DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics

[R. Hirschfeld]

> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry at piermont.com>
> Date: 09 Jan 2003 16:03:00 -0500
> 
> Matt Blaze <mab at crypto.com> writes:
> > By the way, import region-free DVD players *are* available, quite
> > legally, within the US, as are non-region 1 disks.  Kim's video in NYC
> > is one source.  They are all unfamiliar off brands, however - you won't
> > find Sony or Matsushita (deliberately) producing one.
> 
> Actually, that's not true. Kim's sells grey market units typically
> made without licenses to the DVD patent portfolio in places like
> China, and units that are more legal but that have been cracked. The
> latter are supplied with instruction sheets describing how to disable
> region coding. Some of these sheets actually say things like "we can't
> be responsible for the effects, but if you were to push the following
> buttons in the following sequence..."
> 
> I am unaware of legal region-free players being generally available in
> the US, although I may be wrong on this.

How "illegal" are these grey market units?  For unlicensed units made
legally in jurisdictions not subject to the patents, is the illegality
in the importing and/or selling?  Are modified ("cracked") players
necessarily illegal?

It's legal to own several DVD players of differing regions so it seems
odd that it would be illegal to have them in a single package sharing
common components (everything but a byte of firmware).  Manufacturers
are presumably prevented from doing this by the terms of their license
agreements (and some, like Sony, have vested interests).

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