The Dangers of DVD Region Encoding 19 years, 8 months ago by Martey Dodoo

The story: Boy sees movie. Boy falls in love with character from movie. Boy buys DVD of Japanese movie that inspired character boy loves. Boy realizes that DVD is Region 3, since there is no Region 1 DVD. Boy gets angry. Boy gets even, by constructing an extremely funny dialog between "DVD Jon" (famous for being sued at 15 for creating decss, a ridiculously small piece of code that defeated DVD encryption) and rapper "Lil' Jon." If you loved Cheney's and Leahy's freestyling in the Senate, you love Lil Jon meets DVD Jon:

dvd jon: Is that a Battle Royale DVD?
lil jon: YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Humor aside, the MPAA's reasons for region encoding (which you can find at the bottom of their DVD FAQ) are stupid. If I buy a Region 2 DVD (being afflicted by a love of anime, as too many of this country's young people are), but happen to " the large international region of the world" designated Region 1, I should be able to play my DVD. Regardless of whether the movie has gone through the MPAA's cycle of revenue, I should be able to watch the movie on the DVD I paid for. Considering that DVDs are more expensive than movie tickets, the MPAA might even benefit from ending the practice of regional encoding. More importantly, they would be acting in the benefit of the consumer, who they claim (falsely) that region encoding is meant to protect.

One day, both the RIAA and MPAA will learn to embrace open technology, instead of trying to stifle it. As long as that future looks nothing like Usher's "Dot Com" (from Waxy Links), I look forward to it.