Slashdot Mirror
Spielberg Bitten by DVD Encryption
diodesign writes "The Guardian newspaper has reported that 5000 DVD based preview copies of Spielberg's 'Munich' sent to reviewers in the UK can't be played due to the copy protection system involved. Human error at the laboratory where the DVDs were encrypted lead to the wrong region code being set, plus the reviewers use special players from Dolby that prevent the pirating of 'screeners'. An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers."
They don't have laws such as the DMCA making it a crime to sell region free players, you ca walk into Tescos (a supermarket chain) and buy a region free DVD player with your milk and other groceries.
Then they now know how someone who only has a linux machine feels when he tries to play the dvd he just bought.
I suggest them to download the movie that works without problems.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
This is more a problem of quality control at the manufacturing plant. It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago. The people who were supposed to view these aren't even going to notice. They'll likely get new copies in a week or two and watch them without even having one thought of shaking their fists at the MPAA.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
go over to the lab and club them with his oscar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Of course If I'd actually read the aritcle I'd have realised that the reveiwers had been given 'special' DVD players last year for viewing advance copies of movies. 'Special' as in 'Special Olympics' 'The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.'
it was region encoded wrong, Munich is in Germany, not in the UK.
You don't need to anyway. Pretty much every DVD player on sale in the UK has a code you enter on the remote that makes it region free.
But as it says, these "screener" copies need special Dolby DVD players anyway. Surprising that they are region coded.
At least it wasn't Jaws.
Prove it.
Oh, if only Aeon Flux had been so lucky!
"Someone pushed the wrong button," she said. "It was a case of rotten bad luck."
I sure wish I could blame pushing the wrong button on bad luck. Unfortunately, I live in the real world and have to live with the consequences of my negligence.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
The DVDs can only (supposedly) be played on "the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD screeners .... Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe".
Why on Earth they region-encoded them on top of the special encryption is a question Steve may well be asking.
I'm sure it did. His chances of winning awards based on this film just decreased, if for no other reason than the screeners will be pissed that they can't watch it because of actions by Spielberg's people. True, it wasn't him personally that did it, but he still is the boss, and his name is the one all over the credits.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The post has completely missed the significant point with this story. It's not so much that the dvds were unviewable, it's that because the reviewers couldn't see the film, the film itself is ineligible for the main official UK film awards.
The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
No, but I heard something crack.
ayottesoftware.com
Oh, well - they'll just have to download the torrent, I guess.
I don't think DMCA can mandate what can and can't be called a DVD player. The DVD consortium mandated that the players be divided up into regions so that the movies studios could prevent distribution outside of the intended market (don't ask my why). From what I remember reading, it has something to do with the algorithms used (which are proprietary); therefore, if you want to use the algorithm then you have to agree to have regions "enhancement" ""Feature"".
Just go buy a cheap Asian made player that agree to the ""Feature"" but are not really good, care, or in the business to make it hard to disable the region ""Feature"".
..did it stop screeners of 'Munich' from appearing on trackers?
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
If you're prepared to go with unheard of players you'll find virtuall all of them are region unlockable and often contain a slip of paper telling you how to do it.
Region encoding is a farce anyway. It's hard to see why studios are so worked up about it.
In other news, the VHS tape is making a huge resurgence in the video market for its low price, high duplicability, and general ease of use.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Like they expect us to do.
I don't see anyone saying he was responsible. The article just says he was "bitten" by it. I.e. it negatively affected him. They're singling him out because it's not some joe schmoe being affected by it, it's a famous director and that may have greater implications than if it had affected someone else.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Why not just use either software for region free DVDs or a hacked region free firmware. Then use DVD decrypter like someone will do anyway?
I think the point is, these DVDs are going to non-technical people who receive hundreds and hundreds of DVDs (that work) from other competing studios. If the movie doesn't work, they move on... they have a fixed deadline to review everything and make their vote. There's no time to give special treatment to a studio that can't even get something as simple as region encoding correct.
And its not like they're taking these movies to their home computers and popping them in; to prevent piracy, these are special release DVDs which only play on the special DVD players -- "Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies." If the DVD doesn't work, they have no other alternative.
So basically, they can't.. (1) it has a special encoding scheme that your household DVD decrypter isn't going to understand, (2) these aren't the type of people who would know how to crack it.
... is obviously not in a state of humor this morning.
Infuriate left and right
He did replace the guns with fucking walkee-talkees in the re-release of ET. Fuck him right in the ear for that. I decided to ignore his work form then on. Especially considering that today the police are MORE likely to be packing weapons then back in the 80's. Because of the terrorists, you know. Shit man...in 2005, ET would be in Abu Graihb awaiting a trial that will never come.
Blar.
No, it didn't hurt. But in a few weeks, Spielberg will transform into DRM-Man, a superhero who can crack DES keys in his head, spin thousands of times a second in place, and spoof anyone's biometric credentials! He is dedicated to wiping out piracy everywhere in the world!
...Thus increasing global warming. The next chapter has a battle between DRM-Man and the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
If only we lived in a world where they included that information in the article, and there was some sort of reference that could allow us to read that article...
"Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies."
Exactly why you'd implement region encoding on a screener-only DVD system is open to question. Maybe it's a legacy thing. Either way, it's dumbass, and much as I like the guy, I'm glad a major hollywood figure is getting a virtual beating for using DRM.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I could have sworn that a "screener" was just another word for "cam," a designation that means the pirated version comes from someone sneaking a camera into a theater and bootlegging it that way. If you have the DVD, why do this? Also, I thought that the proper designation for a prerelease that is bootlegged from a DVD preview was "Royal." If anyone can correct me on this, I'd appreciate it, as AFAIK, there is no bootleggers vocabulary list anywhere... and the whole culture, from a socialogical standpoint, is very interesting.
The Admin and the Engineer
No, no, no. Everyone knows there is only one correct region code, "1". Countries with other region codes are either figments of imagination or simply way too backwards to even know what a DVD is.
But the preview DVD sent to the academy's members is unplayable on machines used in the UK. As a result the majority of Bafta's 5,000 voters will not have seen the film, due to be released in Britain on January 27, and can hardly be expected to recommend it for acclaim.
As has been known for years, academy members simply don't watch many of the movies they select. It's a huge farce. I'll bet that even though they didn't get the movie within a reasonable time, many vote for it anyway.
The Academy Awards are a grandiose pat on the back, given by the industry to itself. Why we care, I'm not sure.
are there really 5000 "reviewers" in the UK to start with? I didn't think there were *that* many newspapers left on the planet, much less great britain.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
...nobody will want the Director's Cut.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
This has almost nothing to do with the DRM battle between media and consumers. These people aren't consumers. These are screener copies used in the awards process. I have absolutely no problem with whatever kinds of DRM they want to use on screener copies, as these have already been found to be a genuine source of piracy. This is EXACTLY the kind of target that the media companies should pursue. The only problem is that they goofed on their first attempt at using some of their new strategies. Other than that, nothing to see here.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Maybe they should just "encrypt" screeners by putting them on VHS. People won't want to pirate a VHS version...well they would, but it wouldn't spread nearly as fast as DVD versions.
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed. I can understand them using CSS to encrypt the DVDs to prevent copying since that directly eats into their profits, but why should they care where you watch the DVD? If I want to buy anime directly from Japan why should I need a region-free DVD player to view it? Same goes for people in Europe buying the "American" version of a movie. Has region-locking ever been held up in court in the USA anyway? What law would they use to support it? It's not copy protection so the DMCA doesn't apply.
Who cares if the people making the nominations don't get to see the movie, since when are these awards handed out for the content anyway? The movie will get nominated anyway because of the buzz, and Spielberg.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The deadline is comming up very soon for the reviewers. Tomorrow? Does this mean that if Munich is nominated, it's a scam, since no-one was able to watch it!?!
\couldn't get me to watch that piece of crap if you paid me.
\\slashdot needs for fark "slashies"
It seems that a wrong button was pressed. However the real problems is that there was NO QA process. It would of been very simple to add the step of trying to play the DVD on the DVD player that was the target. If they did not have the DVD with the proper region encoding, they choose not wait for the DVD player to be delivered.
Trying to take a shortcut on the QA process has turned into big problem. Reminds me of the old nursery rhyme, "For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost..."
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
They just downloaded the torrent and were able to watch it.
Every British Academy member I've spoken to, and to be fair, that's not a huge sample. More like 3. But every British Academy member I've spoken to has a normal multi-region player as well as their special screener player.
So the wrong region code wouldn't be an issue if the things didn't have the extra special "don't use their normal player" protection.
How often they can be bothered to hook up a different player to their setup to watch screeners is a guessing exercise left for the reader.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
It is 100% greed. DVD could be more expensive in Europe than in the US, even with the postage and custom (saying could, because it depends on the country). MPAA members want to be able to sell the same product for different prices depending on region. So, for a western European, buying from the US might be cheaper than buying locally. For a northern American, it could be cheaper to buy from Asia than to buy locally. They really want the public to pay as much as possible for a given product, and not the world average.
Also, they usually get local distributors to sell their DVDs. These would go away, they fear, if everybody buys DVDs from another country.
To be honest, I don't think they should fear the last point. Most people in Norway would prefer to have DVDs with Norwegian subtitles, so they probably wouldn't order from the US anyways (since those DVDs aren't subtitled in Norwegian).
Je ne parle pas francais.
I always thought that Regional distinctions were wrong, and illegitimate. Even if you want to "protect your IP" and prevent people from copying your product, there is no legitimate reason to prevent someone from buying something in one country and viewing it in another. People can be called upon to move because of work or family. They can bring a present to a family member abroad... maybe because things are cheaper at home. There are so many legitimate reasons for the movies to have to be played in other markets than their destination markets that that kind of protection should plainly be illegal. On the other hand, here we have a beautiful example of karmic retribution. Maybe there is intelligent design after all.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Or more importantly why, on these special encrypted DVD's, they would bother setting a region encoding!
(In other words... Did you read the post you relied to?)
The reason is pretty simple, though equally it's pretty rubbish.
Movie studios sell the distribution rights for a film to multiple companies, including CD soundtrack producers, toy companies, and DVD distributors, giving each one limited rights in what they can do, including what parts of the world they can sell the finished product.
The DVD distribution company then decides on things like the price they'll sell it to wholesalers at, what extras to include, the packaging design, does all the retail hand-holding, local marketing (if it's a major film the studio will still play a part in all this), and is responsible for the DVD manufacture and shipping out to the wholesalers.
The theory goes that if there wasn't region encoding, the distribution companies wouldn't be willing to pay as much for their monopoly rights to distribute a film in a region, as everyone would buy the version with the extras and packaging they wanted at the cheapest price they could find wherever it came from in the world, rather than pay full retail price in their local country for the version their distributor has decided to produce.
Film reviewers often go to cinema screenings anyway. This article is about BAFTA members who aren't "reviewing" the film for the press, but deciding whether or not to vote it onto the nominations list for the awards. No-one loses out if they vote for something else except the people behind Munich.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I have one of the Cinea Players (a member of my family is a Bafta member) - to even play normally non spazzed up DVDs on them you need to ring Dolby to activate the damn thing. If I remember, no movies that were sent as screeners last year actually used the Cinea player, so its been sitting in a box somewhere. A lot of the screeners used to be just single layer DVD-Rs, meaning that quite a few films spanned several discs. And they don't really stop the creation of pirate copies, given you can still just plug the video output of the thing into a capture device (although given a lot of the DVDs have serial numbers displayed pretty clearly, you really wouldn't want to).
It's amazing how often the popular press gets confused by the technical details.
And it's amazing how often Slashdot and its elitist readers do an even worse job. For example, in this case:
1) The bozo who submitted the article was the one who got the technical details confused. If you RTFA, they actually get it correct.
2) The Slashdot editors, not caring about accuracy, posted a summary which they saw as a button pusher and traffic gem. $$ trumps facts
3) You, the typical Slashdot reader, didn't read the RTFA, and posted a general rant about stupidity and included the mandatory karma whoring Wikipedia link
4) The mods, following the chain, gave your nice little culmination of ignorance a Score:5, Insightful
So to summarize, the press got the story and technology straight. It wasn't until it made it to Slashdot that the story was misunderstood and politicised at every level.
Interesting, ain't it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
My family happens to be very good friends with Jerry Bruckheimer, and he brings screeners over quite often. Never once has it required a special DVD player to play. Maybe he has a different copy than most of the academy members recieve, seeing as he's one of the major players in the industry. We watched The Producers on new years on our standard Sony DVD player at home.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Yes but mainly due to dvds being released by the stufios so soon after the theater run is over. Movies from earlier in the year are shipped for Christmas sales now and more than half the screeners we got were early retail packages complete with all the ads. The "traditional" screeners have annoying pop-up messages which kills the mood of most films. We still prefer to watch movies at the cinema so most of the screeners go unopened. Free crap is still crap.
The submitter and I have very different criteria for "ironic twist". A Cask of Amontillado this is not. Hell, it isn't even up to M. Night Shyamalan standards.
Seriously, every time I reread the submission I find something else wrong. This has nothing to do with encryption, consumers, or copy protection. Region codes serve only one "useful" purpose: preventing the import/export of legit discs. The lab mistakenly put in a "1" instead of a "2", so the disc wouldn't play. This is a non-event. This is not a stunning blow against the media pigopolists. No points were made. No wars were won. No minds were blown.
Rename the headline to "Lab fucks up; switches 2s with 1s. Almost nobody affected" or I will start submitting a new article for every DVD-R I coaster.
Welcome to the EUCD: it's illegal to circumvent copyprotection mechanisms.
i !celexplus!prod!CELEXnumdoc&numdoc=32001L0029&lg=E N
Current DVDs with regioncodes and CSS might be exempt since they were no longer effective before ratification of the EUCD.
You might want to read (and your local implementation of it)
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartap
CHAPTER III
PROTECTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES AND RIGHTS-MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
Article 6
Obligations as to technological measures
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of,
any effective technological measures.
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "technological measures" means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
Million Dollar Baby didn't get a single one, even though it won tons of Acadamy Awards. Why? The precisely stated reason was that the distributor chose to not send Screener copies to the Bafta members and therefore it wasn't seen by them- not seen equates to NO nominations at least with the UK version of the Acadamy Awards.
It's going to hurt Spielberg very little in the long run, but it's still very annoying to him all the same- and it's over paranoia about "piracy"...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Remember that reviewers are helping the guy who makes the picture.
If he doesn't trust you with an readable DVD, why would you want to use your time to help him?
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
Exactly. So what about it don't you understand?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The Palestinian terrorist (Black September) did infact use guns, and not walkie talkies.
:)
F'n Speilberg, leave your movies alone! ET phone home.
(2) these aren't the type of people who would know how to crack it.
So where do all the illegal screener releases come from?
It's an anti-free-trade move.
You see, corporations love free trade when it's in their favor. Lower tariffs, move factories over seas and sell stuff domestically, that kind of thing.
On the other hand, if there's any way that they can HINDER free trade when it's in the customer's favor, they'll do it.
This is one of those cases.
It is possible to dupliate a disk, including the CSS encryption, using professional equipment for mass production. This can be done with zero understanding of CSS. So CSS does nothing to stop money-making pirates.
The true purpose of CSS was to prevent translation to different forms by unauthorized software. The good thing is that this makes it harder to copy over the internet (currently sending a CSS disk image over the internet is impractical, and all known compression schemes require decoding the CSS). The bad thing is that this allows region encoding and locking out the fast-forward and other things that the authorized software may enforce.
That, my friends, is quality ownage.
That is interesting, but your post is why I continue to read Slashdot nonetheless. The cycle continued and Slashdot self-corrected that culmination of ignorance, as evidenced by your post which was modded to Score:5, Interesting.
I bought a Philips DVD player from WalMart in California last month that I region-unlocked with the codes on the remote, so it's not just a UK/Europe phenomenon... it plays DIVX files, too.
*Still* negative function...
> The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players
> (somewhat) illegal?
There doesn't have to be a logical reason for making something illegal. Alcohol was legal, then illegal, then legal. Most drugs are now illegal. It's illegal for Tescos (a UK supermarket) to buy Levi's jeans abroad (more cheaply than can be sourcd here) and sell them in the UK (they lost a big court case over that - it was treated as if they'd sold counterfeit clothing). As long as you're in a position of power you can make the laws.
As someone once said - "Politics* is the shadow cast on society by big business"
*(and therefore law, a consequence of politics/policy)
How is this any different than me sending someone in the UK a file, encrypting it with a password, but typing the wrong password, or using the wrong algorithm to encrypt it, thus making it unreadable at the other end.
There is nothing in the field of morality or ethics that says Spielberg shouldn't be able to send some people of his choice encrypted copies of data that he created. He did make the movie, after all.
Sheesh.
If you SELL me a movie that has encryption or DRM limiting how I can watch that movie, then there's a problem. These people in the UK never purchased a copy of the movie.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"Spielberg is a sellout but not as much as Lucas."
The term sell out amazes me to this day especially when applied to music and movies. In case you didn't know the very reason that about 99% of people that get involved in the movie biz is becuase they want to get rich and famous and you can't get rich and famous by making indies films. I only said indie because on average these people are considered to be "true to their art" and not sell outs. Now to get rich and famous you MUST make movies for the masses. Do you really think that Lucas made any of the Star Wars films strictly for fun or the art of storytelling and not to make a profit? Lucas is in my opinion a mastermind. Yes he has made crap but he has also made some of the best films of all time, strictly my opinion here. Back to the point to call someone a sellout just because thay made it big and then changed the product to try and stay big is ridiculous. Movies are big business and alot goes on that we never hear about. Decisions are made that are beyond even the creators control or even the producer sometimes to be sure the product sells. The bottom line here is according to most peoples definition evey successfull person in Hollywood is a sell out. Since I got way off topic here I'll sway back. I am glad that this happened to a major hollywood figure maybe it will make them think twice about how secure a dvd should be.
WTF?
Actually the original reason was because films tended to have staggered releases. A film print costs a LOT of money (low to mid-five figures per copy, once you factor in transportation expenses). Unless something is guaranteed to be a blockbuster, they tend to recycle prints as well as use the time and profits from the initial release to pay for and print additional copies for other staggered releases.
In some cases, DVDs come out in their first market while the movie is still in the theater in secondary markets. Region encoding was intended to prevent someone in Europe from buying a US DVD before the movie was released there.
Nobody is mentioning the obvious reason (obvious, at least, to smart people) why there's region coding. It's directly related to cinema releases. The reason movies are released at different times in different territories because a single film print that one theatre shows costs approximately $10,000 to print. They're not cheap, and on average they're shown for a few weeks before they're pulled from cinemas. Therefore, depending on anticipated audience numbers, a certain number of prints are made up for American cinemas. It then gets its month or two in cinemas, before the prints are returned to the distributor, and shipped off to other territories where the whole process begins again. It's not greed, its a sensible cost saving measure to prevent wasting millions of dollars on prints that will only be used a few weeks, even if the movie is a mega hit (which is only a small percentage of released films). It's not just Hollywood that follows this example, its every distribution company in the world. Therefore, when it comes to DVDs, they have to be region encoded because the above distribution method can take a year. You might argue, why shouldn't people be allowed to own a DVD before the movie is released to theatres, and maybe they should, but then theatres would start to go out of business. Maybe, that's the way the industry is headed, but for now, put up or shut up, and don't criticise an industry when you don't understand how or why it works. I know this because I work in film.
IANAL...
The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players (somewhat) illegal? A company choosing to use regions for business purposes is a far cry from a legitimate federal law.
The algorithms for doing pretty much anything with DVD's (encoding, decoding, copy protecting, manufacturing, etc.) are patented. Because they're patented, you can't make a legal DVD player without permission from the inventors. You also can't say your machine plays DVD's because you don't have a trademark license.
When you go to the inventors for a license, one of the things you sign off on in the contract is (presumably) that you will lock your player so it only plays discs for the appropriate region.
My guesses as to why region-free players are so common:
1. It's cheaper for the company to manufacture generic players that have the region code set in firmware.
2. The companies manufacturing the players do business in countries that could care less about U.S. IP laws.
However, its the movie companies fear of pirating that's holding this back so long.
The solution: Eliminate the fear of pirating. How: I don't know. The free distribution model is only a solution to the narrow minded people who think Karl Marx had a point - it clearly doesn't work. We see digital music distributed legally on the net, but that hasn't stopped piracy. What can?
Is there a solution? Is there a way for people to make money on the entertainment they produce, without fear of it being stolen all the time? The kiddies usual response is "If you made better movies I'd pay for them and wouldn't download them" which is so laughably ridiculous.
Personally, I think this will all end in jail terms. There is no technical way to stop a piracy, so governments will be lobbied more and more to put more and more pressure on the people who commit piracy, and on the wonderful technologies that are being abused to help distribute it. That's the only "solution" that I see, unless we, as a group of intelligent, technical minded people can find another way.
Films start at different dates in different parts of the world. If people in Europe would get the newest Hollywood films before or during they run in their local theatres, they might decide only to watch them on DVD.
If DVD-Video region coding were about theatrical vs. video release dates, then DVD copies of a film produced after the film has completed its theatrical run in the developed world would be all-region, right? Why are classic films from the 1950s and earlier still region-coded?