Rights.. again

In recent weeks I've spent a lot of time on a project abroad, which has taken up much time.

It's also got me thinking about rights again.

A lot of people in this industry spend a lot of time analysing technologies and platforms and alliances but rights rarely gets a look-in. And as for boring stuff like metadata well...

I'm very much a believer in getting content out there. It's not that I don't care about rights - every content owner should be able to protect their intellectual property and take appropriate value from it.

But when the attempt to protect property runs head-first into consumer behaviour then it's the rights that have to change.

I say this because on one of several flights and facing long hotel stays I picked up a box-set of James Bond DVDs. It wasn't until I tried to watch it on my laptop that I realised it was a Region 1 (North Am) DVD and both me and my laptop are Region 2 (Europe).

I was graciously granted the right to switch between regions but only four times... gee thanks. I might not even make my way through the box set if I watched Region 2 DVDs in between. Clearly this causes a problem, not least of which is choosing between Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun.

But the main problem is that I am now being penalised for apparently reasonable consumer behaviour. In this day and age of frequent travel and movement, let alone digital access, the idea of geographical restriction is outrageous. I've paid a substantial amount for the DVDs and even more for my laptop, software licences etc. So the owners have made their money but I will be left holding a useless DVD.

So what am I going to do ? Obviously find some way to crack the encoding software or download the movies illegally instead. There's only one pirate in this scenario.