Video piracy was hardly a crime in 1982

Re:Video piracy was hardly a crime in 1982 by pingyong on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @10:54AM (#21584945)

Eh, Germany isn't exactly "piracy friendly" at all. If you torrent a popular song there's a decent chance you get sued for hundreds (previously thousands) of dollars.

But region hacking isn't really piracy, and the guy you talked to might've just been cool with it. People in electronics stores are super different, some of them are just nerds who pirate at home and will gladly help you with any problem you have in that regard, others will just follow "protocol".

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Re:Video piracy was hardly a crime in 1982 by ChuckNorris89 on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @11:48AM (#21585541)

My thought exactly.

Germany is probably the unfriendliest EU country when it comes to piracy, enforcing fines even on small offenders.

Grandparent's example with the DVD player region lock isn't exactly piracy.

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Re:Video piracy was hardly a crime in 1982 by jandrese on Wednesday November 20, 2019 @03:39PM (#21588238)

In some cases the region locks were even counterproductive if the goal was to reduce piracy. If you have to install a modchip to play a game from a different region, then you've just enabled someone to pirate who might not have bothered otherwise. But now that they've gone to the trouble to mod the system it's no extra effort to start pirating games.

It also give the modchip companies a thin veneer of semi-legitimacy.

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