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DVD Zoning Enforced In Law
hysterion writes: "A recent bill from the French government makes the headlines of the major daily paper Libération. (Translation here.) Currently, French law prohibits DVD sales of any movie during its first 9 months in theatres. While reducing this to 6 months,
the bill aims to kill a thriving import market by now including
foreign issues -- even if they are not dubbed or subtitled in
French. In effect, starting January 1, "any
importation of zone 1 DVD or VHS of movies which have obtained
a visa of exploitation in French theatres is prohibited."
Can they really hope to enforce this? Or will movies eventually
have to come out simultaneously in all parts of the world? (Irony: the Secretary of Culture who wrote this bill is also on record speaking against
software patents.)" Apparently the law will ban any Zone 1 DVD permanently if the French distributors have, or plan to, show the same movie in French theaters (and presumably release it on Zone 2 DVD some time after that).
Because Region 2 disks are woefully short on features. Typically they will have 4 or 5 language tracks and a copy of the trailer and that's it. Most of my Region 1 disks are double sided and have widescreen and letterbox editions, as well as all kinds of nice things. They also cost me $15-20 each and my R2 disks are £20 each -- about 40% more expensive for an inferior product and there's not that may to choose from anyway. There's not that many DVD players in Europe -- so the studios don't care -- that doesn't mean they don't want to gouge us anyway.
What next, cheep ass aussie wine, but better quality and 1/3rd the price being banned?
Whilst in France many foreigners living here are helped in their own languages.
You just hate us French for trying to protect our values but you do the same in your own country. Anglosaxon values must be adopted by everyone and any immigrant who tries to hold his own values is shunned.
Everybody has to become a wanabe American in your view.
In a way, that sounds like throwing out people from bars if they don't get drunk in a hour. (In which case, they don't care either..)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
Why would FACT care about the sale of R1 disks in the UK? There is no rule against selling R1 disks in the UK and multi region DVD players are commonplace. You can even buy them in Tesco's.
That said it is still an incredibly stupid law even by French standards. Are they intending to check every package imorted from abroad to see if it is a DVD and if so check what region it is? Of course not. This law is unenforcable and dumb. I had better not say any more about French law before the francophile set come out and censor me.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
"We have the most beautiful language" Well, French is indeed beautiful, but Gaelic is about 5 times more so, in my opinion. Especially when sung.
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Does this mean that French movie studios might actually start releasing movies on DVD?
Considering the relative strength of the French movie industry (compared to other European countries), you might expect to be able to get at least some "big name" french movies on DVD.
On the actual topic: I thought that EC law didn't allow 'selective import' within the Community? Isn't this why the whole of Europe is one region in the first place? Doesn't that apply in reverse in this situuation?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
So can I sell Nazi memorabilia by post to France?
Engage brain? I wish they would. They ordered the American Yahoo! auctions site to prevent people in France from being able to access their auction, after all. All Yahoo! were doing was sending IP packets in response to requests from within France, and the courts told them to stop. How is that different from me sending SS armbands in response to a cheque from within France?
We're just as dumb when it comes to geography. It's more the fault of crappy public schools that don't think that geography is important as long as the high school hockey team gets enough money this year.
Hell, *I'd* never heard of them until I went hunting on a map a minute ago because of your comment, and I live in the Acadian peninsula, right next door. Does anyone actually live there?
I meant Western, not Northern. Oops. I used the Atlantic as my dividing line (but I guess that doesn't work either, since France still owns a little piece of rock - St'Pierre & Miquelon - off the coast of Newfie).
"Le D'oh!"
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Sorry for the trollish nature of the title, but it's true. They are fanatically protective of their language and culture, and particularly dislike American culture, both because it's in English, and is, by their standards, incredibly unsophisticated, but annoyingly successful. They throw millions of dollars at subsidising their film industry (which produces some great arthouse stuff that unfortunately only a relatively small fraction of the population watch), fighting Englishisms in their language, and other angst-ridden rejections of American influence. They also suffer from the twin delusions that they are a superpower and that they can legislate the rest of the world away. This is yet another example.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Do film makers not make money from DVD sales? So why do you need to go to the theatre to support them? Some people like the experience of visiting a theatre, others like to watch movies alone or with family and friends at home. So why not release the movie simultaneously in all formats?
So how come if I buy a DVD here in the UK it will often come with an English and German soundtrack (and sometime Italian or Spanish) but rarely a French one? If I buy the same title from France it comes with both French and English soundtracks.
But EU citizens are not subject to the DCMA
Nobody has yet managed to explain, to my satisfaction, what this (both DVD zoning and Sat. TV.) has to with copyright anyway. In both cases the producer/copyright owner is paid for the 'copy' (DVD or TV Viewing) so why is it anything to do with copyright where that (paid for) copy is enjoyed? Part of the DVD retail price and the Satellite TV subscription fee goes to the copyright owner. So why should the copyright owner be allowed to decree that the DVD can only be played and the Sat. TV broadcast only watched in certain countries? If I buy a book at the airport in one country, when I arrive at my destination I am not told that I am no longer allowed to read the copy I brought with me but have to buy a copy locally and read that. So why should DVDs and Sat TV broadcasts be any different?
It is not just intellectual property that the corporations do not like free trade. Take the example of a UK supermarket chain that was importing (genuine) perfumes and designer jeans from other countries and undercutting the price cartel imposed by the 'official' importers. Corporations like Free Trade when it allows them to sell into other markets, but not when it allows other people to sell into "their" markets.
In EU there are no laws, al least up until now, that make it illegal to buy and use Zone 1 DVD.
Things like DMCA, that makes illegal "circumventing digital protection methods" even when you have all the rights to see/use the content (since you paid for it) are still drafts at best, and with little chances to become effective.
Ciao,
Roberto.
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
You've just discovered that lobbies (in this case, the lobby of movie theaters) may make the government take decisions that piss off a lot of people. Congratulations.
Nope. On
in Canada
Alliance/Atlantis was producing DVDs from Disney studios like Touchstone with better features than the US counterpart (French dubbing, bien sûr), but also with 16x9 enhanced versions that were NOT available in the USA! Figure that one out...
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I thought that Zone 1 DVDs were illegal to sell in the EU by definition of them being Zone 1 DVDs. Zone 1 is just North America, right?
-B
When I got an e-mail address in 1994 I fought for european language support on the Internet. I will fight to save French culture even though I am not French. But I don't think that this law is the right way to save French culture.
It is easy for you guys to rant on laws such as this, but you do not understand what is at stake here. I think that this law stinks BUT zoning was put in place by the US motion picture industry to protect their bottom line, not by the French governement.
BTW Hollywood buys French scripts by the ton to do remakes. Being bilingual I may tell you that the remakes stink big time.
The food and wine are great and cheap.
The women are - well French...
Just don't come here to do business or get rich (unless you are a world class chef - see above).
realkiwi
SECAM is a standard that was an attempt to improve upon NTSC - you know better color, better definition...
PAL won in Europe because there were more clients who had the cash to buy a VHS in the UK and Germany. And second reason there were many more television chanels in those countries.
Look at the map of countries using SECAM today...
realkiwi
museum = shopping mall
only our (originally american, now everybody) culture could have spawned such a thing.
yeah, i know, it's not as bad as i exaggerate, but i have to make a point...
my point being that although the french are paranoid about preserving their culture, they are not doing a very good job of it.
yeah, i was thinking of the virgin store. OK. it is still one find step away from a Wal-Mart poster section.
sorry if i offended you, it's just that i always like to take a jab at the parisienne cul-ture... quand l'opportunité se manifeste...
a bientôt
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
every time i go to paris, i am astounded at how extremely american it is. almost a exaggerated parody of it, in fact.
anyone been in the louvre lately? (it's that big museum where the mona lisa is...) it's a shopping mall! there is a fnac where you can by spice girls cds, tourist merchandise. there may or may not be a mcdonalds in the food court. maybe the substitute quick burger, i forget.
off topic rant flame bait, i know.
needless to say, i still prefer to live in europe than the states, and french culture _is_ something to be respected, but the loads of hipocrasy and bullsh!t about protecting superior french culture from american imperialism always makes me chuckle.
what does this have to do with DVD's? nothing. off topic.
adrien cater
boring.ch
Point and Grunt
fair point.
:-)
I've never been stopped at French customs for any reason. At least the time, there isn't even anyone there, even at high-profile places like Charles de Gaulle International in Paris or the airport in Nice.
But region 1 discs are readily available here in Holland.
Thay's my understanding too - I quite don't imagine the GIGN (French SWAT) assaulting a house to bust someone who bought, for his own use, a Z1 movie thru the Internet at Express.com.
Seriously, the proprietarity of SECAM held back the advent of VCRs and DVD players in France until people bought converters.
Definitely not ! All TV sold in France are PAL/SECAM capable thru the video in, and most will take NTSC as well. The DVD player you buy here are the same as anywhere else in Europe (or in the world, since most have a PAL/NTSC switch). Nobody ever needed a PAL -> SECAM converter to use its DVD player in France.
For a time, French televisions actually let you lock the controls (so your children wouldn't watch that "excessively violent" cartoon show on La Cinq).
What are you on ? Never seen or heard anything like this.
And incidentally, the burden of having to supply multiple region encodings of a disc actually means the region code system is more costly. American studios prefer region 1.
The idea that the region codes protect the filmmakers is silly, and the way to improve the system is not to impose restrictions on parallel import, but to remove the system and allow films to be distributed simultaneously in Europe and Asia. Unfortunately that probably entails beaming films digitally from satellites, but sometimes you have to lose something (like picture quality) to gain something else.
As a citizen of a European country, I can tell you that the availability of region 2 films is terrible here, and the quality of these releases often worse, compared to the original releases. (With the exception of subtitle translation, which most people actually like here.) And that's why I had my DVD player modified to support multiple region codes. I would like the freedom of choice. Just like I want to be able to buy books and electronics from the US -- and I do -- I want to be able to buy DVDs.
Unfortunately I live in a country whose stores usually cannot satisfy my refined tastes, and whose economic policies dictate that it be twice as expensive as most others. My enemies include region codes, VAT, customs duty, high shipping costs, US-centric shopping-cart systems, and American electrical standards -- none of which have stopped me yet.
Note: Remember, this is the country that when Germany grew dangerous -- they just built a big wall and said "Don't come in!"
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Why is this irony??? These are completely separate issues.
If someone does not have the exact same views as those on ./, then there must be irony involved? Cannot a person have the same viewpoint as you on one issue and a different view on another?
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Interestingly, play247 will supply anywhere in Europe, except Jersey. Which is where they are based. Must be some kind of weird tax or certification reason for it.
A Clockwork Orange was never banned in the UK. Kubrick pulled it and decided it would never been re-released within his lifetime due to the way the BBFC handled it. I could go into Virgin and buy it on DVD now if
A) it wasn't midnight and therefore a bit difficult to get into Virgin without setting off pesky alarms, and
B) Virgin (and other High Street stores) wasn't horribly over-priced for DVDs (£20-£25 a pop? I don't think so. Import, import, import.)
I fear it is not.
On the last summit (deciding which issues in the future will still have the veto right of each state, and which issues shall be in the realm of EU rules and which not) the french pushed very hard (and with success) to keep culture/movie issues outside of EU territory.
They know that its them against the rest (also within the EU) in those matters. Other EU states don't suffer from the cultural paranoia that France has.
Strange. Where is this (region 2 being twice the price)?
In Switzerland, region 2 are somewhat cheaper. A region 2 of a new top movie costs about $25, a region 1 might cost $30 or even more.
Here, the region 2 don't seem to be of less quality than the region 1 (of which there are plenty too, main advantage you have them sooner). Most DVD players are sold with multiregion hacks preinstalled.
No, alas no such law exists (not all of them are sold with the hack), but it isn't illegal either.
That will be because in Switzerland you have a law that makes regionalized releases and hardware illegal such that a DVD player /must/ have a multiregion "hack" installed to be officially saleable. That's some fairly admirable legislation, recognizing that a nation can be just as threatened by foriegn corporate interests as it can be by foreign national interests. Switzerland still is as expensive as I remember when I lived there, but then, if you were to tack shipping onto a US purchase, you'd be paying about the same price for region one anyway.
-Daniel
Stop spouting that bullshit. You can't force people into supporting someone in a manner that you choose just because you think they should. If they want to buy a DVD and then not go see the movie in the theater that should be their choice, not the French Govt's, not the movie stuidio's, and not your's.
Legally enforcing region coding is a smack in the face to the people of the world. It's taking away a freedom that no one has the right to take away. You have the right to buy/sell whatever you want from/to whoever you want, no country's government has the right to stop you.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Interesting point.
But wrong. No law can prevent the copy right holder - if he is the creator - to distribute it.
To prevent the distribution, the material itself would need to be illegal, like e.g. child porn.
If THAT was intended by the law, keeping region 1 DVDs outside of France, well, then the creator would win in the european court.
Of course the law aims against DVD resellers who legaly bought DVDs to sell them in countries where the market placement was planned to be done later, thats the intent.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I disagree. :-) the creators right simply allow him to have full control over how it is performed, distributed and TRANSLATED)
The european court will not shot it down.
Its just a matter of application of copyrights or how its called in euorope: creator rights.
The creator of a work has the right to descide how and where it is published and further more how and where it is performed.
So if a creator descides he likes to have certain piece of his work to be performed first (theater) and published later (dvd) it his sole right to do so.
However global markets allow it easyly to circumvent this.
In general its the authors respopnsibility to claim his rights in court.
This is not practical. He had to go for each single DVD owner and each single distributor.
So its perfectly right to make a law to prevent that(to clarify the rights of the creator stronger).
In fact for standard VHS videos the situation is just the same. You place a movie in the theater then you release it as VHS video.
However to bind on the region code of a DVD and by this onto one single language is stupid.
Better would be: enforced delay of DVD sales of a certain piece of art as long as it is shown in the theaters.
AND MAKE A LAW TO ALLOW TO PLAY ALL REGION CODES FROM IT! (But this is also difficult
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Actually, it is illegal to sell R1 DVDs in the UK, unless they've been submitted to the BBFC for certification. Even if there's an identical R2 release, you can't sell the uncertified R1. You just can't sell any video that hasn't got a certificate from the BBFC, even if it's the same thing as one that has gotten the certificate. It's not illegal for someone based outside the UK to sell import videos to someone in the UK, though. And it's not illegal to do personal imports. Thank ghod for that, or no one would ever have an anime collection here except for the same 20 tapes, most of which suck.
Le Car
Crossanwitch
Parle Vous Ya'All?
Come back when your flesh stops crawling and I'll come up with some more.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"A Clockwork Orange" is in my local Woolworth's, with an 18 certificate on it. You're about a year out of date. We have "The Exorcist" too, now...
BBFC decision on ACO
BBFC decision on The Exorcist
So no, we're not as bad as we used to be. Even then, we still ban all kinds of stuff and FACT will raid markets and/or shops for R1 discs at any chance it gets (ignoring pirated stuff while it does it.) We're not a panacea, and our Customs are paranoid. Still, at least we can import our stuff whenever we like...
I suppose it's like the ban the French had, until a few years ago, on encryption software: a futile attempt to keep their citizens at bay. They seem to be more recipient of this than we are (although we have RIP); no wonder they think their government is screwing them over. Because they are.
Shouldn't the consumer have the choice to view a film in any of the currently available formats? I prefer to watch movies in the theatre, and own them at home for repeat viewings. Isn't this law, and any similar laws here in the US, maintaining a sort of monopoly over the distribution of the movies?
Ironic.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
But, how would this be considered a cultural issue?
This law prohibits everyone from distributing zone one DVDs for a movie if it has a theatre release, even if you are the copyright holder. I can't see how this law supports "creator rights".
Obviously, you couldn't do this in the US, because it would violate the DMCA.
This is all the difference between US culture and enropean culture: we do not watch movies like we eat french fries in MacDonald's...
And the "fight" people are talking about could be the right to consider culture as something different than food.
I think that you didn't read right the text law ( available on legifrance ):
Ces dispositions s'appliquent quelles que soient les versions linguistiques de l'oeuvre fixée sur ces supports.
This law applies without any restrictions with languages availables on the support.
This law prevent the sale of a DVD (Zone 1 or even Belgium Zone 2 which are available a few months before) IF:
This law is COMMERCIAL and has nothing to do with culture. It ensures movies distributors to make money by selling theater tickets. I don't see the problem for the USA as this law follow their way of thinking: patent, copyright holder, money...
Limits on US imports are not.
Sad but true.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Let's take for example the highly acclaimed film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Called Best Picture by lots of folks, this film wouldn't be seen by anyone if Sony Pictures Classics (God bless em) didn't buy the rights to distribute it.
sorry, that is patently absurd. i have shaken chow yun-fat's hand, played body-guard at a sammo hung appearance (before the u.s. television show). film fans and otaku see the great films. period.
in a theater no less, it's true.
uh, seen dozens of hong kong films... projected on a screen... never a single one at a film festival.
so are basing your sorry arguments on what the masses will do? here you obviously fail. masses of europeans would probably head off to the theater to see an american film dubbed into their language (or subtitled) before struggling through another foreign-language lesson.
why not just prove that american dvd's suppress american film distribution in europe? for that matter, you could start with something easier perhaps, do you think fan subtitled versions of mononoke hime have ruined the market for the princess mononoke dvd? why not prove that? help us out here.
laws should have some basis in fact, shouldn't they? film distributors claim other-region dvd's endanger their profits. where is the proof, any proof would be nice.
look, this is ridiculous, i am hereby claiming that every italian who doesn't buy the american titanic dvd is a goat-fucker.
and there is no technical reason a subtitled version of any film cannot be released anywhere prior to the american dvd. subtitling is cheap.
so i think your arguments are hogwash, not some regal business sense. your statements are money-this, theater-attendance that--but you initially claim italians rush out to buy american dvd's as if american english held some compelling anti-papal allure.
so where is your fucking proof? please stop telling us what you know, no one cares except some clueless moderators. prove something.
real numbers, now, okay? from a source with at least a hint of integrity? you have nothing like that and yet you drag a potential flame-war from the depths of usenet with your naive babbling. how long would it take a pebble to plumb the depths of your intellect?
i do not want another well-reasoned, didactic dialog out of you fucker. i want some proof, any proof would be nice. you make a claim, now back it up with something more than sweet airs.
you say a law is good. a law will protect film distributors. prove there is a threat. quantify that threat. enlighten us obiwan, the force is strong within you.
does this make any sense?
what i get is that this moron thinks italians should be supporting his favorite american directors/actors/writers.
why, that's brilliant. fuck world cinema, hollywood is all that matters.
We will never have region 1 laws. So instead of selling dope to the French we can now start selling region 1 DVD's... ;)
Bizar technology?
FWIW, the Christmas 2001 theatrical release of The Fellowship of the Ring will be simultaneous worldwide. If they can do it, why can't studios do it with all their films?
--
PaxTech
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
Well that's just because you used your brain, checked the facts and actually read the paper !
/. seem unable to do. Language barrier ? I don't think so. Maybe a French judge should forbid access to /. to the French in the name of a "intellectual exception" ???
Some things a lot of people here on
Ah, I knew there was a better reason for Play247 being based in the Channel Isles, and thats it. Thanks for clearing that up. :D
Syllable : It's an Operating System
It is not copyright per se, but the public showing of said copy.
Say Sky One buys x episodes of program y for viewing in the UK for z pounds. Z pounds would be less than exclusive rights to all of Europe. The "owners" of the copyright would want to be able to sell the same episodes to say a danish TV station. If Sky then sold cards in the whole of Europe, the danish station might not be willing to pay the premium for having an exclusive right to broadcast program y in Denmark, and Sky would be sued by the owner for breach of contract.
I assume Sky is not eager for this.
Also non-english stations would be at a disadvantage, as they have to take the time to subtitle or dub anything they buy.
That is rationale, not that I have much sympathy for it.
Indeed....
American, or and English
Have you heard about the recent treaty of Nice (the European Union treaty that was actually very close never to be)?
One of the main requirements from the French government was that they could continue to enforce the so-called French "cultural exception". What this means is that export/import restrictions on a product can be enforced whenever it is a "cultural" object. As far as I know (which happens to be: too much; yes I am a proud Frenchman...), this applies to DVDs and all audio and video recordings, video games, etc....
So: out of luck! Some kind of revolution might indeed be needed soon...
BTW, Marie-Antoinette said something like: "if the people do not have bread, let them eat cake". And that is precisely what I decided to do a couple a years ago. Abroad (although I must say that cake does not taste very good outside of France, unfortunately...)
Italian food is damn good, no doubt. But that entire continent would be improved by a lot of green chile sauce, corn tortillas, and the like.
Or they need cayenne pepper, andouille, etc.
But as food goes, France is a benighted backwater that thinks if you use cream sauce nobody will notice that the meat is actually insects.
PAL winning in Europe had bugger all to do with VHS machines ... they weren't even invented when SECAM kicked off. FWIW PAL is the improved version of NTSC. SECAM (System Essentially Contrary to the American method) was designed as a transmission format, in competition with PAL, for use in countries where multipath problems are severe. As far as I'm aware no studio complex was ever built which ran in SECAM (internally at least(even a mix is impossible to achieve without a decode/encode process)), it's purely a system to get programmes from the transmitter to the aerial.
And yes, a bloody silly system that works for small values of work!
How about "A Clockwork Orange"?
still banned in the UK.
(too bad the Kubrick DVD set was fubar by the distributor)
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Psh. If the movie industry wanted to release the movies at the same time, they could very easily. I mean, it's not like they're not already sitting on fully complete movies for months (if not years) before releasing them already (mostly to spend time promoting and such).
They should spend some of that time translating and dubbing them. Hell, they have the script. They could have people translating and dubbing while they're filming.
So don't let yourself believe that it's not all about the benji's. It's just not true.
Why do they single out and ban Region 1 DVDs?! Instead of banning any NON-Zone 2 DVDs. Sounds like a slam against the US to me. France doesn't really like the US you know... (I am not getting into any Us vs Them debate, just stating a fact of international relations)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
A system like this is already in place in Sweden. Here the movie distributors has gone out and sued all the companies that sell non zone 2 DVD's. I study Japanese and a lot of training I got from watching Japanese DVD's This is no longer possible. It will be hard being of non-Swedish origin in Sweden from now on, no more foreign movies. I wonder how much longer I will be allowed to read books and magazines that are printed in foreign country's. Or watch web pages with non-Swedish content for that matter.
French law says different release dates may be required, CSS enforces that. You can argue CSS helps to prevent people from breaking french law.
Using other's computers is illegal in U.S. Your computer requires a password to login. Password system helps to enforce the law, by making it harder for people to casually break it.
Where do you get "login systems are illegal" from that? Your arguement that having a law obviates a measure that makes it harder to break that law is flawed.
Anyway, this thread is dead...
How exactly does it become easier to attack it? "Well, your format is in full agreement with the law monsieur, you will have to change it."
Region coding is bad because it only exists to gouge consumers, and as a side effect makes everything a little less compatible. Having laws that can be used to justify it is never a good thing.
There is nothing wrong with the headline. I'm starting to think that the people who whine about headlines/katz/trolls/the world are simply another kind of troll.
Talking about the French censorship, it seems to me that France is one of the country which didn't decide that DeCss was outlaw.
Maybe this is some censorship then... :p
Oct
I can just see this being enforced at the airport...
Worker: Are those DVDs?
Me: Um....yes.
Worker: Are they ZONE 1!?!?
Me: Um...no...trust me.
Worker: Well, we'll have to check on that...
Suddenly, I'm stuck at the airport while the French customs agents spend 14 hours watching my copy of "Eraser" over and over. Ironically, it's a Zone 1 DVD, dubbed in French.
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
i'd suggest taking a closer look at that url before you click it.
> It's funny how the French have these rabid emotions against anything German
Don't generalize. German has an undeserved reputation as a barbarian language, but people having practiced it (I, for example) knows it's false. Just don't pay attention to such a idiot, I don't even understand he did get an "insightful" moderation.
> A lot of people might say that under voluntary situtations, but when a Frenchman points that out, you simply have to shoot him down. I wouldn't have to carry quite so many rain coats when visiting France if the expressiveness of the French languages produced a bit less flying saliva, thanks. If it were a bit MORE expressive, on the other hand, business lunches might not need to extend to 4pm or so. Check the instruction booklets with the average product and see how many more pages the French section takes than the English, that should shoot the notion of French expressiveness down in a jiffy.
Please also avoid the language flamewar. French isn't a good language for technical matter, nor for business. It is, however, perfect for arts and diplomacy. Not a wonder it's no more the lingua franca, what is more important todays ? Business and technology, or art and diplomacy ?
And your point about saliva is stupid. Throwing saliva is a matter of lack of education, not of language spoken.
Football (or soccer, or whatever) has never interested me, so I just skip this part.
> Funny you should mention him, considering he's about as French as Victor Hugo, whom I'm sure you also consider part of the great French literature.
Yes. Hugo, and Zola, and Balzac, and others. A writer who live in France, write in french, and had obtained french nationality is a french writer in my view of the world. Similarly, a french writer moving to USA, adopting USAn nationality and writing in english is an american writer.
I consider someone is of the nationality he choose to be. The world would be a better place if more people were thinking like me about this.
sigmentation fault
Thank you for telling me I am to arrogant to call a Big Mac a Big Mac. I've been a little surprised at this assumption. But you were right. I just call it a big mac, not a Big Mac. Common words don't have big initials. Not only I, but also all other people in french. In you go in one of your beloved McDonald in France, you will find Big Mac on your menu. (They put initials, because commercials just loves initials.)
Nonetheless, where is the shame in creating new words, or transforming them to match the sounding of the importing tongue ? Does I taunt german for writing "cousine" "kusine" ? Does I insult english for having transformed "tonnelle" to "tunnel", "déjà vu" to "deja vu" or "coup de grâce" to coup de grace" ?
No. Is this arrogance to change the graphy of a word when adopting it ? If you think so, please acknowledge the fact englophone are as much arrogant as francophone. Thanks.
sigmentation fault
> If I buy a DVD then I have bought the right to play that DVD for my own entertainment.
Yes. That's why this bill don't want to outlaw people watching their DVD, but people selling DVD. RTFA.
Now, if you buy a DVD from a foreign seller, there is an applicability issue. The best way to deal with this problem is to let the fan getting is dose. Buying a DVD from another wountry include large expedition fees... Together with the insecureness reputation of e-commerce... There won't be many people.
But now, I found this whole zone thing stupid.
sigmentation fault
The Italiens are world champions.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If I see a movie on videotape (or DVD) that I feel is good enough to inspire 'loyalty' to the filmmaker, then I will see it in the theater if given the chance. I realize I am a statistical set of one, so YMMV.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
That's part of the power of English. The English equivalent to 'deja vu' is 'deja vu.'
I'm not sure what it would have been before we appropriated that phrase, though.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
It's not that a movie is in theaters for 9 months. It means that a movie cannot be released on DVD/VHS earlier than 9 months after it has started playing in theaters. E.g. a movie starts playing on January 1, then it cannot be relased on DVD/VHS until September 9. Here in the Netherlands, we get DVD releases which are combined French/Dutch releases. Gladiator which was also released here a couple of weeks ago, won't be released in France for a couple of month yet!!
You did not understand the thing at all... The problem is to forbid the sale of DVDs or Video Tapes while the film is still in the theatres and the following 6 months. So lemme look, what is it protecting ? The American movie industry, not the French one. Just tell me where in the world you could find a DVD of a french movie while it's still in the theatres, huh ?
That means that superstores can't sell the DVD of the film while it's still in the theatres. That sounds quite reasonable to me...
I'd like to damn the frogs to an eternity of DeCSS legal battles! I think that the this whole situation is illegal according to California law.
Keeping
I think you meant to say mayonaise.
Who wants the government making laws about movie release schedules?
The only ones they are hurting is their own people. If the French government wants to control what their people can or can't see, they are just moving themselves 1 step closer to totalitarian idealogy.
What about a nice picture of Mitnick instead?
Mr. Ska
My French is next to non-existant, but it seems that sales of imported DVD movies are out, not import for personal use. Is it true?
--
Frankly I don't think most americans CARE whether or not the world likes them. Some of us may be clueless enough to believe that fiction, but by no means all.
As for the rest, Turn about is fair play.....
Look to the middle ages when French was the language of the aristocracy of ALL european countries. Now the world uses English.
Is America a 24 hour bloated corporate call-center of greed? Yes.......
But we do get shit done!
Like it or Lump it.
As for the French being a world power, sure, maybe when Hitler ran the country......
P.S. welcome to PAX Americana!!!!!
(And if you don't like that, we've got a few cruise missiles with your name on them)
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Turn about is fair play.....
Look to the middle ages when French was the language of the aristocracy of ALL european countries. Now the world uses English.
Is America a 24 hour bloated corporate call-center of greed? Yes, but we do get shit done!
Like it or Lump it.
Just eat your cheese, drink your wine, and
dream of the good old days when Napoleon was
the ruler of most of europe.....
Meanwhile the rest of the world will ignore your
pretentious crap!
P.S. welcome to PAX Americana!
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I think our (Yes, I'm French) government has achived one of the most stupid laws ever. I guess it won't be long before someone attacks the law as it goes against EEC regulations (can you spell protectionism?).
It has been decided to please the commercial interests of the cinema industry: The DVD zones are not backed up by the law, they're just a technical limitation the consortium aggred upon to maximize their profits.
Now the consummers are all abusing than the broken-by-design limitation, so they've been lobying to have this stupid law passed, and our Minsitry of Culture put down its pants and told them to do as they want.
(Sorry for my bad English)
____________________
Ni!
The solution to viewers in getting to see movies at the same tame when in USA DVD's are already available is to NOT forbid selling of those DVD's.
If the DVD's will be freely available, then it will just make an economical incentive to start showing movies in all the world at the *same* time.
Why should people at wait a year to see a movie after it has been released? Taking away the movie-makers ability to restrict regions will give the people the freedom to view available movies without regard to the country they are in.
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
Six months after it's released, not six months after it's done running (who could define such a thing?). Rocky Horror has been eligible for video for 24 1/2 years.
You and your Front National buddies[...]
[About Zinedine Zidane] Funny you should mention him, considering he's about as French as Victor Hugo, whom I'm sure you also consider part of the great French literature. Yes, he is as French as I am, as M. Chirac is and more than 60 millions of french people are. Why mention Front National if you take their propaganda ?
On the entire DVD security issue, I only have this to say: "This function is void, it has two args..."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Should Slashdot set aside a special topic called "French Censorship"? With all the stories about the French gov forcing Yahoo to deny hyperlinks to Nazi memorabilia and the entire DVD issue, we should put a beret on that censorship guy.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'd like to see the French government not just ban Region 1 DVDs, but Region 2, 3 and others. This would mean that only Region 0 discs would be saleable. In fact, the entire EU should stop all regionalised DVD madness, because it will never happen in corporate-lapdog North America.
Until such time that the evil megalopoly cartel that controls DVDs can comply with the EU directive, I propose that we Europeans decode all regionalized DVDs with DeCSS (or equivalent) and write unlocked copies onto blank DVD media. We can then break the tainted DVDs against rocks, or send them with excretia to the DVD-CCA.
Does my bum look big in this?
http:// www.cnn.com&story=breaking_news&template=default&r eferer=f1r5tp05t&passport=none&os=francais&list=dv d&type1&story_id= @linuxthings.virtualave.net/
And it doesn't even use dotless IP addresses, which would've made all the difference (ie story_id=@1882493024). Probably couldn't get a static-IP web address. Cheap.
Does my bum look big in this?
Of course it's unenforceable! Their best inspector is a bumbling fool who can't even pronounce "monkey" right!
--hongpong.com
An interesting thing to look at here, besides the obvious 'we don't want people buying movies on DVD that aren't even out in the cinemas yet' is the different way DVD marketing seems to work over in the States. For example, during a recent trip to London, I tried to acquire something (I'll be honest: anything) on DVD from the Monty Python tv-show. A single 'best of' compilation is the best I could find.
Several days later, I discovered that the whole damn thing is available on 14 DVDs in the states. I'm quite sure that M.P. is British and has been around for a long time, so this is obviously not an issue of protecting the cinemas' income. I'm assuming that the demand for DVDs in the US warrants a much wider range of titles being available over there than us poor sods on the continent will ever be able to lay our hands on through official channels.
Now I'm not french, nor am I living in France, but if the local government would ever tell me that it's illegal to purchase or import DVDs that are not and will probably never be available through regular channels, I'd be rather cross to say the least.
I want the fire back.
Please moderate this up! Also #212. I think they're the ones getting it. Why everyone took it, instead, as a signal to start and beat a "French paranoia" straw man, is beyond me.
It's not about "cultural exception". (Except, perhaps, to the extent they would invoke it to defend this bill in European Court. But what a strange argument that would be! This is a law that allows Hollywood to have it their way.)
It's not about that 6 or 9 months theatre-to-video delay, either. In the U.S., copyright holders seem good enough to enforce themselves whatever delay they see fit.
To DVD Zone system is meant for something else -- a (now artificial) delay between continents so that, among others, the PR steamroller can take one country after another.
They can't have Sharon Stone do all magazines and talk shows in L.A. and Paris and Barcelona at the same time. If anything, this circumstance might have helped Euro movies (most of which are co-produced in France nowadays) compete on a more level playing ground. So why should the French bend over backwards and "correct" it by law??
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
To do somethig boneheaded like this. Come to think of it, doesn't the rest of the world always laugh at the French and their silly ideas of how things should be? Fortunately, I don't live there, and never will. FD
-- Don't you love a world where they give paranoid sociopaths guns, and tell them to shoot traitors and subversives?
I don't agree with you completely. It is true that the producers are rated by their box-office income and the number of awards. Point is, this is not really about going to the theatre or seeing the DVD, it's about the CHOICE to do so.
The assumption is almost always made that when you have seen the DVD, you don't go to the theatre anymore. Not true for me, after the DVD I still go to the movie (if I liked it) for the 'BIG SCREEN' effect.
Besides, though DVD is becoming more and more accepted, there are still plenty of people without a DVD player.
As far as I know, videotapes were never banned by law to get imported from the US, though there are people in the Europe with NTSC playback...what makes the DVD this different?
--- Anyway, here's Aniway!
What I found peculiar was that the bill proclaimed that all Region 1 DVD's were not to be imported, yet the Region 2 Japanese DVD of Akira is apparently banned as well, until a French version is available...
Why state Region 1 if they actually mean ALL DVD's without French sound/subtitles?
--- Anyway, here's Aniway!
But don't leave out a stop in East St. Louis!!!
Some Guy: "East" St. Louise? Homer: Is there any other?
Where's the beef?
I think you're mixing different stuff here. What the new law says, is that zone 1 DVDs will not be allowed to be sold in France before 6 months after the movie has come out.
This is basically a lobbying problem between the Hollywood majors and their distributors in Europe. Zone 1 movies are american movies. They were distributed 'directly' in zone 1 DVD, before going out in theaters, thus harming the business of the european distributors of the same films.
It has nothing to do with the 'cultural exception' some of you talk about. The 'cultural exception' is a try from french government to protect french cinema against american one. The reason behind this is that french and american film makers, generally, do not have the same conception about filmmaking. Cinema in the US is a business, a film is a marketing product, targeted at the worldwide masses. In the mind of the french cinema school, cinema is an art, and as an art, is meant to express something from the author, not necessarily to entertain or even be understood by other people.
There are of course the so-called 'independent filmmakers' in the US, but they struggle a lot to get money and be distributed, and it would help also to have some way of helping these too...
In most european countries other than France, american movies have eaten all the market share, and the local creativity has mostly died, or struggles to produce rare films.
This is about monopoly and diversity. I have seen a few english, spanish or portuguese movies, and found them great. And I would like to see more of them. Each culture has it's own things to say, that can profit the others.
Holywood movies and independent movies do not provide the same pleasure, but I like both of them, and both of them are needed.
An analogy could be made with the Microsoft antitrust thing: sometimes, if you let market regule itself, it does not do it right, and government has to step in and protect the small.
I think it would be better for everyone if you could see more european movies in the US...
Please.
I do not comment the way you speak french, and your accent. You speak that way, I respect it. Here in france we have different regionalisms and different accent, some of them being funny, but respectable.
And please, don't generalize like this. Minitel, when it was invented, was in front of everyone technology-wise. Now it's out, because of Internet, but we are not sticking to it, and Internet is developping quite well, thanks.
I'm not telling we're better than anyone, I try to respect everyone with it's differences.
Your comments about women shaving or not is quite strange. It seems to be one of the misconceptions people from Quebec have about us, I don't understand. Please do not say such things without knowing, but rather come and visit us, and check french women, who are (most of them, still checking) shaved...
The French courts have, this century at least, always been on the side of the goverment and against freedom of speech. The ebay Nazi thing is nothing new.
As for DVD, the average Joe (Jean) has no idea what these region things mean, and anyway only buys French-dubbed movies. So there is no popular drive to change these laws. Alas, the forces of evil will win this battle.
---
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Don't know exact legal position, but it's something along the lines of "The US video software is only licensed for sale within certain geographic boundaries eg US & Canada. Anywhere else is breaking the law."
However, it is not illegal to do a personal import from the US. So most companies selling R1 DVDs to the UK public use dodges such as acting as "agents" for you in the import of DVDs, or simply operate off-shore as does www.play247.com which is in the Channel Islands. They can also exploit the dodge that packets under a certain value are not charged VAT, so you can get DVDs from the US for 15.99 or less.
There is *no* control on the sale of multiregion players eg at Tesco. That was supposed to have been taken care-of by the agreements that manufacturers signed with the movie industry in order to gain access to DVD decryption technology. Didn't work very well, did it?
In any case, *had* it worked, I would simply have bought two DVD players, one for R1 and one for R2. It's an unenforceable policy in a global market.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Can those of us in the US write our congressmen and have them make it illegal to sell a DVD player in the US that is limited to what zones it can play. Seems like a perfect way to do an end run around all those restrictions. I'm sure smart people on /. can come up with several freedoms that the corporate world is limited unnessicarly with region codes.
I'm not a huge fan of big business but I wonder why the French government wants to stick its nose into their deals like this. Most companies in the US wait about 9 months or a year to release to home video anyways, does the French government feel the need to enforce that? Don't they have better things to do with their time? Micromanaging seemingly innocent sales tactics wouldn't give me a woody. "Honey, I made sure a company delayed a video for another month, lets celebrate!"
Play247 already do this sort of thing [...] They get around import restrictions by sending each order in a seperate jiffy bag, and not selling the goods for more than £18 each (Good over £18 are taxable on import).
Indeed - I'd recommend DVD Box Office in Canada who do the same thing (separate jiffybags), and also free postage worldwide. They are the reason that most of my DVDs are region 1 - I can save roughly 5 pounds per disc buying from Canada, not to mention getting releases a lot sooner (Ferris Bueller, 6 months), and intact (Fight Club).
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Obiwan Kenobi points out that this sort of law is necessary because films are released at different times.
Movies are released at different times in different zones for business reasons. That's it. If the motion picture companies wanted to release movies simultaneously throughout the world, they most certainly could. They don't for financial reasons.
Because a customer could purchase the movie from another zone, he is provided more options. Suddenly the local distributor has to compete against internatial distributors. The customer is no longer at the mercy of arbitrary release dates.
By restricting the import of Zone 1 DVDs until the local version comes out, the French government is granting a brief monopoly to the local distributors. No longer can the customer choose to get the movie now internationally. He has the single choice granted by the local distributor: to wait.
The question here is why the French government feels it necessary to help large corporations keep choice away from consumers.
Obiwan also commented, "So you wonder, why would the Italians bother seeing it at all if they could get the DVD in a few weeks?" Perhaps because they enjoy seeing movies on bigger screens than they can afford with better sound than they can afford. There will always be a demand for quality theatres. A local theatre recently re-ran The Matrix and drew solid crowds wanting to recapture the magic of the big screen. Many of these people already owned the DVD.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
>> it just opened in Italy.
> Alas, this is an artificial scarcity.
Do you think the 35mm prints required for an
international distribution grow on trees? Or do
you think they're "cheap" to make an distribute?
Or do you not believe the law of supply and demand
applies to film distribution? Do you believe that, when a 70mm film is only shown in 8 cities, it's some weird conspiracy, or could you understand that there are staggering costs associated with this?
Did you think movie execs sit in board rooms deciding things like "let's deprive the Italians
from the privilege of seeing our film for 9 months?" and get a sinister laugh out of it?
There's no malice behind it, it's simply economy.
If the demand for the aforementioned film were
remarkably high in Italy, economic principles could lead to its being released there sooner.
Unfortunately, reality is the driving force here.
If you still want to call that "artificial scarcity" then go ahead. But I would recommend
that you research the costs involved in film
distribution before you totally dismiss the need
for a distribution company to perform to a budget
and acheieve a positive profit to loss ratio, as
"artificial." Because there really are finite resources involved here.
When cinema is all digital, we can revisit this discussion, because when the industry tries to maintain the status quo *without* the limits of resources, you'll be correct in your comments.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
advp,
:)
I agree 100% with your assessments!
The problem with the Acadamie Francise is that in their zeal to protecting the language, they are threatening to turn that language into the modern equivalent of Latin.
After all, look at English, Russian, and even Japanese. They have borrowed a LOT of words from other languages to make it their own. After all, Modern English is 60% Germanic origin and 40% Romance origin (thanks to this thing called the Battle of Hastings in 1066). American English has particularly picked up words from other languages thanks to the various waves of immigration in US history. In fact, a number of words in Yiddish (spoken by the Jews that came from Eastern Europe to the USA in the late 19th Century) are now common English words!
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I thought I remembered him being an immigrant, but I believe only his parents were. He was born in France, which certainly makes him French enough. My mistake, sorry.
> Don't generalize. German has an undeserved reputation as a barbarian language, but people
> having practiced it (I, for example) knows it's false.
Well, I haven't met many Frech(wo)men who have learned German, so kudos to you. Personally I have no biases against the French or their language, I just wish the reverse were true also. The cake takes the French couple I met in San Diego that saw the (front) license plate on my car with the German flag and the eagle and asked me if that was a Nazi insignia.
> French isn't a good language for technical matter, nor for business. It is, however, perfect
> for arts and diplomacy.
Well, that's a matter of debate. If you consider long-windedness a virtue in diplomacy, so be it. On the other hand, I consider French one of the most pleasing languages for choral music--after German, naturally .
I think neither French nor German (or most of their related languages for that matter) contain the necessarly flexibility to describe our new technological world. In that respect English is far superior. It has neither the grammatical rigidity nor the ideological purity to shun coining new terms as required. German at least has given up on that front and pretty much eagerly embraced English terminology, while the French still fight the Good Fight. Come on, calculatrice numerique or computer, which would you rather print on a box?
> And your point about saliva is stupid.
Come on, throw me a bone. That was meant purely as a joke, since so many people accuse German of being guttural and producing a lot of saliva.
...and please let it not be yet another Frenchman taking stabs at German.
> None of that germanic harshness.
You and your Front National buddies must be watching too many Hitler speeches with subtitles. Get the dubbed versions, they're more melodious and you might actually understand what he was saying, rather than just stare at all them pretty uniforms and flags.
It's funny how the French have these rabid emotions against anything German, whereas on the other side of the Rhine people couldn't be more indifferent towards the French. In fact, the German language has adopted more frenchism than ever before. And the German accent has practically cloned the French one--if you can actually roll your R's nowadays you're a weirdo. Embrace and extend--hey, it worked for Microsoft.
> We have the most beautiful language - a good balance between a melifluous sound and
> expressiveness.
A lot of people might say that under voluntary situtations, but when a Frenchman points that out, you simply have to shoot him down. I wouldn't have to carry quite so many rain coats when visiting France if the expressiveness of the French languages produced a bit less flying saliva, thanks. If it were a bit MORE expressive, on the other hand, business lunches might not need to extend to 4pm or so. Check the instruction booklets with the average product and see how many more pages the French section takes than the English, that should shoot the notion of French expressiveness down in a jiffy.
> We have the best football team in the world (world cup 1998
Well, it was that, or France would have kicked everyone out of the country for loosing. You have to throw even the blind chicken an acorn once in a while lest it starve.
> (zinadine zidane).
Funny you should mention him, considering he's about as French as Victor Hugo, whom I'm sure you also consider part of the great French literature.
Alas, this is an artificial scarcity. It's the movie industry itself that choose to restrict the availability of the movie in Italy. This law only serves to assist them in keeping that market-defying scarcity in place.
The right thing to do would be to release the movies everywhere simultaneously.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you are French, buy your DVDs in a neighbouring EU country (this is easy in France, as IIRC all countries bordering it are in the EU bar Switzerland). Once bought in an EU country, it is against the law to prevent personal imports. We British have been giving the finger to our government that way over beer and cigarettes for a few years now.
:-)
Then, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette, you can have your cake and eat it!
Bon Chance!! Viva la Revolution!!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
And I will preface my comments with this:
:) I have no problem using these short words when there is no french equivalent. Who in the world wants to use "conge de fin de semaine" when english has this short word that expresses the concept so well? I'd like to point out that many language borrow from other languages that way. English speakers (at least in the states) will use words like 'deja vu' (and many others) since these are concepts that these french words express best. I have no idea what the english equivalent to 'deja vu' is, but it's probably a paragraph long.
I am a french speaker myself, although from Belgium (I live in the USA).
As a french speaker who has learned several languages (including asian ones) I am particularly amused by anyone claiming that their language is the most beautiful one - even if that happens to be french. Pleeeease!
As far the anglicisms like 'le weekend', well, Belgians have never had the hangup the french have for such words. Not only do we use them, but we typically make fun of the french for their attitude regarding these words (French and Belgians have a long history of making fun of each other
As far as moliere - very enjoyable to read - very funny plays. But hardly the best quality litterature, in any language.
A movie can be in the theaters for 9 months in France? Here (in the US) even the successful ones only last about 3 weeks. In about 4 months they are released in video, and by 9 months you have to check the back of the bottom shelves in the video stores.
A quick comment about all movies being released simultaneously everywhere: this looks like it's actually happening. Here in Sweden, the time from the US release to the screening here has gone down quite noticably the last year. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut took ten months to get here, now one month or two seems to be the standard. I have no proof, but I suspect this is due to Region 1 DVDs being available before the movie went into theaters.
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
Do you think the 35mm prints required for an international distribution grow on trees?
Assuming these actually are the same prints used for a US domestic distribution in the first place. This certainly isn't the case where the films are dubbed or subtitled.
Nobody has yet managed to explain, to my satisfaction, what this (both DVD zoning and Sat. TV.) has to with copyright anyway.
Its the US style of "copyright" which should be spelt "controlright", because it extends into areas other than copying.
why is it anything to do with copyright where that (paid for) copy is enjoyed?
Because corporate copyright owners want things this way. They have been lobbying to create laws and treaties which extend copyright in these ways.
And the films are dubbed in France almost all the time, because France won't import a film that isn't dubbed locally and filmmakers don't want to have to pay twice for that dubbing.
Films are usually dubbed (and subtitled) locally so as to ensure that audience can understand them. The French probably do not want films in Canadian French...
In the pre-Internet days I remember reading, probably in Goldmine magazine, of the many laws the United States uses to prevent (large scale) importation of (analog) music.
In the early '80s I used to buy very cheap "Greatest Hits" albums of US artists, on cassette, from places like Spain. The US record companies and distributors raised a big fuss about these *legitimate* recordings. They had paid a lot of money for exclusive US distribution rights for say, Jimi Hendrix, and did not want to be undersold by cheap products licensed for the poorer parts of Europe and Asia. Today the only imported music I see in shops is expensive stuff.
If anyone could point me to good information on the current US laws on music importation I'd like to see how they compare to France's.
It's interesting how corporations love Free Trade for non-intellectual property, but hate it for intellectual property.
Movies could easily be put in France just at the same time as in the US. More films are dubbed in French by the time they come out in the US. They come out in Canada at the same time as in the US (maybe a few days late sometimes), and the French version is available here in Quebec at the same time as the English version.
And the films are dubbed in France almost all the time, because France won't import a film that isn't dubbed locally and filmmakers don't want to have to pay twice for that dubbing. So the same reels could be sent over there if they wanted to.
It's a purely economical reason why the films are not shown at the same time. And it kinds of make sense to the French to say: Well if you're not going to send us the reels to show in theatres, you're not going to make money out of your DVDs too with the people who would buy them instead of seeing it in theatre.
Rather hypocritical IMHO, but that's how international commerce works.
It sounds as if Movie theatre companies are trying to legislate against competition from home theatre technology.
Wasn't it obvious that as soon as Home theatre technology became available then consumers would stop going to Movie theatres in favour of their home setups?
Also...
IANAL but I have looked into this issue before. If I buy a DVD then I have bought the right to play that DVD for my own entertainment.
You cannot put proviso's such as "Ahh but not in France" on that right. After all I've bought a legit copy through normal consumer channels [ie: Amazon].
It's just sour grapes on the French Movie theatres part. The European court will throw this out fairly rapidly.
Remember kids! Guns don't kill people - Americans kill people.
Of course, being region 1 the french would have a hard time finding the disks in the UK, seeing as FACT will come down hard on anyone selling R1 discs in the UK. And I wouldn't be surprised if the EU completely backed the french - even when banning R1 imports from other EU contries. While it does go against the prinicple of a single market, the EU seems to be taking a dim view of parrallel imports. That and the fact that the EU usually bends to france's view, unless germany has a completely different view, means they will get away with as far as europe is concerned. The french are very much do as I say, not as I do when it comes to europe and they get away with it every time. Like the beef issue - what I'd like to know is when the EU is going to ban french beef now that they have BSE. Never - because it's france and they can get away with anything in Europe.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
The right thing to do would be to release the movies everywhere simultaneously.
Are you aware of the fact that a few people around the world still don't understand American English perfectly (you know, there are even people who don't speak English at all - no kidding), and therefore need silly things such as translation and dubbing ?
Those things happen to take quite some time. Hence the delay.
Thomas Miconi
Huh? Something that prevents you from watching the film can make it more popular?
He meant : "Something that prevent you from buying [random Schwarzenneger movie] as soon as it's released can give a significant help to [random indie studio movie]".
Thomas Miconi
They feel the need b/c movies come out so late there. They are often on video overseas by the time they hit theaters in France. I don't think that justifies it, but that's why.
pétard
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"Immediately" is a very long time when it comes to satellite television. The UK based Sky Television has for years been deactivating cards used by fully paying subscribers for the heinous crime of calling their hotline from outside the UK. The EU turns a blind eye, because its free trade rules supposedly don't apply to copyrights.
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Things are only impossible until they are not.
WTF is a Secretary of Culture, and do we really need one? Someone who manages our very culture? How stupid is that? Isn't a culture something that naturally occurs in a society? Damn, I hate bloated government. Think I'll go read up on what one does in this office.
What do laws and government have to do with entertainment??? This is insanity. How can they actually talk about LAWS about when MOVIES can be released???? Say I'm a filmmaker... If I felt like releasing a theatrical movie simultaneously with a video, I could be PROSECUTED????? Stop the Planet, I want to get off!!!!!!!! Kevin
"But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo..." - William Gibson I'm a signature virus. Please c
Of course it is against EU rules, but only with respect to EU member states. This means if you try to import the DVD from the US then they can make it illegal. However if you try to import the exact same DVD from the UK then they would be in big trouble trying to enforce it. That said the biggest problem with the European Court is that it takes years to get a rulling out of them. Take for example the export of British Beef, the French have been flouting EU directives for over a year and the court case will take at least another year to bring.
Huh? Something that prevents you from watching the film can make it more popular?
sulli
RTFJ.
Of course, if it's not any good, then it won't make money. But why protect films that suck?
sulli
RTFJ.
And now I shall watch my karma hit rock bottom.
Once again, France complains that this will hurt the french language. Well i'm a native french quebecer and I hate France for being such loudmouthed fools. "Vee are deestingwished! Vee are beeooteefull!" It's an interesting little tidbit that France French (vs Quebec French) is the bastardized accent while the Quebec dialect is the original accent. According to ancient retardology (and please forgive my lack of details, I used to sleep through history class), some lard-assed french monarch decided that his upper-class fellowship should have a distinguished language from the common folk. That's when they started talking funny with their noses up so damned high. Well I'm a crappy storyteller but France has always been doing these stupid things to try and stand out, to be "better" and more glamorous than the rest of the world. They talk funny, they wear silly hats, they're about 10 years behind everyone technology-wise (think Minitel), and the women don't shave. Of course that shaving bit has nothing to do with the topic, but my point is that France is doing the opposite of everyone else just because they've always loved being the center of attention, whether it's by passing a stupid law or just by broadcasting a game show involving jello and livestock. Just like today's pre-teen generation, they can't just sit down and be normal for one moment, and this is just another demonstration of that trait.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The right way is to start releasing movies all over the world at the same time. But of course, they won't do that.
Did you know movie theatres outside the US usually end up using second-hand film that's already been shown in the US - yet customers don't get to pay a lower price for second-hand goods?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
However, in some (possibly all) juristictions, DVDs fall under the same certification rules as applies to videos. Zone 1 DVDs will not normally have a local certificate, and may contain scenes that were removed or altered in a particular locality in order to get that certificate. An example might be of a Region 1 DVD being sold in Britain, where in the US a film might have been given a PG certificate, and in the UK a 15 certificate with some scenes removed to get that.
Under those conditions, while it's legal to import the DVD, it is not legal to resell it - that would be an offense against the Home Recordings Act 84.
But in essense, someone, outside of France of course ;), ordering a DVD from Amazon.com (not Amazon.co.uk), getting it sent to them in Britain from the US, and playing it on their own equipment privately is committing no offense within the EU.
I should prefix this with the usual IANAL stuff.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Stuff like Napster, Freenet, and 3ivX make France's Ministry of Culture obsolete. I really think the French should stop pretending that American culture is an unstoppable force. The Japanese are starting to fight back with stuff like the Final Fantasy movie: a Japanese cartoon that pretends to be an American live action movie, sold primarily to Americans. If the Japanese can compete with Hollywood, so can the French.
The European Trade law forbids any and every barrier in protection of goods or prices across the borders of the EU member states.
So, if a french consumer gets sued for buying a Zone 1 DVD from Italy, Germany or UK, he can countersue against the French State at the European Court in Strasbourg. And he will definitely WIN, because no member state can have laws that protect its industry from the other states' ones. If Zone 1 DVD are legal elsewhere in the EU, then they must be available for inter-state sale in France.
The only way the French state has to enforce this law is by having it approved by the European Parliament.
Ciao,
Roberto.
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Fair enough, but Region 1 DVDs are invariably much better than the Region 2 DVDs we get over here. Bad transfers, less special features, and almost twice the price.
Also, I think you'll find that many films do make a lot of their money from the home market; in some cases it can turn a cinema flop into a modest success....
I read the actual text of the decree. The decree is actually a patch upon regulations that impose a certain delay that is imposed between the moment a film is shown in theaters and the moment it can be sold or rented in videocassettes, video discs, DVDs and so. The decree makes it explicit that this delay holds whatever linguistic version is concerned.
These regulations were originally imposed by the movie theater lobbies. Similarly, most TV channels cannot broadcast real movies on Saturday evening, because it was thought that TV may kill movie theaters. I find such things a bit ridiculous (I myself think theaters would have more clients if they were cheaper... but they are coming to it, with cheap monthly "all you can see" passes), but France is, as the US and many other countries, partially run by lobbies.
Many movies are shown in France a certain time after they were shown in the US; for instance, Chicken Run, shown last summer in the US, is shown now in France. This is not a legal disposition; this is merely a choice of the big movie companies. Sometimes, Zone 1 DVDs (in original version) were imported when the film was shown at theaters.
What do you do about movies that have never ceased their original theater run after 25 years *AND* have a brand-spanking-new special edition double disc DVD box set? I know for a fact Rocky Horror is playing on at least two screens in France, so I guess they won't be allowed to get the DVD. Or, by the wording, the video either. I wonder how their cast is supposed to practice?
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Hi, I come from England (in Europe, where the history comes from).
We get our films way after the rest of Europe because movie companies are so tight we typically get the reels that were shown in the US, after the film has closed in their theatres. At least with dubbed films they actually have to bother about making a fresh set of films up with the new audio on them. As a result the French end up with less scratches as well as getting the film earlier. That said, they have to put up with any English people speaking as though they've just got back from the dentist and the anasthetic hasn't worn off yet. It is really strange to here how other nationalities think you sound. If that made sense.
It looks more like the French expressing dislike of the US. Interestingly they cannot (legally) bar a DVD simply because it is zone one, they can bar any imports they like from the USA (or anywhere outside the EU.)
Not ironic at all, at least not to him. I couldn't read that link, I got a 404, but he probably thinks, as we do, that software patents often grant exculsive access to obvious algorithms to be used for an unfair business advantage.
So how could such an intelligent, forward-thinking man promote region-coding? Well, I imagine that's not the point for him. The POINT is probably that some lobbying group has convinced him that the theatres lose money when a video, be it dvd or vhs, gets imported (lobbyists probably say "smuggled") before the first-run is over, thereby taking money away from legitimate French businesses and giving to these evil American pig-dogs.
Stereotypes and Monty Python jokes aside, he probably has a point: local theatre owners get screwed by so-called "pirated" movies. I don't have statistics on this, and they probably don't either, so maybe the problem is negligible. But maybe it's not.
Yeah, I think releasing movies at the same time worldwide might be an okay fix to that problem. Region coding is not, and it wasn't really the point of this legislation, I'm guessing. He basically used "Zone 1" to mean "DVDs of movies which we're still showing in theatres."
Thankfully, i'm not in France. If i were, this wouldn't worry me unduly; all i would have to do is purchase my R1 DVD's from an off-shore seller who sends them to me via. the normal postage system.
Play247 already do this sort of thing for the U.K. Not that it is illegal to sell R1 DVD's in the U.K, but being based in the Channel Isle's aparently makes it easier for them to secure R1 DVD's from the U.S. They get around import restrictions by sending each order in a seperate jiffy bag, and not selling the goods for more than £18 each (Good over £18 are taxable on import).
There is no reason why Play247 couldn't offer the same service to our French friends over there. The only thing this law will do in France is to harm DVD sales.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
This sounds like the sort of thing that the European court will immediately shoot down. It limits trade in a way that is not good for consumers, for no particular reason other than that it's good for the producers of the movies. I don't see how this could hold out against the court. They usually do the right thing.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
A Gasp! is heard through the crowd.
But why? You ask. Well, I'll tell you. For one, movies don't come out at the same time all over the world. While we Americans love to think the world revolves around us (and there are many who'll never think otherwise), that's just not the case. While a DVD may come out over here for What Lies Beneath this January, it just opened in Italy. So you wonder, why would the Italians bother seeing it at all if they could get the DVD in a few weeks?
I'm all for supporting the filmmakers I like, love and respect. I would be happy to give my money towards Ridley Scott's efforts, or Paul Thomas Anderson's, or Darren Aranofsky's, and theatrical runs are what fuel the fire for them to get financing so they can (hopefully) make better movies. Of course it's all about money, and the fact that studios don't have all the legalese worked out for distrobution by the time it hits American audiences. But the point still remains that a filmmakers efforts are (normally) judged by either:
a) How much the film makes at the theaters, or
b) How many awards it takes.
You have to have one or the other, and hopefully both. American Beauty wasn't racing up the box office until it won Best Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematography and Screenplay. After that, Dreamworks Re-released it (for the third time) and it made its way over 100 million. Sometimes the best films get looked over, and believe it or not, Region Coding can actually help films from becoming that way.
It's still business, I'll freely admit, but it's also a question of loyalty and how far you'll go (all the way to the theater) to support the directors/actors/writers you like.
The French have a law stating that movies cannot be sold on video (OR DVD) for 6 months after they hit the theaters. It used to be 9! They cannot appear on pay per view for 9 months and on premium movie channels (Canal+) for 1 year. This law simply bans selling Zone 1 DVDs of the movie while the ban is in effect. These fell into a loophole before.
Honestly, it's no worse than the old law was! A little better even, since the time has been reduced. The real "accros" will be able to get their fix over the net anyway.
pétard
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Any bans on the basis of zone are probably void. The headline of this thread suggests that that's what the French government are "in effect" trying to do. Piffle. The French government are merely upholding the principle that the industry be allowed to release at different times in different countries, and in that respect they're undermining the region code system, not supporting it.
By putting into law the practice of releasing at different times, the region code becomes redundant for that purpose. It becomes infinitely easier therefore to attack it as merely an attempt to enforce price discrimination.
Could we see a few less "conclusion" based headlines on Slashdot please? 9 times out of 10 the wording seems to be some idiotic and unjustified "conclusion" that has nothing to do with the subject matter, or as in this case, is completely opposite to the likely effect. Normally we call unjustified, unargued, highly-opinionated sermons on any subject trolls. At what point do we regard Slashdot's editors as no better than the Hot Grits/Goat Sex crowd?
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.