windows for movies. A title released in the US will often be out of cinemas before it comes to Europe. In fact a lot of reels used in European cinemas have already been used in the US - which is why they look so bad in smaller cinemas. During that time, the American DVD can be released followed a few months later by the European DVD. Different region codes helps prevent Europeans from seeing the DVD release before the cinemas have got their fill.
The final reason, and the one most important to studios, publishers and governments, is differential pricing and taxation. US DVDs are usually only about 60% the price of those in Europe, so every sale to an American company is a loss to the European arm of the distributor, and of course any sales or value added tax that would normally go to a European government is lost.
So don't expect to see any European governments asking for the end of region coding. Although it has bitten one of them already. When Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister went to Washington this year, he took a present for President Obama - a pen holder carved from one of the timbers of a Royal Navy ship that had once enforced the end of the slave traffic. In return - he got a boxed set of classic American movies (I guess the White House was fresh out of Presidential M&Ms). As well as being a crappy present, there was a slight problem...
...the disks were Region 1 and wouldn't play in Gordo's DVD player!
I'd like to think that Internet distribution would get round this problem - that way a movie or DVD could be released everywhere at once. Those people who might be tempted to pirate the movie because of delays, wouldn't have to wait and no one would lose out. Apart from all those people who neither make movies or star in them, but who make all the money.
M.
