Keep in mind that the US government took a substantial ownership stake in the automakers it bailed out.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/06/13/us-dealerships-told-not-to-sell-vehicles-to-canadians-to-save-canadian-franchises.html (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/06/13/us-dealerships-told-not-to-sell-vehicles-to-canadians-to-save-canadian-franchises.html)
(CBC is weird. They have utter crap news in the main news programs on their 24-hour news channel, yet their news department and interview shows (at least on radio) deliver a surprising amount of good stuff that tries hard to deflate Statists, among other blowhards.)
And now they know how it feels to be from New Zealand and Australia, where we are price gouged on electronics and electronic media...
Quote from: ebalosus on June 16, 2012, 10:16:56 PM
And now they know how it feels to be from New Zealand and Australia, where we are price gouged on electronics and electronic media...
Ah, but is there a government involved in doing so in a manner involving violating the laws supposedly enforced by that government?
Incidentally, can you still get DVD players in Australia that ignore most of the stupid rules on playback encoded onto the discs?
I will concede that no, it is not government enforced...but it still sucks all the same. I would be quite happy for the government to add an exception to section 92A of our draconian copyright enforcement bill that allows piracy in the case of price discrimination.
Yes, you can get both DVD and Bluray players in both australia and NZ which will play discs from any region.
Quote from: ebalosus on June 18, 2012, 08:38:09 PM
I will concede that no, it is not government enforced...but it still sucks all the same. I would be quite happy for the government to add an exception to section 92A of our draconian copyright enforcement bill that allows piracy in the case of price discrimination.
Yes, you can get both DVD and Bluray players in both australia and NZ which will play discs from any region.
Are those 'any region' players, or do they just ignore the region coding entirely?
To my knowledge, they are set to "play all regions". Technically, all DVD and Bluray players are capable of this, if you know the unlock code for the specific unit
Quote from: ebalosus on June 20, 2012, 08:59:47 AM
To my knowledge, they are set to "play all regions". Technically, all DVD and Bluray players are capable of this, if you know the unlock code for the specific unit
What I mean is, there's two ways to do it.
One way is the 'legit' way, which leaves you vulnerable to discs that are coded to tell 'all region' players to not play them.
The other way is the player simply ignores all region coding and flags relating to it.
I understand...though from my experience, it depends on the player. I had one that ignored the flags associated with region coding. I know this because I asked the person who sold it to me whether it a) was region free, and b) was the good kind of region free player (i.e. one that ignores region coding).