In reply to:

---

...Resistance to RIAA and their movie industry brethern is still sporadic (e.g. sale of region-coded DVD players is illegal in Switzerland and New Zealand, IIRC), but we will see

---

Um, I live in New Zealand, and Region Coded DVD players are certainly on sale here. We are in DVD Zone 4, but most DVD players you buy these days are 'adjusted' before you get them to play any zone DVD you care to have.

There is certainly no law here against the selling of Region-Free [or Region-hacked] DVD players. Our Government currently has a hands off approach to this whole area of 'copyright' by assuming that the citizen has more rights for personal use of the DVD from other zones over the rights of the ditributors to enforce their sales regions.
This same hands of approach also lets video & DVD rental shops parallel (or grey) import DVDs from the US - much to the annoyance of the local distributors of said DVDs and movies but my heart bleeds for them.