A few months ago while shopping for an iMac DV, I faced a dilemma. It wasn't the matter of sticking with Apple, but about whether I should buy it locally. Aside from issues of availability, price and OS language, there was the DVD bugaboo.

The majority of DVD-compatible computers and players manufactured locally can only play DVD discs that are coded for Region 2 (that's us) or those that are free of region codes (which are few). Anyone can order videos of foreign films several months before release in Japan, but DVD region coding has put up a new barrier. Trapped in Region 2, not only do I have to wait for DVDs to be released here (with subtitles I don't particularly need and at prices I don't like), but I am also limited in my selection. Likewise, certain discs of Akira Kurosawa or Takeshi Kitano films, which have been made for an overseas audience, are also out of reach.

In the big picture, I'm in the minority, just like Jon Johansen, a 16-year-old Norwegian programmer who was unable to play DVDs on his Linux machine. Johansen and two colleagues cracked the encryption code of DVDs (called CSS, for Content Scrambling System) by "reverse-engineering" and then uploaded the source code of his utility (DeCSS) to the Net.