I rented The Naked Spur from the library (hear that it's pretty good, haven't watched it yet), and I noticed the disclaimer on the back saying that it was "authorized for sale only in the U.S. and Canada." This led me to wonder about importing and exporting DVDs? Could some companies sue and construe it as illegal? I mean, I see numerous foreign discs on eBay all the time, and doesn't Amazon ship out of the country? I'm a bit confused....

Thats just the DVD companies trying to scare people

Perhaps this would be a better question for the international forum.

I don't think it's illegal. It could be that distributors/studios of such movies in a particular region are not allowed to sell DVDs to resellers overseas, though. Also, playing out of region movies can be challenging, and as result I don't think retailers (or most consumers) would want to deal with the related issues.

Movies can be locked to a particular region... so US movies may not play in regular Japanese DVD player, for instance. Or A UK DVD may not play in a US player. Movies from other regions can be in different video formats, so they may not play on your TV... even if the DVD player can send the signal to your TV.

Amazon.com makes the sale and transaction in America. Wherever they ship it to after the transaction is finished is not against any kind of rule.

If I remember correctly from the days when the record labels went after companies that imported CDs and vinyl from other countries, there is a legal difference between individuals buying and importing titles themselves and businesses importing titles for resale. But I could be wrong.

Techncally, the reseller is violating a condition of the sale by allowing the DVD to be a parallel import. Gray market goods like electronic products made for the Canadian market and sold in the USA would also be parallel imports. These electronic goods may be cheaper than approved products sold here, but they have no USA warranty. As for DVDs, it seems that few countries stop the import of foreign DVDs. France did sometimes, from what I read, to protect its movie industry from DVDs of the same movies still playing in French theaters. About 8 years ago, Tai Seng filed lawsuits against DVD stores in New York's Chinatown selling HK DVDs that Tai Seng had the US distribution rights to. Tai Seng sicced the US Marshals on these stores, getting some of the clerks arrested and forcing the stores to carry Tai Seng labelled and higher priced versions of these HK DVDs. Now, with the HK film industry in near total collapse, there is no problem about gray market sales of HK DVDs. Few new HK movies, few new HK DVDs made (mostly new Blu-ray versions of older SD HK DVDs).

Hollywood movies companies don't care about parallel DVD imports here, a small market. Some like Universal are worried about redbox's $1 a day DVD rental kiosks cutting into sales of new movie DVDs.