My mom bought some vcd's and dvd's from another country. However when I tried to play it on our Sony vcd/DVD player it says there is some regional restriction or w/e. Is there any way to bypass this w/o purchasing another player? For instance ripping the contents onto a computer and removing the conflicting file then recopying? I appreciate the help. P.S. I really hope this doesn't turn into a discussion about copyright infringement and other various issues involved with international movies.

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You will need to purchase a player from the area they ere meant for. But if you try to copy them you will be guilty of copyright infringement if you succeed.

You can buy multizone DVD players and software that will play DVDs from multiple zones on your PC, and these are legal in most jurisdictions. The copyright implications of the region-coding system of DVDs are unclear and largely untested, and they conflict with established jurisprudence for things like books (which can be read anywhere, not just in certain regions). Sony is one of the most gung-ho proponents of region coding, or has been in the past, so there may not be a way to make your DVD player handle multiple zones (although even Sony players often have a special command that does this). In any case, as long as you purchased the DVD legally, it's okay to watch it anywhere in the world, if you have a player or software that will bypass the region coding. I'm not aware of any attempts by any movie studios to sue someone for bypassing the region code on a legal DVD—probably because any such attempt could backfire.