I am in Switzerland for Christmas. I launch a new Firefox install. Firefox loads the Firefox Start page, featuring Google search. The page is in German.

About 64% of people speak Swiss-German dialects (and German as well), 20% French, 7% Italian, based on geographical boundaries. People in these different areas do not necessarily have a working knowledge of the other languages (even though they should). This means that Switzerland is not a German-speaking country in the same way that Germany is.

For this reason, it is not ok to present pages in German by default when you believe that the user is located in Switzerland. Even if you think it is ok to make an clearly erroneous guess, then you must provide an easy way to switch to the other national languages as well as English. This ability must be available directly on the home page and must be a one-click operation. This is how Swiss sites typically behave.

The Firefox home page is particularly badly designed in this respect. You can't switch language directly on the page. In fact, to change the language, you have to know German to go to the advanced search preferences ("Einstellungen", and then find the menu to change the user's language), which does not make any sense. Somebody without a knowledge of basic German or an awful lot of patience will simply not be able to do it at all.

Other countries are multi-lingual, including but not limited to Belgium and Canada. I think it is time that companies that design localized sites become aware of this issue.

Today I put in my computer a DVD from a Blackadder set, bought legally for me as a gift a few of years ago.

I happen to have plugged a European DVD into my US Mac, and you can guess what message I got from the Mac OS X Leopard DVD player. You got it: "The disc region does not match the drive region". Yeah, I can change it 4 times. Thanks, that's so generous.

This is simply insane. I had forgotten that this even existed as I don't play DVDs very often. Furthermore, in Switzerland where I am at the moment, standalone players are routinely sold region-free (although that may change with the upcoming and particularly crazy Swiss DMCA).

What is the sense of this region coding? This is the 21st century. People travel. They use the internet. The world is working hard on removing existing boundaries and I don't think it is permissible to build new, artificial barriers. Governments and industries that attempt to do that should be fought.

I understand that I am partly at fault because I am using an actual, physical DVD, a quite old media, and I should have ripped my DVDs a long time ago and be free of these issues. But I think it is still important to talk about region coding, because:

• Most content sold today is still in region-coded DVD format, while it could be region-free.
• Recent formats like Blu-ray support region coding as well.
• DRM in general is pervasive for video content online (if you except P2P networks), and kind or region-coded through stores like the iTunes Store which require credit cards registered in a certain country.

DRM is going away for music now, which is a good first step. There is hope that, as broadband and video-enabled devices become even more widespread, DRM on video will vanish on its own as that will be the only option left to the industry in the face of underground P2P filesharing. Unfortunately, in the meanwhile, as has been the case with music, a lot of harm will be done. I am not sure what we can do about it, except raise the awareness of the issue by talking about it.

PS: In my particular case, there are workarounds, like using VLC to play the DVD (although VLC seems to crash quite often). My previous laptop, bought 4 years ago, was made region-free right away. However on the Mac, making the drive region-free is not as mainstream a process. I wonder what non-technical users do in this kind of situation? Change the player's zone until it is finally locked in the wrong zone?

On pourrait croire qu'en Suisse, pays champion de la démocracie directe, on ne puisse pas facilement passer une loi sans même que les citoyens en aient vent et sans que la presse n'en mentionne quoi que ce soit.

Pourtant, c'est bien ce qui semble se passer avec le "DMCA" suisse. La SUISA avait déjà réussi récemment à voler au consommateur CHF 80 par lecteur mp3. Ceci était présenté comme la seule façon de garder le droit à la copie privée. Une loi enrageante, mais qui au moins n'entachait pas la liberté des consommateurs.

Maintenant, une nouvelle loi proposée est bien pire: elle semble même aller plus loin que le DMCA américain par certains aspects. Voir cet article pour plus de détails: c'est une vraie folie qu'on essaie d'imposer à des citoyens suisses complètement malinformés ou désinformés. Lisez également ce billet web écrit par Cory Doctorow. Il appelle cette loi "brutale", et il a raison.

Le gouvernement suisse apparait aussi corrompu (au sens "corruption du processus politique" proposé par Larry Lessig) que celui des Etats-Unis ou de la France. Ce n'est guère une vraie surprise, mais j'en reste déçu. Quant à la presse, en particulier en Suisse Romande, on ne peut que la blâmer pour sa médiocrité.

En attendant, faites passer le mot et signez le référendum.