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Is It Illegal To Order A Movie From Overseas?
from the unclear dept
Earlier this week, we had the story of Miramax sending out threatening letters to a movie review site that simply linked to a site that used to sell movies that had been released in Asia, but not in the US. So, now, Wired News is exploring the tricky legal question of whether or not you're allowed to buy foreign DVDs of movies not released in the US. The conclusion is that you can probably buy a single copy for personal use. Maybe. You can't, however, sell it anywhere. So, if you go into a store, and they offer films (or, I imagine, music) that were released for sale outside of this country, it could be illegal to buy them. Apparently, despite having this nice global economy we're all supposed to be a part of, intellectual property law still means you could be breaking the law if you are buying and selling products not from this country.
Reader Comments
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Won't play anyhow?
How do you play foreign DVD's in the USA anyway?
As a data point, I'll say that DVD's are still not popular in Japan yet -- video stores still have mostly VHS. Great stuff too, like "Mass Suicide" (Shuudan Jisatsu), a new movie, about the internet starting a fad of mass suicides, and the movie starts with 50 girls jumping off a train platform and turning Shinjuku station into a river of blood.
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Re: Won't play anyhow?
Huh? You mean you don't all have region free DVD players? Nobody (sensible) in Europe buys any other kind. Most of my DVDs are in fact region 1 rather than region 2 anyway. It's trivial to switch region freeness on in most DVD players anyway - there are dozens of websites that tell you how to do it yourself.
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No Subject Given
I have a first or second generation DVD player that lets you change the country code on an on-screen menu.
Not that I have ever actually done it.
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