On Sun, 25 Mar 2001, Nathan Russell wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 01:15:33 +0200, Shot wrote:
[...]
> >Stragne - I heard that Sony equipped the astronauts with a player
> >capable of playing any DVD (a player with disabled region-lock
> >check)...
>
> I didn't know it was possible to disable the check; I'd thought it
> was somehow integrated into the cryptosystem.
It is very possible. My friends in France tell me that many
well-known shops where you buy DVD players will unblock them for a fee.
> If it is possible, that means the players are being deliberately
> designed to check, which could place the manufacturers at a legal
> disadvantage if they're ever accused of interfering with free trade
> or any such - which I, as a perpetual optimist, devotely hope they
> eventually will be.
From what I understand manufacturers must implement the check as part
of their contract with the DVD-CCA without which they cannot legally
implement the decoder (since DVD-CCA is the only licensor of CSS, see
what happened to DeCSS).
But resellers are not bound by any contract with the DVD-CCA which,
as I understand, is how they can legally disable the region-lock.
Still, it looks to me like they must get support from the
manufacturers to be able to do so, but maybe that's allowed by the
manufacturer's contracts. In other words the manufacturers it seems it
is legal for the manufacturers to produce DVD players for which the
region-lock can be disabled by shorting a connection, switching a
dip-switch, changing the ROM (I'm not sure about the remote control
secret codes though). And they can publish information about this / sell
alternate ROMs, as long as the DVD players they ship enforce the region
lock.
See: http://www.dvdcca.org/dvdcca/
--
Francois Gouget [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fgouget.free.fr/
The nice thing about meditation is that it makes doing nothing quite respectable
-- Paul Dean
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