3 ms·
Another aspect you didn't mention is how the number came to be illegal in the first place. The law for it was signed in 1998 and is one of very few laws that ou
by lozenge 9y ago
Another aspect you didn't mention is how the number came to be illegal in the first place. The law for it was signed in 1998 and is one of very few laws that outlaws distributing information regardless of how you got the information.
It outlaws bypassing any DRM, regardless of how trivial it is mathematically, the legitimate purpose of doing so, or even whether the content inside the DRM is copyrighted.
- DanBC 9y agoYes. > > You could change the "region" on your DVD player or computer, but only 3 times or so. Before this law the shops selling DVD players (for TVs, not computers) would also give you a sheet of paper with a controller code to turn your machine into a region free player. You'd tap some numbers into the remote control. After these laws (which were introduced across the world) shops would no loner do this because it was a criminal act. The fact that I could not legally buy a DVD that was only sold in Japan (never sold in the UK) and play it was really weird and scary. It was now more legal for me to pirate that DVD than to buy a real copy. So, when people ask me why I pirate so much, DeCSS and DMCA are why.
- gcb0 9y agothey did that till the very end. they just realized it was the ultimate killer feature so it was cleverly removed from the lower end models. the high end ones could always be turned region free. in the very end the ones with multidisk and what not could be factory reset to clear the 3 region change restriction.
- rconti 9y agoMost "normal" TV-compatible DVD players, in the US, at least, were region-locked and had no way to change region (or at least, no such information was distributed with them). Region-free players existed, mostly from sketchy/low-end sources.