{"id":2501,"date":"2008-12-09T13:44:10","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T18:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2501"},"modified":"2008-12-09T13:44:10","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T18:44:10","slug":"region-free-dvd-players-the-answer-to-dvd-zones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/12\/region-free-dvd-players-the-answer-to-dvd-zones\/","title":{"rendered":"Region Free DVD Players: The Answer to DVD Zones?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I am currently in Italy combining work commitments and holidays with my family. As part of\u00a0my (modest because of what is called here “the American Crisis”) holiday shopping, I have decided to opt for useful gifts for my children: so books and DVDs in Italian — fundamental items for little children growing in a bilingual environment (and for anyone who wants to learn a foreign language well). Books: no problem (apart, of course, from making sure to avoid too much weight for the plane). The problems start, however, with DVDs. And here is why.<\/p>\n

The world of DVDs and DVD players is divided into six different zones or regions<\/a>, i.e. DVDs from one zone only play on certain DVDs players, also sold in the same zone, and not in the other zones (so, DVDs bought in the U.S. do not work on common DVD players in Europe). The reason for these differences (that do not apply, on the other side, to music CDs) has traditionally been control. Motion picture studios (primarily in the U.S.) wanted to control the release of movies around the world since movies were released on DVD at different times (later in Europe or Japan, for example). In order to prevent the (uncontrolled) flow (i.e., parallel imports) of DVDs from one region to another (where a certain movie, for example, was still playing in theaters), these different regions with different technical standards were created. Thus, because of different technical standards on DVD disks, users could not use DVD products freely around the world.<\/p>\n

Much has changed, however, since the advent of DVD regions in the DVD world. <\/p>\n

Much of this change is due to the enormous quantity of pirated DVDs (not just from China) that are available worldwide, and the growing trend towards downloading (initially primarily illegally) movies as mp3 files. To overcome this situation (and to compete with the illigal movie market), studios and the movie industry are now releasing DVDs increasingly faster in all zones. In addition, movies can be downloaded legally in most countries via the same studios or other sites under their control. Yet, this change has not extended, so far, to many “specialty” products (like my Italian DVDs for children!!!). These products, in fact, are not in sufficiently high demand in zones different from the one of their origin to justify the cost of making them available everywhere. In the past, I have tried to purchase Italian movies, documentaries, and cartoons on DVDs in the U.S. many times, but they are not available (you can find some videos in libraries, but not many, and the search can be long and difficult). Likewise, many of these videos cannot be downloaded from the Internet (they can be available\u00a0on YouTube sometimes, but their quality is often not good).<\/p>\n

So what can I do? How can I transform our TV into a learning tool for\u00a0foreign languages?<\/p>\n

The answer is: Region free DVD players<\/a>, i.e., DVD players that play DVDs from all regions!<\/p>\n

As it often happens, the need for a certain item (and many people in many countries are in my same situation) has\u00a0led the industry (interestingly, often linked to the same picture studios) to develop products to satisfy this need. Now, this comes, of course, with a price tag — these players are considerably more costly than the common “one region” ones. In addition, it is not really clear that these devices are not, even incidentally, violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a><\/p>\n

So, what is the morale of this story?\u00a0 Anyone\u00a0who has an interest in purchasing DVDs abroad can today happily shop for them, as long as her\/his DVD player is a “free-zone” one. Of course, we have to pay a premium for this specialty item, but competition (many of these items are increasingly available) is driving prices down (and features and quality up). Who, in all that, is particularly happy is my son, who was very worried to have to remain without his “Barbapap\u00e0” series (in the picture) once back in the U.S.!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am currently in Italy combining work commitments and holidays with my family. As part of\u00a0my (modest because of what is called here “the American Crisis”) holiday shopping, I have decided to opt for useful gifts for my children: so books and DVDs in Italian — fundamental items for little children growing in a bilingual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-property-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}