DVD Region-changing Restrictions - Fsf-friends

2 Feb 2005


      Dear Friends,
This article mentions mostly Apple devices,DVD region
codes are really problem for people like me.Beware
FYI
--arky
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
Apple restricting DVD region-changes -- voluntarily!
-- UPDATED
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/01/apple_restricting_dv.html
Apple's DVD players are subject to restrictive rules
laid out by greedy Hollywood studios that don't really
care if they piss off Apple's customers, since that's
Apple's lookout. However, I've just discovered, to my
amazement, that Apple imposes its very own
restrictions on its DVD players over and above those
imposed by the studios: that's right, Apple
voluntarily treats its customers worse than the
studios say it has to.
In the crazy world of DRM for DVDs, there's this idea
that a Hollywood studio should be able to tell you
where you're allowed to watch a DVD after you buy it.
They accomplish this with something called "Region
Codes." Discs have region-codes and players have
region-codes. If you have a Region 1 disc (US and
Canada) and a Region 2 player (Europe), and you put
the disc in the player, the player will reject it.
But what happens when you take your laptop from New
York to London? You're in Region 2, but you bought
your device in Region 1. Can you buy a disc in London
and play it on your computer?
Yes and no. When a computer manufacturer gets a
DVD-decoding license from Hollywood's licensing cartel
(the DVD Copy Control Association or CCA), it is
allowed to make players that can change regions up to
five times.
What's more, once the region-switches have run out,
computer companies can reset your counter at a service
depot a further five times. That means that you get 25
region-switches. This sucks pretty bad: I moved from
San Francisco to London with hundreds of Region 1 DVDs
and now when I buy a movie in the shop, it's Region 2.
That means that if I watch a movie from my US
collection once a week, and once from my UK connection
the next week, I'll run out of region switches in
three months. Three months after moving to the UK,
I'll have to throw out half my DVDs.
So, basically, I don't watch my DVDs. Sometimes,
though, I'm weak, and I tune into one and squander one
of my precious region switches. Now my nearly-new
Powerbook has only one switch left out of its initial
five, and so I brought it to Apple to get them to
reset the counter. It needed service anyway (I'm on my
fifth or sixth screen replacement for the defect in
the 15" machines that causes the "white blobs" to
obscure the display), so it seemed like a good time to
do it.
I know that Apple is allowed to do this. How do I
know? Well, when EFF went to the Copyright Office and
asked it to give us an exemption to the DMCA to make
tools for watching out-of-region DVDs, Time-Warner
showed up and told us this:
"And, the way it works, and I apologize because
it's a little bit complicated, the consumer can set it
five times. After the fifth time that they've reset
it, they do have an ability to reset it again, but
they have to bring the drive to an authorized dealer
or an authorized service representative, who can then
authorize an additional set of five changes, and then
they can bring it back for a second, for a third,
fourth and fifth set of authorized changes. So you can
change it 25 times in total, but you have to go back
for each set of five. You only get the first five when
you buy the ROM drive itself."
That was Dean Marks, from AOL Time Warner. Straight
from the horse's mouth, testifying to the US
government.
But when my Powerbook was ready for pickup, Apple left
me a voicemail saying that they couldn't reset my DVD
player, that doing so would void my warranty.
When I went into the Apple Store in London to get the
machine, I asked about it. I wanted this in writing:
if they had a policy that said that they couldn't fix
my region-counter, I wanted to be able to tell Dean
Marks about it the next time we went to the Copyright
Office and ask him why Apple thought it couldn't reset
my counter.
Apple refused to put it into writing. They refused to
let me record them telling me they couldn't fix my
Powerbook. They wouldn't even put in writing that they
were referring me to the legal department. Eventually
I spoke to the manager, who promised to get back to me
the next day.
The next day, he did. He told me that he'd spoken to
legal and that they wouldn't put anything in writing.
However, they did have some documents on their website
they printed for me that talk about DVDs.
1. DVD Player: About DVD-Video Regions, last
modified July 16, 2004, technical contributor J Scalo.
This document describes the different regions, saying
that after five region-switches, "the drive is
permanently set to use that region, and you cannot
make any more changes."
Interestingly, this also contains something
labeled APPLE EYES ONLY that says that
On Wallstreet and PDQ (PowerBook G3 Series
M4753), the number of region code changes remaining is
not stored in the firmware of the DVD drive but rather
in the DVD extension and NVRAM. This information
should absolutely not be conveyed to the customer.
In extreme customer satisfaction situations
you can reset the region change count by following
this procedure:
             1. Reset PRAM/NVRAM by pressing
Fn-Ctrl-Shift-Power while the computer is turned off
             2. Startup with system extensions off.
             3. Restart with system extensions on. 
          Note: This procedure resets some of the
customer's custom settings.
After following this procedure, the region
change count for the drive is reset to five.
In later PowerBook models, the region count
is stored in the firmware of the drive and cannot be
reset with this procedure.
2. Changing the region code of your DVD drive, last
modified on January 23, 2004. This document says that
you can only change your region code five times.
"After that, the region code is set permanently and
you cannot change it."
So there's two things going on here that I'm pretty
pissed off about:
1. The studios have screwed the electronics
companies with this region code business and I have to
throw out my DVDs or buy an extra Powerbook or
something
   2. Worse, though: Apple has a policy about
region-changing that is more restrictive than it has
to be: they're playing for the other side. This really
stinks and makes me wonder why I should keep on buying
Apple hardware.
Lots of Apple execs read Boing Boing. If you have a
reply on this, email me and I'll be happy to discuss
it with you.
Update: Many of you have written to point out that VLC
plays out of region DVDs on a Powerbook. That's nice,
but it doesn't work reliably on my Powerbook.
Update 2: Thanks for all the tips on how to hack my
Powerbook or change its firmware. I'm afraid that I'm
not in the market for this, though, tempting as it is,
as I've been informed that using these tools will void
my warranty.
posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:46:39 AM permalink |
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____________________________________
/\                                   \
_|       Rakesh 'arky' Ambati       |
  |        Bangalore (INDIA)         |
  | Homepage: http://arky.port5.com/ |
  |   _______________________________|_
   _/_________________________________/
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