Re:Isn't this against EU rules? (Score 1)

FACT *do* care and did a swoop on several UK suppliers of US laserdiscs and R1 DVDs about a couple of years ago, removing all their stock.

Don't know exact legal position, but it's something along the lines of "The US video software is only licensed for sale within certain geographic boundaries eg US & Canada. Anywhere else is breaking the law."

However, it is not illegal to do a personal import from the US. So most companies selling R1 DVDs to the UK public use dodges such as acting as "agents" for you in the import of DVDs, or simply operate off-shore as does www.play247.com which is in the Channel Islands. They can also exploit the dodge that packets under a certain value are not charged VAT, so you can get DVDs from the US for 15.99 or less.

There is *no* control on the sale of multiregion players eg at Tesco. That was supposed to have been taken care-of by the agreements that manufacturers signed with the movie industry in order to gain access to DVD decryption technology. Didn't work very well, did it?

In any case, *had* it worked, I would simply have bought two DVD players, one for R1 and one for R2. It's an unenforceable policy in a global market.