Piracy is LEGAL and buying original DVDs is ILLEGAL?

[4RM3D]

Piracy is LEGAL and buying original DVDs is ILLEGAL? That requires some explanation.

Lets imagine the following situation. You are not from the USA and you have a movie that you want to buy. But that movie has only been released in the USA and it will not be released elsewhere. Now clearly the movie studio doesn't care about the rest of the world and it shouldn't matter that people download the movie instead of getting it from the USA. And the question is if you can really expect to people to get it all the way from the USA. In the end there shouldn't be much financial loss for the film industry.

Now, the above example, is that piracy? Yes, I suppose so. But is it illegal? If there is no copyright holder in the country where the movie has been downloaded, then there is no claim to make. Is it illegal by law? Can you get arrested? That depends on the country. I know that at least in some countries it is not illegal.

But that is not all; the plot thickens... Because you are a hardcore fan of the movie, you decided to order it from an American website. A week or 2 later, you receive the package. Being very enthusiastic, you immediately put the DVD in the DVD player where you are greeted by a FBI warning and then this: Warning! This program is protected by law. Licensed only for use in the United Stated and Canada. Uhm, what? You are not officially allowed to watch/buy that movie outside of the USA and Canada. And because it falls under US law, you can get arrested? WHAT!?

So how are you suppose to legally acquire such a movie? Because by law, buying the movie makes you more liable than downloading the movie. No, seriously!? No sane person is going to sue you for buying a movie legally, right? I am just overreacting right? Well, there is no such thing as overreacting when it comes to law. It will own you regardless.

Finally, coming back to the opening statement: Piracy is LEGAL and buying original DVDs is ILLEGAL? Of course I don't honestly believe that and the story above is exaggerated. BUT it does makes you wonder, no?

 

[evilneko]

No, the buyer is not liable. The seller might be, but not the buyer.

 

[Pyro Paul]

Is it piracy? Yes.
Is it illegal? Yes.

Can you be punished? If the US Justice Department can convince your country to extradite you to the US for trial... Then Yes you can be punished.

but the plot Doesn't thicken!
You order a DvD from an American Website. 2 weeks later you receive the package. You immediatly put the DVD in the DVD player where you are greeted by a blank screen...

You see, DVDs are encoded with Regional Lock-outs to prevent people from doing this.

This is intended to prevent market saturation from imports because of price diffrences which are incurred through tarrifs, contracts, and shipping fees. If you at any US retailer for a modern Video Game it will be 10-20 dollars cheaper then the UK retailer.

but as to the
" Warning! This program is protected by law. Licensed only for use in the United Stated and Canada."

Yes, you can get arrested.
you can get fined.

you're bypassing a multitude of international laws which may exisit between the two countries.

To answer the question though.
Piracy is Illegal. it is the unauthorized distrobution of copyrighted material. The individual that sold you that DVD violated copyright law and can be subject to punishment.

Buying Original DVD's is legal, although with the DMCA... altering a device to remove the regional lockout encoded in the reader is actually illegal. So while you can buy as many as DVD's as you want, you legally have no way to acctually see what is on them.

edit:

well, techincally there is a very grey area on readers because it is acctual hardware which follows diffrent copyright laws. hacking a player to read movies flagged for a diffrent region technically isn't illegal (depending on your country)

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

There's one big problem with this: the only country in the world that actually enforces those regional lockouts is the U.S.. In fact, in a lot of other countries, it's actually illegal to make it impossible to circumvent the region lockouts. That's why, for example, you can buy all region DVD players in ordinary stores in Australia. In fact, back in the days of Laserdisc, importing media from America to PAL territory was standard practice, because a lot of movies never made it out there, and the ones that did were usually inferior, since the Laserdisc format was built around NTSC video, and it lost certain features in accommodating the extra bandwidth needed for PAL. Point being, this is yet another case of the entertainment industry overstepping their bounds, getting laws passed in the U.S. that would be abhorrent anywhere else.

 

[4RM3D]

This is intended to prevent market saturation from imports because of price diffrences which are incurred through tarrifs, contracts, and shipping fees. If you at any US retailer for a modern Video Game it will be 10-20 dollars cheaper then the UK retailer.

And this fact has been abused by companies a lot. Originally the film companies wanted to make importing DVDs illegal. And they have sued various retailers that sold imports. But after the film companies saw they really couldn't contain or prevent people from importing DVDs, they finally stopped trying to make it illegal. Although, that is good news, I still haven't forgiven them for even trying to outlaw imports. Especially in the early days when the DVD was just released here (in the Netherlands). Dutch version were more expensive, more crappy, had less extras and had months delay. Well, screw them, give me the imports! Nowadays, the situation is much better. But I still need to import half of what I want, because it is not released in the Netherlands.

altering a device to remove the regional lockout encoded in the reader is actually illegal.

I don't think home modification to any hardware is illegal. Apple tried to sue people for jailbreaking their iPhones and the judge ruled in favor of the people. If this analogy can be applied to DVD players, which I believe it can, it is not illegal.

So while you can buy as many as DVD's as you want, you legally have no way to acctually see what is on them.

Even if modifications to hardware is illegal, there are still two simple legal tricks to play region 1 DVDs.
1) VLC player, one of the biggest software video players for the PC, can play every region.
2) DVD-ROMs (DVD players in a computer) are not region locked. They give the user 4-5 times the option to switch regions.

EDIT: Oh, @Owyn_Merrilin made a reply before I could finish mine. Oh well...