Hey, I hear you and am right there with ya (as I said in my post, I buy stuff from Europe and do the rip/burn using an unlocked G4, MactheRipper, and Toast).
Just explaining SOME of the logic behind it.That said, the real issue in my mind is lack of faith in product. The reason for separate release dates in separate countries for film is to test how it does in one market before pushing it in the next, which is kind of bulls**t, if you ask me. If you're going to get behind something, get behind it, release it at one time to the world, and be done with it (which is happening more and more these days). Region-encoding prevents people buying a dvd of a film that hasn't come out in their country yet (for example, I had the dvd of Shaun of the Dead right around the time it was released here in the US, though to be fair I paid to see it in the theater as well, just to see it in the theater). If you have uniform release dates, then you don't need region encoding at all.