Note: Region 1 is US and Canada. A Region 1 DVD in French with no English subtitles probably was issued in Canada for francophones there. Canadian French-language releases often do have English (and sometimes also French) subtitles, so this is a good source for the US. You can use amazon.ca or archambault.ca but their information about subtitles is often shaky.
Region 2 includes France and to play these disks with *extremely conservative* legality you need either a computer drive set for the region or a player sold already preset to Region 2. Hacked players or players (software/hardware) that get around the encoding may be illegal, according to the last pronouncement (in 2003) http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/registers-recommendation.pdf) . However, so far as I know there has never been any prosecution of vendors, software or hack instruction distributors, or users of hacks for regional encoding. It is a pretty gray area. The Omega vs. Costco Case has however raised a potential copyright problem which could block the sale of foreign-made DVDs in the U.S. This could include DVDs made for Canadian release, irrespective of the region. The case allowed a Swiss watch company to block the resale by unauthorized vendors of a watch with a *copyrighted decoration* (not a trademark or patent!) in the U.S. In principle, the copyright owners of Red and the Black could deny the right to sell the DVD at all to US buyers. However, this is pretty unlikely. I never heard of the "droit de prêt"-in the US this would be covered by the Doctrine of First Sale (the very thing challenged by the Costco case) which allows the purchaser to lend, give away, or resell the item. Judy From: videolib-boun...@lists.berkeley.edu [mailto:videolib-boun...@lists.berkeley.edu] On Behalf Of Nadia Gabriel Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:00 PM To: videolib@lists.berkeley.edu Subject: [Videolib] (was) Looking for The Red and the Black - region 1 dvds Hi all, I'm interrupting this conversation to bounce on Brigid's answer Found this through a French site, but it is a Region 1 DVD sold by amazon.com<http://amazon.com/>: [...] How often do you purchase Region 1 DVDs for your library? If/when you do, should you pay a copyright fee, or what they call "droit de prêt" in France? My customers ask for more French movies but most of them are Regions 1 DVDs. More and more people have 'dezoned/multizone' DVD players so the technical issue is not so much the matter nowadays but I'm more concerned about the legal issues. What do you think? Thanks, Nadia Gabriel Librarian at Alliance Française de Washington
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