Contest

To enter any contest here one must be a U.S. resident. I assume that has to do with shipping a prize. What if a non-U.S. resident entered, won, then had his prize sent to someone within the States to forward at the winner´s expense? Is this a possibility?

i know. i was just pretending that my feelings were hurt. :)

but seriously, like the piracy thing, we can't be a part of any illegal exportation of dvds.

Sorry, Eddie. I didn't mean for my comment to appear condescending, just teasingly practical.

John

gee, thanks, john.

You can see Eddie's paranoia runneth over. I suggest you simply have whoever it is you know in the U.S. enter the contest. If that person wins, what you folks do with your own discs is up to you.

John

John,

There's a good reason why our contests involve only American and Canadian residents--we cover R1 releases, and strictly speaking, R1 releases aren't supposed to be viewable anywhere in the world other than in R1 territories. Therefore, in order to prevent products that aren't supposed to be released in non-R1 countries from reaching those shores, we are not involved in that sort of transaction. As we are aware of Sasha's residency in Spain, we can not in good legal faith select him as a winner because we would then be aiding/abetting him in a crime (I'm not saying that anyone is a criminal, but I am saying that we WOULD be if such events were to happen).

It's not just the studios being jerks, either. You see, some movies/TV shows are distributed by different people in different countries. Sometimes, sending a movie to another country means that one studio could be sued by another studio for breaking a contract. For example, if Warner were to ship "T3" to a non-R1 country, Sony would sue Warner.

Eddie

Generally speaking, we ask the movie studios to ship out their prizes. (I used to do a lot of it myself, but the expense became prohibitive.) Anyway, the studios are understandably wary of shipping things overseas. On the other hand, if you could provide them (through us) a U.S. address to ship to, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem. But that would have to be up to Henning, the Editor, to decide. We want to avoid possible cases of fraud, too.

John

Eddie:

Please share with us more of your knowledge about R1 countries and such. Does this involve musical CDs, books, PC programs or only DVDs? Suppose, I was visiting in Michigan and bought a movie in a book shop. Who is to say that I cannot take it back to Canary Islands in a suitcase with my underwear and peanut butter? Would I be breaking a law then? I know they would have a problem with peanut butter, but what about the disc?

Sasha

The main thing is to avoid getting the peanut butter on the disc. Despite everything that they say about CDs and DVDs being indestructable, the fact is that scratches, fingerprints, and peanut butter will cause skips or total failure of the disc to play. On the other hand, there are some discs that peanut butter would improve. Try smearing it extensively over "Freddy Got Fingered."

Incidentally, it's illegal to sell or distribute DVDs made for one region to another region. It's not, however, illegal to carry them from one region to another. It's kinda like Prohibition in America. It was illegal to make or sell alcoholic beverages; it wasn't illegal to drink them.

John

Sasha,

As far as I know, only DVDs have the R1, R2, R3, etc. coding.

There's nothing wrong with physically carrying items from one place to another unless it's prohibited by law in the final destination (for example, "Playboy" magazines in certain parts of Asia).

Since our contests involve studios doing direct shipping, we can't choose winners from outside of R1 because the studios would end up violating DVD Forum rules. It's not worth it to anyone to break the law just to send one free DVD to someone outside of R1, lol.

Eddie