RE: European Video

Matthew wrote:
> A professor here on campus recently purchased several German-language
> videos from www.amazon.de <http://www.amazon.de/> , the only place
> they are currently available. Each of the videos is regionally encoded
> for European playback, however, making playback on DVD players from
> North America impossible without altering the encoding. Provided the
> professor were to otherwise adhere to all aspects of Fair Use for
> display in her classroom, would she be within the bounds of Fair Use
> to alter the regional encoding for playback here in the US?

There is a view that region encoding is a breach of anti-trust and similar legislation:  

This view was expressed by our consumer protection organization in Australia the ACCC c.f.
http://www.consensus.com.au/ITWritersAwards/ITWarchive/ITWentries02/C1Caitli nFitzsimmons.htm
and I believe there was a case in New Zealand effectively requiring all DVD players sold in New Zealand to be multi-region although I have been unable to track it down.  

Has this argument ever been tried in the US? Regards,
Tim Received on Sat Feb 19 2005 - 00:00:01 GMT