The DVD region code system: Standardizing home video’s disjunctive global flows

Abstract

Drawing together work from global media studies, studies of digital media regulation and governance, and cultural theory, this article analyzes the DVD region code system. It details how the technology came about through a process of global governance that set the terms for home video’s global distribution to the general advantage of Hollywood’s film industries. Rather than presenting a picture of purely top-down technological control, however, it argues that the emergence of region codes represented an international process of technical development and standardization by private media industries that reflected and generated understandings of media regions as both differentiated economic markets and spaces of cultural organization and coherence.

Localizing YouTube: Language, cultural regions, and digital platforms

“…From the perspective of the media industries, regions are at times regarded as sites of cultural and political coherence but at other times as spaces that have to be actively policed and (geo) blocked (Elkins, 2016; Lobato and Meese, 2016). Studies of global media industries make it clear that any straightforward mapping of geographic territories onto media regions is a fraught endeavor.…”

Un modèle éditorial du troisième type

“…Vodkaster permet de résoudre les problèmes liés aux codes de région des DVD (Elkins, 2016), puisqu'il suffira à l'usager d'accéder à l'internet, n'importe où dans le monde, et sur n'importe quel terminal, pour lire le DVD acheté en France, dans la zone n o 2. Autrement dit, cela contribue à augmenter ce que certains nomment le côté « poreux » du marché de la vidéo en raison des différentes manières de contourner les régulations techniques des pays et d'en faciliter la circulation internationale (O'Regan, 1991 ;McDonald, 2007).…”