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Australia Rules DVD's are Films, Not Software
divereigh writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that an Australian Federal court has decided this case in favour of the Australian Video Rental Association. The Association had taken Warner Home Video to court for trying to classify DVD's as software and thus double the price for those sold into the rental market."
I for one will gladly pay twice as much for DVD content as I would for equivalent VHS content; the extensive capabilities of the DVD format make the medium that much more valuable. By declaring this practise illegal, I'm afraid Australia could be severely stifling the incentive of movie companies to include special DVD-only features. This move doesn't benefit anyone; both the content producers and the consumers suffer.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
I hope that someone can take it one step further and gain a ruling that DVDs legally purchased anywhere else in the world can be played legally in Australia - effectively, a ruling invalidating any so-called 'right' for content producers to restrict disks to geographical regions.
The 'region encoding' thing totally sucks. Not only do the anti-De-CSS rulings effectively make it illegal to play a DVD on a Linux box, it's also a thin edge of the wedge allowing content producers to exercise ridiculous levels of control over how people are able to consume content. What'll it be next? You can't watch a show unless you key in a serial number from inside the lid of a Coke bottle, plus a code from inside a Pizza Hut carton?
Australian legislators have some 'quirky' notions of technology that often differ to those elsewhere in the world - it just might be possible to get such a ruling and overturn this ridiculous region coding bullshit once and for all.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Yeah - I always thought it was a bit of an exageration that so many US citizens are so insular - 'til I saw George Bush on TV.
Mind you when you've got such things as - World Series Baseball (which contains only US teams) the last thing your country needs is people like you going about encouraging the stereotype. Especially at this particularly politically sensitive time.
The amount of junk mail I get from US companies is amazing - and they all have this little disclaimer at the bottom saying I was spammed in accordance with some US law. Well heads up guys - I don't *live* in your country ffs !
The Director's Edition of Robocop was $40 (and worth buying btw). T2 *was* $40 when it came out, it's cheap now because it's been out a while. Could it have been purchased cheaper? Sure. But I'm an impulse buyer. If I want it and it's there, I'll get it. If I want it cheaper, I can try eBay or Amazon or something. To get either of those movies for $32 back then would have either required a ride to a local Costco (membership fee) or waiting a few days to get it from Amazon (shipping fees).
The last few DVD's I've purchased were about $20 each. They don't have any special features to speak of though, not on the same level as T2 or RC. The only reason these were worth $20 for me was that I'm a fanatic for MST3k. Frankly, though, I would have bought VHS versions for cheaper if I had known they were so light on features.
"Derp de derp."
Why isn't Steve Irwin dead yet? Anyone who can one minute say 'This is one of the deadliest snakes in the world' and the next minute say 'Lets pick him up and have a look at him' has definate suicidal tendencies...