Piracy is necessary and doesn't hurt revenues

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Cheating them out of money they wanted to cheat you out of?

It's their product. They can decide to price it at whatever they want to price it at. To me, if a product is not being sold in a certain region then that is because they don't want it to be sold there for whatever reason. Piracy or purchasing grey market products are both ways of circumventing the wishes of the publisher. I'm not being holier than thou here as I'm not saying that I follow by those guidelines but some people who find it to be black and white are actually somewhere in the grey.

[mgbino]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It seems to me that you keep using "out of region" because you shy away from the implications of bypassing Geo-restrictions. Yes, some countries have made Geo-restriction illegal. It doesn't change the fact that out of region and Geo-restriction are one and the same things. Yes, I understand what region codes are, you don't have to link to the Wiki article about region codes like it somehow adds validity to your claim. There was nothing in that article that said that Geo-restriction and out of region are different things.

I don't know that I think think of them as the same thing. I view geographic restriction as a block on the importing of an item and region encoding, like DRM, as a method of blocking the use of the item once its been acquired. I can also say, with 100% certainty, that there are different legal issues at play with both (at least in the U.S.).

To be clear, there is no law on the U.S. books that prohibits a consumer from importing an item unless the item itself is illegal or otherwise ineligible (like Cuban Cigars, for example). At this point, no court has ruled that it is illegal to bypass a geographic restriction to make a digital purchase. Maybe at some point they will, but it doesn't seem to be a big concern.

Circumventing region encoding is a different issue. Removing DRM is not legal. Period. But, there is no law against purchasing a region free DVD player, nor using a menu to change the region of a DVD player. Using a method to clean the DVD of region encoding, like ripping and coding removal, could be construed as DRM removal, and thus not legal.

Now, the store selling the product may be violating the rights of copyright holder, depending on how the product is licensed, but the consumer that is bypassing geo restrictions isn't doing anything illegal.

I don't see how it's immoral either, but I'm not the arbiter of people's morality.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's no such thing as a "DVD that's set to be watchable only in the US", any more than there's a paperback book that's only readable in the US.

There are DVDs that are only sold in the US, just as there are books that are only sold in the US, but both can be bought by anybody. To suggest that buying a DVD from the US is "wrong" is as silly as saying that buying a book from the US is wrong. Is that what you're suggesting?

The region code on a DVD is meant to prevent that DVD from being watched outside of the region the code says is allowable.

OK, it's not just the US, but region 1 is United States, Canada, Bermuda, Caribbean, U.S. territories.

[pwalker8]

I believe that the other poster was trying to say that there were Geo-restricted DVD's, i.e. DVD's that were only suppose to be sold in a certain area, and region encoded DVD's where the producer didn't really care where they were sold, but for some unexplained reason, sold them with a specific region code.

I personally don't really care what other people do. Personally, I always make sure that I buy the products that I want, rather than download them from the dark-net. My point is that local legality isn't the final arbitrator of what is right and wrong.

Originally Posted by mgbino

I don't know that I think think of them as the same thing. I view geographic restriction as a block on the importing of an item and region encoding, like DRM, as a method of blocking the use of the item once its been acquired. I can also say, with 100% certainty, that there are different legal issues at play with both (at least in the U.S.).

To be clear, there is no law on the U.S. books that prohibits a consumer from importing an item unless the item itself is illegal or otherwise ineligible (like Cuban Cigars, for example). At this point, no court has ruled that it is illegal to bypass a geographic restriction to make a digital purchase. Maybe at some point they will, but it doesn't seem to be a big concern.

Circumventing region encoding is a different issue. Removing DRM is not legal. Period. But, there is no law against purchasing a region free DVD player, nor using a menu to change the region of a DVD player. Using a method to clean the DVD of region encoding, like ripping and coding removal, could be construed as DRM removal, and thus not legal.

Now, the store selling the product may be violating the rights of copyright holder, depending on how the product is licensed, but the consumer that is bypassing geo restrictions isn't doing anything illegal.

I don't see how it's immoral either, but I'm not the arbiter of people's morality.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The region code on a DVD is meant to prevent that DVD from being watched outside of the region the code says is allowable.

OK, it's not just the US, but region 1 is United States, Canada, Bermuda, Caribbean, U.S. territories.

...and anywhere where region-free players are sold.

Region codes *now* work by preventing Disks from being played on a device not licensed to play them. Which region-free DVD players are.

Remember that the region-free DVD players don't remove the DRM or circumvent it, but rather they use the keys that were licensed to them to unlock the DRM wrapper the way the system (and the law) wants it done. At no time is anybody cracking or bypassing the DRM scheme itself so DMCA does not apply. Buying out of region DVDs and viewing is simple Fair Use: when you buy a DVD you expect to be able to watch it anywhere just as you can read a book anywhere.

To view any DVD you are supposed to buy a licensed player and buy the disks.
That is what the system wants and that is how viewing out-of-region DVDs works: you buy a player and you buy the disk. No special knowledge or manuever needed. If you find a local importer you don't even go out of country.

Viewing geo-restricted streams?
You're not buying anything. You have no fair use rights, no first sale rights, nothing. It is a viewing contract and you agree to those terms--and then use technical means to violate the contract you signed.

One last time, people: the players are legal and the content owners are being paid full market price, which is more than can be said of used DVD sales. Or pirate editions.

Not the same thing.
Period.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Any discussion about people committing crimes that doesn't also mention Amazon dodging taxes constitutes "ignoring" their behavior?

I assure you, we are not ignoring it -- if for no other reason than the frequent mentions you give it.

But: That isn't the issue at hand.

Smugly put.

There is a great deal of righteous indignation about small-time piraters, while massive theft on the parts of companies such as Amazon is not only ignored, but lauded.

Others like to endlessly debate the nuances of the different forms of copyright. I think that's fine, though it doesn't appeal to me.

[Indio777]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There has never been any restriction on who can buy DVDs ....

Actually there were/are. I used to buy lots of Asian DVDs from a site (that is sadly no longer in business) and sometimes certain titles could not be shipped to the US. I think this was usually because the company had US distribution rights and intended to release it someday in the US.

A company from which I now buy a lot of my Asian DVDs currently won't ship many of its DVDs to Hong Kong. No idea why.

But overall I don't think it matters most of the time anymore. I've bought some TV series from Amazon UK and elsewhere that are available in the states (usually because they are less expensive and/or not edited to fit into a 60 minute time slot). Also stuff that hasn't been released in the US or is out of print here.

[SleepyBob]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Perhaps they want to sell the DVD in your country for a higher price than what they are selling in country A. So by buying an out of region DVD you technically could be cheating that company out of money, Harry.

Just because they want you to buy the more expensive one doesn't mean you are cheating them by deciding not to, any more than it is cheating them to wait until it gets shown for free on TV instead of buying the DVD at all.

[speakingtohe]

If digital piracy is necessary how did we survive so long without it? There was a time when if you wanted to watch a show, you had to have a TV, power to run it, an antenna of some sort and be in the room at a limited (often one) number of specified time with your eyes glued to the set in order to watch it.

Where I lived a music extravaganza was Don Messer's Jubilee where there was a lot of fiddling and polkaing going on. I wonder if it was geographically restricted. Did Europeans get to see it?

We might be more than a smidgeon spoiled these days.

Helen

[meeera]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

If digital piracy is necessary how did we survive so long without it? There was a time when if you wanted to watch a show, you had to have a TV, power to run it, an antenna of some sort and be in the room at a limited (often one) number of specified time with your eyes glued to the set in order to watch it.

One thing I find interesting is the way in which television has changed since that model became obsolete. There is a lot more high-quality complex long-arc narrative around now, instead of TV being dominated by single-episode-arc sitcom and repetitive soapie type stuff.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

If digital piracy is necessary how did we survive so long without it? There was a time when if you wanted to watch a show, you had to have a TV, power to run it, an antenna of some sort and be in the room at a limited (often one) number of specified time with your eyes glued to the set in order to watch it.

Where I lived a music extravaganza was Don Messer's Jubilee where there was a lot of fiddling and polkaing going on. I wonder if it was geographically restricted. Did Europeans get to see it?

We might be more than a smidgeon spoiled these days.

Helen

Once again, what the original article is saying is that in order to accomplish a certain task, i.e. see German content in the US, she has to resort to using the so called pirate sites at times. Very different that what you are saying.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Once again, what the original article is saying is that in order to accomplish a certain task, i.e. see German content in the US, she has to resort to using the so called pirate sites at times. Very different that what you are saying.

They aren't "so-called" pirate sites. They ARE pirate sites. The question of whether or not she "has" to resort to them is what this thread is about. There is no compulsion on her to do so - it's entirely her choice to do so. Nobody "has" to watch a particular TV show.

[Greg Anos]

Nobody has to do anything but pay taxes and die.....

[Doonge]

Don't say such thing about dying and paying taxes, the man is happy with his rethoric.
He doesn't compulsory need your input, the same way nobody compulsory need to pay the authors: it's a choice.

If one has to do something in order to achieve something, we should NOT call this "he need to do that in order to achieve that", because the verb need is reserved for compulsory things.

Pls.

[Alfy]

Well, kind of playing devil's advocate, but Cultural Rights are defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In addition, the Council of Europe stated that "Culture, as experienced by the majority of the population today, means much more than traditional arts and the humanities. Nowadays, culture embraces the education system, the mass media, the cultural industries". So if, somehow, Game of a Thrones becomes really popular within your social/ethnic group to the point of becoming a cultural reference, but you can't procure it legally (and let's be serious: purchasing a specific model of player so you can read foreign DVDs does not quite cut qualifies as "available for purchase in your region"), you'd should be able to sue the publisher in Europe's Human Right Court. So maybe streaming a couple of episodes illegally isn't really that bad...