Australian Consumer Watchdog Investigates Legality Of Region Coding (1 Viewer)

[David Lambert]

Brian, you win. I won't argue with you over this. I'm sure, you're sure. I don't think Howard Lincoln or Shigeru Miyamoto or anyone else like that will appear here on HTF and settle this. So, you're right and I'm wrong. My coworker may have done something to trick me anyway. So...cool. There was never a SNES lockout chip.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Region coding is already a non-issue for those who really care about it, ie everyone not in region 1.

If you do even a minute amount of asking around before you run out and buy a DVD player, you get a region free model. Then you are free to purchase your films wherever you choose.

There are far worse issues ahead for us not in R1 land... such as HDTV standards that some utterly moronic people have implemented that aren't compatible with the one used in US, which has to be the largest one in existence. Of course, in Europe we really have NO HDTV push, but that's another story.

This is the the year 2002 for crying out loud. Do we really need to create multiple mutually incompatible HDTV standards with all the problems that will cause in a world market? Arrrgh.

 

[Robert Dunnill]

You could always get a player that converts PAL to NTSC like the JVC's!!!!!! Then the region thing would be a non-issue!!!!

How about a Home Theater PC?

RD

 

[cafink]

There was never a SNES lockout chip.

That is exactly correct, David. No need to have Lincoln or Miyamoto confirm it for you — you could just test it out for yourself.

Personally, I own a single Super Famicom game (Mother 2). I own a Super Nintendo, but no Super Famicom. The only modification I've made to my SNES is to take a pair of pliers and yank out the two tabs that physically prevent the S. Famicom cartridges from being inserted into the SNES. The game plays perfectly.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Perhaps it is time that we paid more attention to the enforcement of the "copyright holders must at least try to give positive value to the public" part of the copyright bargain.

i don't know where such a bargain has ever been struck. U.S. Copyright law is designed to provide an incentive to authors to promote the creation of their work. whether this work be of some sort of "positive value" is irrelevant; U.S. Copyright law is value-neutral, thankfully.

DJ

 

[Jeff Kleist]

All you need to mod a SuperNES is a pair of pliers and 10 seconds All you need to mod an N64 is a Gamebit screwdriver, and you just take out this little bar thing. Sega systems until dreamcast just relied on the aforementioned jumpers, easily defeated by a switch. Sony has always been the bitch. The PS2 lockout especially. There are STILL no reliable mods over a year after the US launch. Sure, there are plenty of mods to play pirate games, but still nothing (that doesn't fry your system) to play legit ones. Talk about retarded, legit imports still generate you money Sony!
Just because US citizens are too closed minded to look at the world around them doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of us wishing that we had multistandard TVs

 

[GregoryP]

I just wanted to say this has been one of the most interesting threads I've read in a long time.
I used to be really into videogames back in the days of the Nintendo, SNES, Genesis, Etc and I remember all of these issues. Thanks a lot to everyone who contributed the history lessons.
Gregory

 

[Cees Alons]

... and the legal lessons.

Very interesting thread, indeed!

Thanks.

Cees

 

[David Lambert]

You're all welcome for my contributions to the thread. As I said already, my knowledge of the existance of a SNES lockout chip was via my co-worker, and so - as sure as I've been over the years of what I stated - I will not hold to it and bow to the wisdom of others.
What I'll beg for is to NOT sidetrack the thread into a discussion of whether or not one playback device (the SNES) did or did not have such a chip.
The POINT of this thread is discussing WHY such chips exist on ANY device, especially DVD players, and what we can do about them, if any.
The point of my longish Tetris post was to demonstrate in excruciating detail all of the issues that contribute to the existance of these devices in our consoles. Maybe we can put our heads together and, understanding the reasons that led to them and the rest of their history, figure out a way for once and for all to get them eliminated.
In another thread I discussed the concept of "thinking globally". One of the facets of doing that will be to eliminate region coding, so that we all can live on the same entertainment planet...not just the same planet.
Let's drop the SNES thing, okay? I was wrong, and I admited it. There's no point in raking me over the coals.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Ok, this is just a wild guess here, but I suppose there are no legal issues over defeating "regional lock-outs" on video game machines, huh?

Glenn

 

[Thomas Newton]

In a case like this, in which Congress has not plainly marked our course, we must be circumspect in construing the scope of rights created by a legislative enactment which never contemplated such a calculus of interests. In doing so, we are guided by Justice Stewart's exposition of the correct approach to ambiguities in the law of copyright:

"The limited scope of the copyright holder's statutory monopoly, like the limited copyright duration required by the Constitution, reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be [p.432] encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. 'The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly,' this Court has said, 'lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.'

The public does NOT benefit when copyrights are used as a club to enforce the creation of region coding systems that keep works unavailable to the public

 

[Brian-W]

Let's drop the SNES thing, okay? I was wrong, and I admited it. There's no point in raking me over the coals.

But I wasn't through yet
Actually, I wasn't trying to rub your nose in it(and hoping you didn't interpret it that way). Just an FYI from someone who is in the know and pretty experienced with it.
As for PS2 lock-out chips, I finally bought a Japanese PS-2 so I could play the cool games that I like that never come out here. Then a couple weeks later, I hear of another mod-chip that *finally* addresses original imports (both PS1 and PS2) without having to pirate your own games (I know, really lame). Now I can't remember what it was called, but since I now have a japanese unit, no big deal now.

 

[CamiloCamacho]

Prof Fels said under the apparent agreement, the film studios treated each of the six world regions differently, adjusting prices and availability to maximise their profits.

Absolutly right!.

15-20US$ VS 35-45US$ (Region 1 VS Region 4)

 

[Damin J Toell]

The public does NOT benefit when copyrights are used as a club to enforce the creation of region coding systems that keep works unavailable to the public

why?

if region-coding protects the ability of copyright owners of films to make a profit on their work and to therefore, from that profit, promote the creation of future works, how is the public not benefitted? indeed, if region-coding provides an economic incentive to create films in the first place (again, by protecting the ability to make profits), how is the public not benefitted? this formulation of region-coding fits in exactly with the unnamed quote you provided. how does region coding keep works unavailable to the public? every film released on DVD in Region 1 is playable throughout the United States. what stronger goal can be sought under American law?

DJ

 

[Thomas Newton]

(Apologies if this is an excessively long reply.)

how does region coding keep works unavailable to the public? every film released on DVD in Region 1 is playable throughout the United States.

Ever try playing a non-Region-1 disc on an unmodified US player? Doesn't work, does it? Even though the works on such disc are almost invariably protected by U.S. copyright law and sometimes even originate in the U.S.

 

[Damin J Toell]

There's not one shred of evidence that region coding is necessary to provide adequate incentive. Can anyone point to a film that was made due to the presence of region coding on DVD, or that wasn't made due to the absence of region coding on VHS? Thought so.

your logical fallacies are getting pretty big here. the "if you can't prove it, it isn't true" argument is a poor one and it really lowers the level of this discussion. i'll avoid lowering the discussion further by entertaining it.

in general, your discussion of the Constitution, U.S. copyright law, and property rights is a strange mess of natural rights theory with little (or, actually, no) reference the realities of the 1976 Copyright Act. you might have a certain conception of what copyright law should be, but to state that your goals are embodied in American law is a gross error. American copyright law is based on the maximization of economic incentive (no provision refers to unknowable ideals of "adequacy," as you repeat them). as for region-coding in particular, i have no interest in discussing whether or not it is "necessary," but, rather, whether it is a valid exercise of copyrighted material under American copyright law (i.e., earlier, you called region-coding a "misuse" of copyright law). the fact of the matter is that 17 USC § 106 grants copyright holders the exclusive right to make copies of their works. this includes allowing them to a) not make copies at all and b) make copies in whatever ways they desire, subject to other provisions of law. Copyright law does not in any way, as i see it, preclude region-coding nor does region-coding represent a misuse of copyright. there is simply no affirmative duty in American law to provide copies of a work to the public. you may want it to be that way, but it isn't.

if you've got a response to any of the above that relies on the actual state of American copyright law and/or property rights theory that is actually on point (and actually takes my proposed definition of a property right head-on without misapplied Thomas Jefferson quotes), i'll be happy to continue this discussion. otherwise, i'd rather bow out, as we continue to go in circles as long as you ignore (confuse?) relevant realities of modern copyright.

DJ

 

[Thomas Newton]

 

[Mark Zimmer]

While the sentiments regarding the bargain notion inherent in the copyright laws of the US are probably correct, as a practical matter they're out the window along with the idea of no standing army. The Congressional delegation from Disney will see to it that no film copyright ever expires again. Since it's a little difficult to carve off film in that way, that will take everything else along with it. Everything that ever will be public domain is public domain right this moment. In fact, judging by the GATT Uruguay Round shenanigans reinstating expired copyrights, public domain will continue to be a smaller and smaller pie.

To a certain extent, surprisingly, this isn't all bad. Some films that would not be economical to restore if they are PD suddenly become economical to restore if the restorer will have exclusive rights to them. On the flip side, as we see with Paramount and Universal, their copyrights preclude anyone from issuing video versions their silent pictures (e.g., The Man Who Laughs, an acknowledged classic never released on any form of home video), even though the studios themselves have zero interest in issuing them and other parties have suitable master elements.

For another example of property rights that are involved here, the studios have long term contracts in place (clearly a property right) regarding their materials. Let's say that Disney sold the Region 4 rights to Peter Pan for $X, rather than a percentage, since accounting tricks can be pretty slippery--indeed, studios know exactly how accounting can be manipulated, so a percentage would not be that appealing. They would only enter into such an arrangement under the expectation that this flat fee would be limited to sales in that region. However, they were not expecting the whole region system to come crashing down and thus allow the discs for what is supposed to be region 4 to effectively be sold for the entire globe, all still for the same flat fee. Since region 1 is still by far the biggest market, this is not a trivial issue.

And the fact there is a right of fair use does NOT mean that the producers have to make it easy for us. There's nothing precluding a book publisher from coming up with a special non-photocopyable ink; the reason they haven't done so probably is that it would affect readability and thus interfere with their primary sales.

But trying to go back to original intention of the framers of the constitution to interpret what we have for today's laws, and with today's intellectual property, is a fool's errand. The two just don't mesh at all, and it would be political suicide for Congress to suddenly change gears and start letting movies go into public domain again. You might as well try to get Warner to stop using snappers.

 

[Damin J Toell]

It is said that reward to the author or artist serves to induce release to the public of the products of his creative genius."

so, as i said, the goal of public benefit is achieved by focusing the law on the economic benefits of the authors. that is, the law seeks to achieve the goal by giving the economic incentive the force of law. the rules which bind us (i.e., the law) are rules of economic incentive, not public benefit (i.e., there is no rule that states that one must benefit the public); public benefit goals are not themselves laws but, rather, the presupposed results of laws. i therefore maintain what i said in the portion of my post you quoted: the focus in American copyright law is quite firmly on economic incentive and not on general "public benefits" issues. Justice Stevens may rightly believe that public benefit is the "sole interest" of the U.S., but it is decidely not the meat of copyright law itself; economic incentive is. the "sole interest" is attained after the law has had its chance to work.

notice nothing in what you pasted included other goals of copyright law that you implied, such as "adequate compensation" or "maximum public access." indeed, in the paragraph following the above, Justice Stevens notes that the task of copyright law is to allow for "appropriate access" to works (emphasis mine). whatever in the world "appropriate" is, it doesn't ring true as "maximum," given the exclusive control granted by copyright.

DJ

 

[Angsty]

Getting back to the original topic for this thread - there has been an interesting development.
To recap - the Australian consumer watchdog (ACCC) is currently investigating whether region coding is anti-competivie and limits customer choice.
Warner (Australia) recently announced that the Australian release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone will be released in P&S ONLY, despite the fact that the rest of the world will get the option of buying either widescreen or P&S version. (and that a PAL widescreen master exists for the R2 version)
This short-sighted decision EXACTLY proves the point that the ACCC is currently investigating - that Australian consumers who wish to watch Harry Potter in widescreen will have to buy a copy from overseas, however, region coding prevents them from being able to play this title in their player.
Wouldn't it be ironic if Warner's "don't give a damn" decision about Harry Potter in Australia is the reason that the ACCC declares region coding is illegal and all future DVD players sold must be multi-region...
Angela