I know it sounds ridiculous, but each of this subsidiaries keeps to themselves, with the exception of the random “grey market” cameras. Nikon USA lets that stuff slide because they feel they punish the customers for they by denying warranty work.

The parent company sets up these distributors to a) make things easier by having somebody on the ground in each market and b) there are very likely tax advantages to having pseudo-separate businesses set up in each market.

Now Nikon USA probably moves a lot of merch compared to other markets and has extra money to play with for advertising/promotions and such. This is advertising for them.

Why would Nikon USA advertise in other countries? Does Nikon UK advertise here? Nikon Japan? No, and the parent company would give them a strong backhand if they did. It goes against their business model.

It sounds asinine, because it is. But that’s the mechanics of our global market. I agree that everyone everywhere should be able to buy whatever products they want to enrich their lives. But that can’t always happen.

Instead it’ll be out for a while and someone will share it in entirety on the internet. Nikon may not sell a bunch, but it’s money well spent on publicity. It’s a win/win situation for Nikon USA. They don’t need to do more, so they likely won’t.

There are several reasons it might not be distributed in the the US, and they have nothing to do with conspiracy, just corporate bullshit.

Nikon USA could almost be considered a separate company. They exist to distribute Nikon merch in the US and perform warranty work. They have a bunch of money and do some neat things on their own (NPS?). But they are not papa Nikon and they are not international. They are a subsidiary. I’m guessing (and I could be totally wrong) that this video is my by Nikon USA. As such it is a local product and it’s a) too much money to make in the standard 12 languages and b)they don’t want to step on toes in other markets by directly exporting it.

This is why Nikon UK and others have at times had to pull camera manuals from their websites–because Nikon USA was selling them and pitched a fit when they found customers could get them for free online. It seems like papa Nikon eventually intervened and you can download pretty much anything these days, but for those that don’t remember, this did happen. Ever try and download an N80 manual from Nikon USA? Don’t bother, you still can’t.

Check the Nikon Global site (parent company site) and you’ll see no mention of the CLS DVD. Probably does come from Nikon USA.

My point is there’s no conspiracy and the petition is misguided. Nikon USA isn’t depriving anybody of anything. They’re trying to go above and beyond what a distributor can do. They’re probably strapped for cash at this point and you’re not going to convince them to motivated them to ship to other markets.

Just appreciate what they’re offering, since it’s already above and beyond the call of duty.

I am sure that there will be people all around the world buying / selling gray market copies of the DVD. Assuming that many of these will be legitimately purchased versions of the current DVD, that will actually be good for sales! So why does Nikon need to go to the expense of localizing the DVD for people in say, Sweden, if they are willing to buy the english version over the Internet anyway? Nikon, as a company with foreign subsidiaries in many countries, would have to incur many costs as noted above (and in my previous post) to sell the DVD around the world. If people buy it and then re-sell it on eBay, Nikon makes money by selling a product that they already have, and keeps costs down by not having to localize it.

Sounds profitable to me.

Brett

PS: The point of my earlier post was not to defend Nikon’s decision as to why they have not distributed the DVD globally, it was merely to point out additional costs involved in doing so, which may have led to their current decision not to distribute the DVD around the world.

Sony, Apple, M$…. all the same. Europe usually seems to come bottom of the pile.

Probably it will be available worldwide from the sellers on eBay (HK). Apparently they can put around anything in a envelop and ship it for €3 worldwide.

As you can see, there are many factors that play into the choice of distribution for a DVD (or CD for that matter), and I am sure that there are numerous additional factors that I have not mentioned.

Brett

Comment modified by admin: Please don’t post bittorrent links. As I said:
“It is very important to note that I (we) do not want to hurt the company we love, so let’s make sure we keep it civilized and stick only to the online petition.”

I do consider bittorrent illegal and I will not host any related links.
Thanks for your understanding.

Up until just a couple of years ago there wasn’t a Nikon Australia but rather a wholly independent company who imported and distributed Nikon’s products for them.

This is also why there are grey market products and why I can’t buy Nikkor lenses from b&h over the internet and expect Nikon to service them here in Canada.

As for the video, I’ve been seeing more and more of this regional rights stuff lately and it’s quite annoying. I’m sure Nikon will eventually make this available in more countries soon, but in the mean time, we’ll just have to get it from the US and bring it up ourselves.

I’m not saying a petition isn’t a good idea, just that it’s going to need a LOT of signatures to show that there’s enough Canadian demand to overcome the extra costs that would be involved in producing a Canadian edition.