Play Station and copyright

[Aaron Gerow]

Sony, which released its new Play Station 2 only weeks ago, announced 
yesterday that, because of a miss, the DVD playback component in the 
machine is capable of playing disks from other region codes if 
manipulated in a certain way, and thay they will be exchanging the 
programming software for the machines already sold.

A humorous story in itself, but what I was surprised in the most (though 
not all) of the news stories reporting this said that if DVD from other 
regions could be played, "there is a fear copyright laws will be 
violated."  Personally, I never thought the establishment and maintanance 
of region codes had anything to do with copyright law per se.  Afterall, 
DVD players manufactured as multi-code like the Kones do exist in the 
States.  A few stories, I think rightly, merely said the machine violates 
an agreement between makers of DVD soft.

I just want to ask those more knowledgable on the subject, do region 
codes have any backing in copyright law, in Japan or elsewhere?  Or is 
the reason citing copyright violation just a screen to convince people to 
turn in their old programming soft, and to avoid putting the spotlight on 
the agreement between manufacturers? 

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171