Things that piss me off: Region coding on movies

I want to buy the Blu-Ray version of The Boat That Rocked, which is the British original version of what later appeared in the U.S. as Pirate Radio. I want this particular disc because it's a longer version of the movie, and I want to see as much of the film as director Richard Curtis will let me have. Multiple companies are willing to sell it to me. I have money. Everything is working as it should in a capitalist economy...

...except that I can't play the blasted thing on my Blu-Ray player, so there's no point in buying it. I live in the U.S., and this disc is coded for the European region (B, or 2).

Region coding is a stupid artifact of the desperate desire for control of movie studios, and it needs to die.

I understand the basic rationale: Region coding lets content providers (read: studios) set the prices, content, and release dates of discs differently for different regions of the world. In other words, it lets them attempt to control the market for their products.

What's wrong with this picture is that any fool with a browser and a little determination--which means most of the Internet-connected world--can find a store somewhere that's willing to ship them any product that store sells. Sure, that product will usually carry a premium shipping cost if it's coming from far away, but so what? That hurts no one.

As it happens, my situation offers a perfect example of when a studio might benefit from this control. The Boat That Rocked appeared in 2007, well ahead of its 2009 U.S. appearance as Pirate Radio. By keeping me from being able to play the Blu-Ray disc of the earlier film, the reasoning might go, the studio lured me to the theater. Well, in my case this was certainly true--but the studio would have made money by selling me the disc of the first film, so it would not have left the transaction empty-handed. Perhaps as importantly, it would have gained information, from me and from other buyers, on whether a re-cut of the film for American audiences was necessary or it could have saved the cost and offered us the British version.

What region encoding has really accomplished is to tempt me to illegally download a movie for the first time in my life. No, I won't do it, for the same reason I've never done it before: I believe in paying for the content I consume. I am, however, sorely tempted, and this cannot be what the studio wants.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that region coding, like all DRM, is a stupid idea that needs to die.

By the way, I've heard that not all studios actually bother to encode the Blu-Ray discs they label as being only for specific regions. If anyone out there owns the above Blu-Ray disc and has played it on a U.S. Blu-Ray player, please let me know, because then I'll happily give a merchant (and thus the studio) some more of my money for the original version of this wonderful film.