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REGIONAL restrictions on DVDs could be an anti-competitive practice and a breach of the Trade Practices Act, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has warned. |
DVD hardware and software makers encode DVDs to play in one of six regions around the world as a means of controlling release dates and fighting piracy.
Australia '“ along with New Zealand, Central and South America '“ is region four. The United States is region one and Japan is region two.
The restrictions mean that Australian consumers wanting to buy imported titles must buy a DVD player from the appropriate region or modify their machines. Legal advice obtained by The Australian IT is that it is legal to put a chip or smart card in a machine to play imported DVDs, as long as the it does not also allow the machine to play copied discs.
But such a change usually voids the product warranty.
ACCC chairman Allan Fels said the commission was investigating whether restrictive region coding breached the Trade Practices Act.
"If the manufacturers have an agreement to do that, it looks like an anti-competitive agreement breaching not only Australian law but laws in other countries," Professor Fels said.
If this is in fact the case it would be very hard to solve this because it concerns all countries. It could mean international co-operation to force the DVD industry to change its ways. But if all films would be available on DVD, nobody would go to they movies. Anyway I would like it
Source: Australian IT
