[H-GEN] DVD Legal Issues

[gearon at ieee.org]

Quoting Robert Brockway <rbrockway at opentrend.net>:
> On Mon, 30 May 2005, Willie Yeo wrote:
>
> > It is also discussed that it is technically illegal for DVDs to be
> > region coded in Australia (but hell, I think it cannot be enforced).
>
> Speaking of this - does anyone know is DVD players in Aus are enforcing
> region encoding?  I'd like to bring back a few Region 1 DVDs with me next
> time I travel, but only if they are going to work :)

Name-brand players all enforce region coding.  You have to spend less money to
get a player that lets you change regions on your player, and even less money
again to get a player that will ignore regions.

> > As for whether "dvd decryption librarys used to play dvd movies", it am
> > not certain.

At one point it was perfectly legal to reverse engineer something for the
purposes of interoperability.  While not tested (to my knowledge) it was
believed (or rather, it was hoped) that this would apply to a library for
playing DVDs.

However, in recent times the law in this area has been changing, mostly at the
behest of the USA.  Free Trade Agreements, and all that.  Even before the FTA,
Senator Alston made it clear that he intended to bring Australia into line with
the DMCA.  So these days I don't know if it is still considered legal, but even
if it is, you're skating on thin ice.  Remember that so-called legal activities
can be challenged if the commerical interests involved don't like what you're
doing.  Even if you're in the "right" you can still lose, or at least go broke
in the process.

IANAL, but I'm sure a lawyer can provide a more cynical perspective.  :-)

Regards,
Paul