DVD Question for Canadians (Quebec)... (1 Viewer)

[MarcoBiscotti]

I hope this isn't too off-topic but I was just thinking about what would become of our DVD releases if Quebec were to seperate from Canada?

Would we still retain the same distribution rights and under French law and would we be limited in our US-based film releases due to rights control and language laws, etc? Would our DVD's still fall under the same region encoding system? Would this mark the end of English language cover art for our movies?

What do you guys think?

 

[CraigF]

Region 13?

You'd probably not get any more bilingual covers. Nor would we, except in NB.

The price would go up.

I wouldn't worry about it...

Edit: LOL, you edited your post just before I posted, thinking of the same things...

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I'm told the Maritimes would become part of the United States, under some agreement dating from the Second World War.
I guess it depends whether Quebec were to become part of Metropolitan France, along with Guiana and Saint-Pierre/Miquelon -- things which were "licensed for North American release" would still go to Quebec, since it's not going to physically move, but "licensed for the United States and Canada" would not. That's probably about a 50/50 split in terms of how the contracts are worded. If Quebec were simply to become independent, it would probably be treated as a "successor state" of Canada, bound by the same international obligations and subject to the same set of rules unless-and-until the Quebecois government got around to changing things -- something like the reverse of what happened when Newfoundland became part of Canada back in '48. In either case I doubt there's too much chance of a push for adoption of the revoltingly-poor-but-French-made 625/SECAM broadcast standard, or even the 525/SECAM standard used by Cuba [so that TV MARTI broadcasts from Key West only show up in black and white, on the few colour TVs in Cuba].
Seriously, though, it's not that likely. An active separatist party gets the Quebecois a much bigger place at the national and international bargaining tables than they would get otherwise, and they're smart enough to realise they'd lose all of that if they struck off on their own.