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Miramax C&Ds Kung Fu Movie Reviewer
Mirkon writes "When a movie distributor attains rights to a film, it's rather predictable that they go after individuals offering the movie for sale or free. But Miramax took it a step further - as reported by Wired and on the site itself, Mark Pollard of Kung Fu Cinema received a Cease & Desist letter from Miramax concerning a link on Kung Fu Cinema to a movie purchasing site for the Jet Li movie Hero (set to be officially released in North America in April 2004). Fearing Miramax (and thus Disney) and their army of lawyers, Pollard deleted the link, as well as another for Shaolin Soccer, also unreleased in North America. Pollard criticized the studio for not permitting the original version of such films to hit the states, saying "If they own the rights to this film, then this film is not available to U.S. consumers -- period." The EFF also has some comments regarding the fact that Pollard has done nothing wrong in the first place."
I was in San Francisco in September and I bought the Hero DVD in Chinatown !
(I also got a French subtitled version of Shaolin Soccer one year and a half ago !?)
How can Miramax be *that* late and how can they ignore that one may find these DVDs in Chinese shops ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Hong Kong is NTSC. It is also very cheap, even for legitimate discs (as this site sells). After all, if it's legal there, it's usually legal for you to import it, although not to sell. You might need an all-region player (HK being in region 3), but a lot of legit HK discs - like Shaolin Soccer - are code 0 anyway.
Over in the UK, all of our our DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC, almost all of the cheap supermarket ones are already or can be made multiregion by remote, and certain high-street hi-fi chains sell modded MR product (I have a MR Pioneer 360 from them). Even our version of Amazon sells modded multiregion kit - the current top spot is a modded Sony DVP-NS330. Multiregion is much more widespread here, and that's a good thing for British consumers (even though most of them don't know about it). I try to let my friends know.