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Regulator Challenges DVD Zoning
tahpot writes "The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is about to challenge the DVD regional zoning system. The ACCC claim that the the system may breach the Australian Trade Practices Act. The ACCC claim that the zoning system prevents small film companies from distributing their movies around the world, with their sales generally too small to justify catering for region four. This reduces competition in the advantage of US studios." They've been thinking about this challenge for a while. Who knows if anything will come of it, but it can hardly hurt.
Oh waaaaah! Well, I can't work as a programmer for two or more jobs in different places at once either, so I want a law to prohibit other places from filling "my" programming job until I decide to come... and to not fill it even if I never come.
Why in the FUCK should the law be used to coddle emmasculated businesses that can't do their job right?
(due to the high production cost of the film rolls, and the translation/dubbing/texting involved).
(1) If they're not dubbed/translated, then it's not a problem because those people can't watch your movie anyway, right?
(2) As for costs? Pay up or shut up. No one cuts me a break on paying simultaneously on auto insurance for my 3 cars even thought I can only drive one car at a time.
If you are fluent enough in english to fully enjoy all movies in english, can't you just get region 1 dvd's and players only?
Isn't that a little unfair to people who don't want to/can't understand english well?
Would it be practical to get a region 1 player/dvds in say Peru? I realize this is not ligit according to the MPAA, but aren't laws supposed to be based on moral and practical precident, not made to shape it? Do English speakers enjoy an unfair advantage?
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Hey Jack Valenti. I have a free and open clue for you. Release the damned movie at the same time in Australia. And everywhere else.
It's a global world now. Back in BTI (Before The Internet), releasing a movie a year late in Australia would have no major consequences. People there didn't carry on daily conversations about all the things they love with people elsewhere in the world. But today, the world has changed, and you, Jack Valenti, need to catch up. You need the above clue so seriously.
Every movie that is released late in any part of the world isn't just going to suffer from world wide DVD distributions; it's going to suffer from world wide talk, and plot spoliers. Once a movie is out for a few weeks in the US, everyone will be talking about the ending (be it fantastic or utterly stupid) in the chat rooms, on the web boards, and in inter-office and intra-office memos of all the people working in international business. But among the participants will be people who live in regions where the movie hasn't even been released, yet. DVD won't be the only thing that can gouge into your precious first release theatre ticket sales. The Internet will, and you can't stop it.
But you can work with it. By simply doing world parallel releases, where each movie produced is released simultaneously in theatres in every country, then you'll beat even the Internet talk that can diminish your sales. And then release the DVD version later with yet another world parallel release.
Of course there will be difficulties with arranging that. As you should know, the movie industry is still entrenched with old BTI distribution methodologies that make a world parallel release difficult and costly. So change it. It only takes good leadership to steer the motion picture industry back on course into the future. Do you have it in you? Prove it to me. Or will I be watching "The Rise and Fall of an Industry: Major Motion Pictures" 10 years from now?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In Australia (and, I presume, in other countries), movie distributors have been trying like mad to get legal recognition of the DVD regions. This would make it illegal to import non region 4 DVDs into Australia, and illegal to sell players modified to play non region 4 discs. At the very least, the distributors are colluding with each other to prevent the import of Region 1 discs, and sale of Region 1 players.
Region free isn't an option, as many region 4 players bork on region 0 marked discs. Don't ask me why. They just do.
This gives Fox, Sony, Columbia, etc, effective monopoly control over their respective parts of the DVD distribution market, and prevents the `little guy' from getting access to the Australian market. The Trade Practices Act bans this sort of behaviour; the ACCC is just making sure that distributors know this.
At this point, I've gotta be proud to be an Aussie.
Russ %-)
PS: as a side note, Russell Crowe is a New Zealander who just happens to have spent some time in Australia; Mel Gibson is an American who went to acting school in Australia, and most aussies are nothing like Paul Hogan. Given that we are in a australia + movie context, I just thought I should clear this up.
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Actually it is not illegal (in Australia) to modify a DVD player to make it multi region, it is only illegal if you modify it so that it will play pirated discs. This is similar to the situation with chipping Playstations. The Australian IT has a more in depth article on this issue and also takes a look at DVD regions from the publishers side.
It was recently ruled here in Australia that parallel imports of CDs and electrical goods were legal, and manufacturers/distributors could not penalise retailers who sold parallels in addition to 'official' imports. DVDs would obviously be included.
However, we also have relatively new legislation like the DMCA which makes circumvention illegal. If we have a multi region DVD player, that's fine. But it's illegal to modify the player yourself or for someone else to make it multi region, or even to buy a modified player.
Now I wonder how this new development will affect that law.
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i think the article got accc's complaint a little mixed up. the complaint is probably not about australian filmmakers not being able to distribute their product around the world. they can always remove regional coding to do that.
the complaint is about the fact that how commercial product is always coded and that australia's region 4 gets short shrift on releases and availablity. so australia only gets 750 dvd titles versus north america's 5000+ titles and region 4 dvds are relatively expensive because of the smaller quantities and the 'protected' market.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
I hate regioning as much as the next anime fan, but I don't quite understand how they have a case here. Can't these small outfits just make region-free DVDs?
Actually I think it's 59.94 and I believe it was done on account of colour signals.
Also "region coding" with NTSC/PAL is something I doubt you ever saw. Remember, it's a good mix of countries on 60 cycle and countries on 50 cycle (which is what determines which format you use). For a movie studio to decide not to release ina given format is to cut off a huge market. However it's a little different with region coding, they can decide to cut out just a certian cubset of countries.
Finally, the intent is different. The reason for the NTSC/PAL thing is first power timing, since a TV takes it's clock from the powerline and second differences in resolution (PAL is higher). This was just teh way things got developed. Region coding was developed SPECIFICALLY to let the movie industry make more money. This way they can decide when they want something introduced to a specific region and how much it will cost, and you can't import from other regions to get around this.