Some programs aren't available on DVD in my region. But I suppose DVD players are cheap, so people can just buy one per region.

... Or does piracy sound like a better experience?

It probably comes down one's personal ethics, views about civic virtue, etc.

I want my neighbor's pile of firewood. They probably wouldn't miss one or two logs, but I have other reasons for not taking any.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone that my view is correct, I'm just saying that I think this is one aspect of how different people approach the question of how to obtain digital entertainment.

What does your personal ethics say about paying somebody to build a system that prohibits certain kinds of people from receiving certain kinds of information? Even if a trickle of that money makes it to the artist, doesn't that seems like a technology that's ripe for abuse?

The "piracy==stealing" argument doesn't work here. I don't doubt you'd make a copy of your neighbor's pile of firewood if you coveted it.

Yeah, it was a flawed example for sure. All of the other examples I could think of at the time seemed like they'd be inflammatory in various ways.

Physical copies (Blu-rays especially) are heavily region locked. A Japanese region coded Blu-ray won't play on an EU coded player, unless you're able to flash the firmware to unlock it. And a lot of Japanese movies, especially classic films, never get a Europe release.

Is it hard to find a non region locked player nowadays?

Back in the days when I was living in Switzerland, the DVD players there weren't region locked so a number of french, italian or german people would just drive to Switzerland and buy their DVD player there. No idea if it applies to Blueray as well, I never owned a Blueray player.

Have you ever had your content region locked? Wanting to watch something but can't because of where you live? What if you're half way through a series and a company rips away access to your country? Do you just shrug and 'forgo' your access?