Hoisted on his Own Petard

The encryption of DVDs according to international 'region' is a major inconvenience for people like me, who find themselves living in a new, and apparently digitally incompatible region ever few years. I have DVDs from region 2 and region 4 that are useless on an American player.

Apparently encoding is intended to protect copyright - yes, the panacea to Hollywood's decling profits is not to make good films, its to make people buy new copies of their favorites with their sesonal migrations.

I can't even imagine how this stupid practice is supposed to protect against piracy. Does Hollywood think that asian pirate outfits would innocently mass copy a local DVD and be embaressed when it failed to play on US machines? Or are they trying to ensure that DVDs released in Europe while American distributors cool their heels remain out of reach of consumers here?

So I can't say I'm devastated to learn that Steven Spielberg is going to miss being nominated for a British Film award because:

Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.