It's been a week or two now since Disney was embroiled in a battle with cinema chains in the UK over the release of Alice In Wonderland. The very brief recap: Disney wants to cut the theatrical release window of a film to 12 weeks, while cinema chains want it at 17. The spat was ultimately settled, and Alice In Wonderland brought in over $200m worldwide at the box office. It's also heading for DVD in just over two months. Everyone's a winner. We think.

The interesting factor about this was Disney's reasons for shortening the theatrical window. It argued that this was because it was trying to close down the window for pirates. That, basically, by shortening the amount of time before people could get their hands on a legitimate DVD or Blu-ray, it would keep people away from trying to get their mucky paws on pirated copies of the film.

There may be some logic to the argument, and it also could be that Disney wants to save on marketing costs by contracting down the promotional period for a major release. I don't think too many people are convinced that the 12-week window is a magic wand that'll erase piracy, but I'm gratified that a film studio is trying something positive, rather than waving the rod of the law over our heads. I think it's safe to say that we're all a bit fed up with anti-piracy commercials on our legally-bought DVDs.

And yet, here's the contradiction, as pointed out by Den Of Geek reader Nocturne yesterday. If Disney is so committed to minimising opportunities for piracy, why is it the last studio out there that regularly runs staggered releases on some of its major films?

Arguably Disney's biggest film of the year is going to be Toy Story 3. It looks amazing, and we can't wait to see it. But, while Disney released Alice In Wonderland simultaneously around the world, here's how the Toy Story 3 release dates pan out, starting with the earliest date through to the latest:

Egypt: 16 June
USA: 18 June
Australia: 24 June
Japan: 10 July
UK: 23 July
Denmark: 26 August
Turkey: 3 September

So, for its big movie of the year, Disney is staggering the release by - are you ready for this? - 11 weeks. Does that not render much of what it was fighting for with Alice In Wonderland redundant?

If Disney were to stick to its 12-week cinematic window plan for Toy Story 3, then the residents of Turkey then may have the opportunity to choose to download a rip of the Egyptian DVD release instead, or simply import it. They'd only have a week to wait. Isn't that going against what Disney is actually fighting for? We're not advocating piracy here - far from it, to be clear - but it seems an odd oversight on Disney's part.

Now granted, family movies, in particular, traditionally have to wrap around school holidays, which are clearly at different times of the year in different places around the world. And yet, look at the Alice In Wonderland numbers. That's a family movie, and yet it doesn't seem to have been hurt by being released when the kids are at school. And you can bet it will still be playing come the Easter holidays anyway.

Just to be clear, Toy Story 3 isn't an isolated case. Let's just focus on the difference between US and UK release dates across Disney's recent big family releases. The Princess And The Frog premiered in the US on November 25th, getting a wide release on December 11th, but it didn't turn up in the UK until February 5th.

Up was a massive summer hit for Pixar last year, but it arrived in America on May 29th, taking nearly five months to get to the UK with an October 9th release date. The year before, Bolt made its US bow on November 21st, but didn't get to Britain until February 6th the following year. Heck, that one didn't arrive in Japan until August, nearly 10 months after its US release.

True, there are localisation issues that have an impact there too, but it's still puzzling why English-speaking countries have to wait quite so long. It's, surely, an archaic  holdover from the pre-Internet, pre-DVD days (take that from someone who had to wait a year extra to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas on a big screen, just as it was hitting VHS in the US).

Granted, Disney is adopting global roll-outs on the likes of Tron: Legacy. But even on something like The Sorceror's Apprentice, there's a staggered release: 16th July in the US, 13th August in the UK.

Scheduling a film, in all fairness, is no easy art. But after the song and dance of the last few weeks, it seems odd that Disney wouldn't first arrest the gaps in its own release schedule, before going head to head with the Odeons, Cineworlds and Vues of this world. For if it really is committed to closing up the gaps in the cinematic release window as tightly as possible, it seems to us that it might be an idea to get its internal release strategy sorted first.

With thanks again to Nocturne.