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Posted by Doug Jacobs on 05/04/07 21:23
Walter Traprock <wetraprock@hotmail.com> wrote:
> That doesn't explain why DVD releases of movies like the Lost Weekend
> (1945) or the main Laurel and Hardy releases are region controlled.
Another reason for region-locking is to protect the local
licensee/distributor. It's also supposed to prevent importing the title
from another region before it's been made available locally, or from
another region where the price is cheaper.
For instance, DVDs are at least twice as expensive in Japan. This has
some bearing on when and how certain anime titles can be released in the
US, because there's a real fear that the Japanese customers would simply
buy the American version (that often still retains the original Japanese
dialog track) and import it. While most anime releases in the US contain
both an English dub, and the original Japanese dub track along with
English subtitles, I can think of at least one title that could only be
released in English because it hadn't been released in Japan yet.
> I think the most likely explanation is the desire by companies to
> "de-value" a product as much as they can get away with; you see, the
> Harvardite MBA assholes who run the companies are taught in Harvard that
> the worst thing in the world is to release a product to the hated public
> with "excess value", and consciously degrade the product for it's
> release to consumers, thus, DRM, region coding, unskippable ads and
> warnings, "glitches", reductions in sound quality, etc.
Snideness aside, there are equally cynical reasons for such stupidty.
Regions, copy protection, DRM, etc. are all attempts at using technology
to control what you - the consumer - can and cannot do with your purchase.
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