legality of region-free hacks

[decryptit]

http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

The DMCA is very clear that any means of circumventing copy protection is illegal. While the most obvious and often cited implementation of this aspect of the law the courts have upheld any means of circumvention. Region encoding is one aspect of copy protection as is the encoding methods used on DVDs and is therefore covered by the DMCA. Modifying a DVD Player to bypass any aspect of copy protection is considered illegal. Section 1201 and 1202 prohibits the removal of any means of copy protection. In conjunction with section 109 CSS and region coded are considered protect means of enforcing copyright ownership and circumvention is in violation of the DMCA.



Bottom line, removal or circumventing CSS coding, region coding or Macrovision is illegal as stated in the DMCA.

[decryptit]

Post here for any comments.

[admin]

According to the DMCA (which according to most critics and legal experts is severely flawed - even an US Congressmen think it is flawed : http://news.com.com/2010-1071-825335.html), using a DVD ripper, even for personal backup use, is illegal, even though "fair use" laws say that making personal backups is perfectly legal (and anyone trying to prevent this is acting against the law). With respect to fair use, it is the DMCA that is illegal.

Region free is so far legal here in Australia, and in fact, our government's competition watchdog recently found that region coding may be against Australian competitive laws:

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/87605/fromItemId/378010

Even industry heavyweights such as Blockbuster thinks region coding should be abolished:

http://hometheater.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/home_video/brief_display.jsp%3Fvnu_content_id=2047010

[decryptit]

Region free is so far legal here in Australia, and in fact, our government's competition watchdog recently found that region coding may be against Australian competitive laws:

http://www.accc.gov.au/content/inde...omItemId/378010

Eventually this is not legal in all countries ,but still do you allow any kind of distribution of hacks in here.

[admin]

I went to a few electronic stores a few days ealier, and practically all of them were stocking region-free DVD players, and some even publish remote control hacks on their website on how to unlock region-free capabilities in major brand players (and these built-in hacks were put in by the original manufacturers, so I guess they have no respect for region coding either).

I've also talked in the past to a few DVD manufacturers in China, and they said DVD Forum reps approached them to stop them making Macrovision-free DVD players, but said that region-free players are fine - so now all the Chinese DVD players (which is probably about 80% of the market here) are region-free out of the box.

No one is suing anyone about region coding, mainly because no one cares about it anymore. If it was a major concern, then stores like Amazon can easily prevent DVDs to be shipped to foreign countries (like they do with software), or customs can seize any foreign DVDs. If big companies and the people that created the stupid thing are not acting to enforce region control, why should I do anything about it?

It's CSS that everyone is so concerned about, because it enables digital to digital copy, which makes the powers that be wet their bed thinking about it at night. But even it is still an ungoing debate, as a Californian court has ruled that DeCSS (a DVD decryption tool) should not be banned due to provisions of free speech:

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaynews&NewsID=3819&Page=1&pagePos=1

This despite DeCSS not being a viable tool for 3 years now, so things are moving nicely

Some more useful links:

http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/DMCA/

http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences.pdf

http://www.protectfairuse.org/

http://anti-dmca.org/

I think the important thing to remember is that the DMCA is an ongoing discussion right now (they just recently watered down the DMCA, since as I said before, it's very flawed), and there will be lots of test cases which will challenge the DMCA and will eventually end up with the DMCA being appealed or changed to something completely different.

[admin]

@decryptit: Please have a look at rule number one, which states:

When posting message subject titles, please be specific

Your message title "Important" breaks this rule, so I've changed it.

[decryptit]

Since i consider this topic "important" for every one i've decided
to put it like that ,eventally its good aswell like this.

Quote:
I went to a few electronic stores a few days ealier, and practically all of them were stocking region-free DVD players, and some even publish remote control hacks on their website on how to unlock region-free capabilities in major brand players (and these built-in hacks were put in by the original manufacturers, so I guess they have no respect for region coding either).

I don't care of what sales persons do i just wanted to know if its
allowed or not distributing hacks in here ''I do respect the Forum"

[admin]

Actually, since region coding does not prevent copying, only the parallel importation of DVD movies, which really is a customs issue and one that should be addressed by deals with the local government and the movie distributors. Hence, one might argue the DMCA does not even apply in this case, since region coding is not a form of copy protection.

I've posted hacks before here, and there are lots of software on my main website that hacks software/hardware to be region free. This forum was created so that others can post information about hacks that I wouldn't have time/space on the main website to show.

[decryptit]

Ok then since i thought this forum was just "discussing region free" i kind got on a dilemma if i should help on hacks or not.