SHOULD REGIONAL CODING BE MADE ILLEGAL?

[chudleighpaul]

If you look at this closely, regional coding is a "restraint of trade"

If an American tourist wants to buy a DVD or Bluray while on holiday here, he has to be advised that there is a fair chance that it won't play when he gets back home, unless he has special equipment.

I believe I read some time ago that Australia had banned the practice for game discs (I may be wrong on this), should we not be pressuring our overpaid MEPs to look at this?

Im my view Regional Coding is an aid to price fixing

 

[Big Aura]

The EU has given us:

• the free movement of goods;
• the free movement of capital;
• the free movement of services;
• the free movement of persons;

This applies across the EU. It doesn't apply globally. It's why we have external tariffs and quotas and the like, and why all of Europe is Region 2.

 

[Anonymous]

chudleighpaul:
If you look at this closely, regional coding is a "restraint of trade"

It's a restraint of parallel import, yes. This is not illegal outside the EU.

Im my view Regional Coding is an aid to price fixing

Yes, it's most important and obvious purpose is to aid price fixing in a vertical sense in a discriminatory way. But since it's not used for price discrimination within the EU (which would impede intrastate trade) this isn't illegal either.

Mind you, you don't HAVE to buy region encoded discs, most aren't. Stop buying the few that are and studios will have to stop doing it.

 

[D.J.KRIME]

Big Aura:

The EU has given us:

• the free movement of goods;
• the free movement of capital;
• the free movement of services;
• the free movement of persons;

This applies across the EU. It doesn't apply globally. It's why we have external tariffs and quotas and the like, and why all of Europe is Region 2.

So how comes Japan is also region 2 for DVD then? the EU had nothing to do with they way the world was split into 6 regions nor did EU laws have anything to do with Europe and Japan being covered under region 2. The regional zones were decided upon by the original group who set the standards for the DVD format which included all the major movie studios.

Regional codeing is not compulsory for either DVD or BD but as some movies are distrubeted by differant companys in differant terorties the owner of the rights may have/wish to add regional codeing to the disc. With DVD smaller independant companys have not added regional codeing as to alow their product to be freely playible worldwide, this is not the case where the major studios are concerned.

 

[Andrew Everard]

No, but use of the caps lock in thread titles should be...

 

[seasiders rock]

Not really bothered, the Tevion i have is multi region for Blu Ray.